Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on wage growth of recent trends in the Office for Budget Responsibility's economic forecasts.

Wage growth has now outstripped inflation for 25 consecutive months, the longest period of real wage growth since before the recession. In their November Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast wage growth of 2.2% for 2016, and that this would rise to 2.4% in 2017, 2.8% in 2018 and above 3% per annum from 2019 onwards.