Letter from Angela Rayner and Jonathan Reynolds to Low Pay Commission Remit 2025
Published 5 August 2025
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Letter to Baroness Stroud, Chair, Low Pay Commission from Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Rt Hon Jonathan Reynolds MP, Secretary of State for Business and Trade and President of the Board of Trade.
05 August 2025
Dear Baroness Stroud,
We are writing in relation to the remit to the Low Pay Commission (LPC) issued by the government. We have attached the updated remit to this letter.
First, we would like to extend our appreciation to you, your Commissioner colleagues and the LPC Secretariat for your work on the last remit. Everyone in the government places great value on the tripartite model of the Commission, and your commitment to recommendations based on both evidence and consensus.
As we set out in our letter accompanying the July 2024 remit, we are committed to ensuring that the minimum wage is a genuine living wage. We continue to recognise that our ambition should be backed by evidence, and that the minimum wage rate should be consistent with delivering inclusive growth for working people and businesses alike. We are therefore asking the LPC to recommend a National Living Wage rate that is at least two-thirds of UK median earnings for workers aged 21 and over, to apply from next April, which takes into account the cost of living, effects on employment and developments in the wider economy.
The government also remains committed to ensuring that every adult worker benefits from this genuine living wage by removing discriminatory age bands for adults. In your advice to the government last October, you stated your intention to consult “on the appropriate pace and approach to closing the gap between the rates”; we welcome this consultative approach to this important decision. The findings from this consultation should then inform the LPC’s recommendations for 18 to 20-year-old rate(s) from April 2026.
The remit continues to request recommendations on the under 18 and apprentice rates, and the accommodation offset. We also ask the LPC to gather evidence and publish its findings on what criteria would need to be met in order for the baseline target of the National Living Wage rate to increase beyond the current two-thirds of UK median earnings level within this parliament to deliver greater prosperity and improve living standards for working people, in all areas of the UK.
We, and the wider ministerial team, look forward to continuing to work closely with the LPC, as we deliver our ambitious plan to deliver a genuine living wage for workers across the country. We would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to all the Commissioners to meet with Minister Madders to discuss the remit and the work we are doing as part of our Plan to Make Work Pay. Our offices will be in contact to find a suitable opportunity for us to meet in the near future.
We look forward to meeting with you soon, and to receiving the LPC’s recommendations in October.
Yours ever,
RT HON ANGELA RAYNER MP
Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
RT HON JONATHAN REYNOLDS MP
Secretary of State for Business and Trade