Sunak announces ‘National Living Wage’ rise to £9.50 an hour – Politics Live | Policy

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1.36pm BST13:36

Sunak has announced that the National Living Wage will rise to £9.50 an hour next year

The Treasury has just announced that the ‘national living wage’ is set to rise from £8.91 to £9.50 an hour as part of the autumn budget.

As reported by PA Media, the 59p rise means a full-time living wage earner would see their annual income jump by more than £1,000. The National Living Wage was introduced in 2016 and sets the minimum hourly wage that a person over the age of 23 can earn when working.

The new rate will come into effect on April 1 next year. For those aged 21 to 22, the national minimum wage will rise from £8.36 an hour to £9.18 an hour – an increase of 82 pence. The price of the intern will increase from £4.30 an hour to £4.81 an hour.

In a press release, the Treasury said the increases were as recommended by the Low Wage Commission. Treasury said:

By introducing these changes, which generally correspond to previous increases, the government accepts all recommendations made by the Low Wage Commission – an independent advisory board that includes economists and representatives of employers and employees.

The government remains committed to achieving its ambitious target of achieving a national living wage of two-thirds of median income and expanding it to workers over the age of 21 by 2024, provided economic conditions permit.

Rishi Sunak, Consultant said:

This is a government that stands by the workers. This pay increase ensures that we are paid for the work and keeps us on track to achieve our goal of ending low wages by the end of this Parliament.

Rishi Sunak. Photo: Jeff Overs/BBC/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 1.50pm GMT

1.26pm BST13:26

In the Downing Street lobby, the prime minister’s spokesman said Boris Johnson’s comments in a Q&A with the kids earlier (see 12.52pm) did not mean he wanted people to give up recycling. The speaker said:

The Prime Minister was making it clear that recycling alone is not the answer. We are taking a wide range of actions across society to reduce plastic pollution. Just relying on recycling alone as the Prime Minister explained would be a hoax, we need to move forward and take broader action.

The spokesperson said Johnson was “simply explaining the de facto situation” when he made clear how difficult it would be to reach an agreement at Cop26.

The spokesperson said that when Johnson said he did not support new coal mines, he was making a general point, and he was not referring to the proposed coal mine in Cumbria, which has been the subject of a public investigation.

1.12pm BST13:12

My fellow environmentalists are doing a Q&A with readers about Cop26 right now. You can follow him on a live blog here. As you would expect, the answers are more detailed and less clear than in the previous questions and answers. (See 12.52 pm).

1.07pm BST13:07

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said failure to take action on climate change would be “a betrayal of young people around the world” and risked life on Earth becoming “unknown”.

In a speech before the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, Fish Sturgeon warned that keeping warming temperatures at 1.5°C would not prevent all the harmful effects of climate change. Sturgeon said:

The harsh truth is: “Keeping 1.5 alive” – ​​which has become almost a mainstay for Cop26 – is vital. It should not become a face-saving slogan. It must be real.

And both in the lead-up to “Cop” and at the same time, there must be a huge rise in ambition from the world’s largest emitters to make it happen.

Every country gathered around the negotiating table also knows what action is required to prevent it. So there is no excuse for inaction.

Sturgeon said that “fairness and fairness will be central to Scotland’s entire approach to Cop26” and promised to “work to ensure that leaders of my generation understand that failing to act now would be a betrayal of young people around the world”.

Sturgeon is giving a speech at the Center for Technology and Innovation at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow this morning. Photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Reuters

12.52 PM GMT 12:52

Johnson’s Q&A with Kids at Cop26 – Summary and Analysis

Although Alok Sharma, President of Cop26, has generally impressed environmentalists with the seriousness with which he has taken preparations for the summit, the same cannot be said of Boris Johnson. He took time off two weeks ago, unwilling to accept the potential downsides of moving to net zero, and this morning he sought advice on his negotiating strategy from a room full of kids. (See 11.52 p.m.). In 1980, when then-President of the United States Jimmy Carter talked about consulting his 13-year-old daughter about nuclear policy, he released an audio clip seen as a killer of his presidential campaign.

Johnson’s intervention was innocuous by comparison (in the American analogy of the ’80s, he’s much more Ronald Reagan than the fanatical Jimmy Carter), and he was clearly just laughing at his audience. But perhaps there are better ways to explain that Cop26 is an issue of intergenerational justice. Environmentalists love to hear him take Cop26 issues seriously, rather than joke about people feeding animals.

However, Johnson made a provocative argument about plastic during the Q&A (albeit that may undermine support for recycling initiatives). These are the main points he mentioned.

Johnson said he was “deeply concerned” about the failure of the Cop26 summit. Referring to the difficulty of getting an agreement to achieve net zero by 2050, he said:

I think it can be done. This summit is going to be very difficult, and I’m very worried that it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements we need, and it goes on and on. It is very difficult. But I think it can be done.

He said there would be a lot of “peer pressure” on the countries participating in the summit to come up with proper net-zero plans. But he continued, “It’s not very clear that we’re going to make the progress we need.”

He dismissed plastic recycling as an environmental “red herring”, saying what is important is cutting off the use of plastic. He said:

The problem with plastic is that recycling is not the answer, I have to be honest with you. Recycling – You won’t like this.

You can only recycle plastic a few times, and what you have to do is stop the production of the plastic, and stop the first use of the plastic. The recycling thing is a red herring.

Johnson’s remark led to an embarrassing spat with fellow speaker at the event, WWF UK CEO, Tanya Steele. After Johnson called recycling a red herring, Steele suggested he went a bit too far. She said:

We have to reduce, we have to reuse – I think we need to do some recycling, PM, and we have a system to do that.

But Johnson interrupted him, effectively contradicting her. He said:

It does not work. I don’t want to be dogmatic about this but – if people think we can recycle our way out of the problem, we’re going to make a huge mistake. We need to reduce our use [of plastics]We need much less.

Johnson chose Coca-Cola as one of 12 global companies that “produce the largest portion of the world’s plastic”. These companies need to find alternative types of packaging, he said. He joked about feeding people to animals as a way to remedy the flaws in nature. After Steele said 97% of the mammals on the planet are humans and their livestock, and only 3% were “left to the wild,” Johnson said that was “very sad.” “We can feed some humans to animals,” he added.

Updated at 1.00 PM GMT

12.05 PM BST12: 05

One girl says eating more yogurt and seaweed might be good for people, not just cows.

(Both ideas surfaced earlier as a way to make cows produce less methane.)

We might all end up eating yogurt and seaweed, Johnson says.

And that’s it.

I’ll be posting the highlights (as far as they’ve been) soon.

12.03 PM GMT 12:03

A girl says there should be more pedestrian-only areas.

Johnson says he agrees. But he says care should be taken about confusing cyclists and pedestrians. As mayor of London, he’s built more bike lanes, he says.

12.02 PM BST12: 02

A girl says she hopes Johnson will consider her plan for a water-powered car.

That sounds like a great idea, Johnson says.

Updated at 12.12pm GMT

12.01 PM BST12: 01

Q: What sacrifices would you make personally?

Johnson says he would like everyone to stop using hydrocarbons. He says he would like to go back to the time when he was able to cycle everywhere.

11.59am BST11:59

A girl says that all schools should have solar panels.

This is the solution we want in the end, Johnson says.

11.58 AM GMT 11:58

In some countries a girl says that they burn coal because they have to pay for food.

Johnson agrees. He says it is not fair to ask poor countries to make sacrifices. This is why rich countries give them $100 billion a year to help.

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