Unions urge Rachel Reeves to deliver ‘living standards budget’

Unions have urged the chancellor to keep focused on raising living standards, targeting child poverty and upping the national minimum wage, in the face of renewed calls from business to change course on employment rights. The TUC said that Rachel Reeves must deliver “a living standards budget” on Wednesday to ease the pressure on working households whose incomes have remained stagnant in more than a decade. Related: Rachel Reeves, please, let’s make budgets boring again | Heather Stewart Analysis by the unions showed working people were just £12 a week better off compared with 2008 after a “painful Tory pay hangover”. Real wages grew at an average of just 0.04% each year under the Conservative government between May 2010 and April 2024, it found, while public service workers saw no increase at all. It said that had real wages continued to grow as they did from 2000-2008, workers would now be paid £317 a week more. Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said: “This budget must be a living standards budget. “Households up and down the country [are] still suffering a painful Tory pay hangover – leaving this Labour government with lots of ground to make up.” He urged Reeves to “show ambition on the minimum wage”. He also called for action to bring down energy bills, and for scrapping the two-child benefit cap in full. Related: Voters could abandon centrist parties if budget fails, warns former cabinet secretary The TUC said Reeves should tackle the “child poverty emergency”, announcing new polling by Survation showing 83% of the public agreed that no child should be living in poverty in the UK. Reeves has signalled she is preparing to lift the two-child benefit cap, according to pre-budget reports. Novak said the budget would be “a crucial moment to show ministers are on the side of working people”.