National minimum wage to rise 3.8 percent
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the national minimum wage would go up on Oct 1 this year by 3.8 percent to a rate of 5.73 an hour.
The increase is above the current rate of CPI inflation, but below the rate of RPI inflation - currently 4.1 percent - on which most wage deals were based.
Brown told parliament that the statutory rate has risen by 60 percent since it was introduced by a Labour government in 1999.