Budget 2024: Minimum wage to rise to £12.21 per hour next year

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade group UK Hospitality, said businesses will approach the Budget with “even more trepidation” after the minimum wage increases were announced.

“Attempting to balance the pocketbooks of high street businesses will leave hospitality as collateral damage, threatening jobs, future investment, price rises for consumers and the viability of the business,” he said.

Nick Mackenzie, boss of pub chain Greene King, told the BBC’s Today programme that the increase in the minimum was “slightly higher than we had envisaged”.

But he stressed that what was “critical” for the sector was the “cumulative impact” of rising costs for businesses.

Asked whether rising costs for higher wages and taxes would lead to redundancies and less investment, Mr Mackenzie said: “If you keep adding costs to business then that will happen.”

But Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said: “Every time the minimum wage increases there are voices predicting that it will increase unemployment. They are wrong every time.”

Claire Reindorp, chief executive of the Young Women’s Trust, also backed the rise, saying women were “more likely to work in low-paid jobs, so they have been on the sharp end of the financial crisis in this country for too long.” .