Former Prime Minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak has called for the Low Pay Commission to be abolished, saying ministers must take full control over setting the national living wage.
Sunak admitted in a Sunday Times article that his decisions to raise the national minimum wage contributed to job struggles now facing young people across the UK.
He argued that wage increases under his tenure had outstripped productivity gains, and that he regretted following the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations rather than overruling them.
Sunak wrote: “I decided that for a multimillionaire chancellor to overrule the LPC without any covering fire wasn’t politically sensible — and so let that pay carry on rising. I now wish I’d been braver and acted anyway.”
The current framework requires the government to set a remit for the Low Pay Commission on cost of living and hourly earnings, with the quango then making a formal recommendation on wage growth.
Sunak also criticised Business leaders for failing to “get publicly involved” in wage growth debates, calling on them to engage more openly with policymakers on the issue.
He urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to freeze statutory wage rates until 2030 and to link the national living wage to productivity rather than cost of living measures.
The national living wage rose from £8.91 in 2021 to £11.44 by April 2024 under Sunak’s government, representing a near-10 per cent increase in a single year at its peak.
Reeves has continued raising the rate, with the national living wage climbing to £12.71 per hour from April 2026, a figure accepted in full from the Low Pay Commission’s recommendation.
Several business groups have warned that April’s increase in the national living wage, combined with higher employer National Insurance contributions introduced last year, created a perfect storm of cost pressures.
The current government has also pushed the Low Pay Commission to gradually narrow the pay gap between 18 to 20-year-olds and adult workers, a move economists have criticised heavily.
Critics argue businesses have become less willing to hire young people as a direct result of the narrowing pay bands between younger workers and adults in the wage structure.
The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds reached 16.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, up from 14.2 per cent the previous year, leaving 729,000 young people out of work.
Nearly one million young people, totalling 957,000, were classified as Neets, meaning not in education, employment or training, in the final quarter of 2025.