It was claimed that Rishi Sunak will announce a significant rise in the national living wage and also give eight million households cost of living payments worth up to £1,100.
The new Prime Minister is set to prioritise support for the most impoverished people as he also signalled that he will keep the triple lock on pensions as part of Thursday’s Budget.
A newspaper outlet reported that Rishi Sunak and his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt plan to raise the living wage from £9.50 an hour to about £10.40 an hour, or more, boosting wages for 2.5 million people.
The Prime Minister is also now expected to increase benefits, such as universal credit, as well as up to three cost of living payments for households worth £650, including £150 for the disabled and £300 for some of the most impoverished pensioners. It means some homes could get payments of £1,100 this winter.
These will be a continuance of the payments that numerous households will have already received since September to cover the cost of rising food and energy prices.
The Prime Minister said at the G20 in Bali that he understands the particular challenge of pensioners and they will always be at the forefront of his mind.
The triple lock, introduced in 2010, ensures that the state pension will increase in line with their inflation, wages or 2.5 per cent, whichever is the most elevated, but with inflation around 10 per cent, the Treasury could save about £4.5 billion a year if it raised pensions in line with wages, not around 5.5 per cent, instead.
Asked whether he would ditch the triple lock, Rishi Sunak, who was attending the G20 summit, said that his track record as Chancellor demonstrated he cared very much about pensioners.
He said that he couldn’t comment on any decisions, days before a financial statement. But that they would put fairness and compassion at the heart of all the decisions they made, and he added that he was confident people would see that.
Senior Conservatives warned that ditching the triple lock would be seen by pensioners as a betrayal and could be political suicide given that many older people vote Conservative.
The 2019 Tory manifesto promised to keep the protection in place for the duration of this Parliament.
Rishi Sunak suspended it this year because of a freak peak in average wages linked to the end of lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning pensioners received an increase of only 3.1 per cent.
So, let’s translate this. What Rishi Sunak actually means is that he will be taking more money off the workers who have really invested and put the hours into their progress in life and that he’ll be handing it out to people who simply can’t be bothered to work, and let’s not overlook the illegals.
Benefits are historically low, and they’re worth much less now due to the cost of living crisis, but then so are workers’ wages, and most people wouldn’t be able to own their own property, get a loan, choose where they live, go on holiday, invest, set up a trust fund, buy a comfortable reliable car or choose which school their children go to, and that’s not just people on benefits, that’s people that are working as well.
People from England, that were born here don’t just get a council house, they have to prove they’re British first whilst watching newcomers with large families get on the waiting lists and get a home quickly because they have four or more children, it’s truly despicable.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 