Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

10: Right to Work and Minimum Wage

Thematic Tags

Work; Employment; Cost of living; Adequate standard of living

Concluding Observation 37a

The Committee urges the State Party to index the minimum wage to the cost of living and adjust it regularly, in collaboration with social partners, to ensure that workers and their families enjoy an adequate standard of living and to guarantee full compliance with minimum wage regulations across all sectors and forms of employment in all jurisdictions.

Context

The minimum wage is reserved to the UK Government. However, fair work is at the heart of our ambition to move towards a wellbeing economy in Scotland that benefits employees and the planet. We published the Fair Work Action Plan in 2024 setting out the actions we will take to promote fair and inclusive workplaces across Scotland, incorporating actions on the gender pay gap, the disability employment gap, and the anti-racist employment strategy.

Through our Fair Work First approach, it continues to be a requirement for employers in receipt of public sector grants to pay their workers at least the real living wage, and for suppliers delivering Scottish Government contracts to do likewise for those workers directly involved in delivering the contract. Additionally, employers awarded such grants and public sector contracts are encouraged to address workplace inequalities, including pay and employment gaps for disabled people, racialised minorities, women and workers aged over 50, and to offer flexible and family friendly working practices for all workers from day one of employment. More than 72,000 workers have had a pay rise as a result of accredited real living wage employers, making a real and ongoing impact for people in Scotland.

We have supported Living Wage Scotland with grant funding since 2014 to roll out the real living wage accreditation scheme, and later in 2021 extending to the Real Living Hours Scheme. This resulted in the Scottish Government becoming the first government in the UK to become an accredited living wage employer in 2015. The number of accredited living wage employers is up from 14 in 2014 to over 3,900 in 2025, and there are over 100 living hour accredited employers since the scheme’s launch, including the Scottish Government who were accredited in November 2023. Scotland remains the best performing of all four UK nations with the highest proportion of employees (18+) paid the real living wage or more (88.7%).

Key Actions

We will halve the disability employment gap by 2038 through partnering with local authorities and stakeholders, including health and voluntary organisations, to build on the existing no-one left behind approach. This has supported 61,930 people since April 2019, 19% of whom reported having a disability.

We are investing £125 million in 2025-26 to enable adult social care workers in the third and private sectors to be paid at least the real living wage rate, which takes the estimated total investment up to £950 million.

We are also providing an additional £9.7 million to local authorities in 2025-26 to support an increase in the pay of childcare workers in the private and third sector delivering funded early learning and childcare so that they can be paid at least the real living wage from April 2025.

Since April 2024, we have invested a total of £50 million in funding towards the pay of staff at the real living wage who deliver direct care in commissioned services, namely, secure care, care home for children and young people, support services for disabled children and more.

In September 2025 we published our Impact Report on our fair work action plan. This shows that fair work has been embedded in the public sector, and that we continue to provide significant employment opportunities for women, while also reducing the mean pay gaps for disabled people and people from minority ethnic groups.