What does the pledge mean? 

As part of a series of “milestones” set out in its “Plan For Change” launched on 5 December 2024, the government pledged to deliver “higher living standards in every part of the United Kingdom by the end of the Parliament”.

It said it will measure “headline progress” against this pledge through “higher Real Household Disposable Income per person and GDP per capita” by the end of the parliament, and that it will also track GDP per capita at a regional level.

Real Household Disposable Income (RHDI) per person is a commonly used measure of living standards—it has risen in every parliamentary term since records began in 1950, but saw the weakest overall growth during the previous parliament.

GDP per capita refers to the size of a country’s economy divided by its population. According to the Resolution Foundation, the UK’s GDP per capita has risen in every parliamentary term since 1955 except for the 2005-2010 and 2019-2024 parliaments (which coincided with the financial crisis and the pandemic respectively, both of which significantly impacted the UK economy). GDP per capita growth across all regions of the UK, however, has only been achieved “in three of the last six parliaments”.

The government has only specified that these measures must be higher at the end of the current parliament (set to be the 2029/2030 financial year)—it has not set a numerical target. 

Although the pledge was published on 5 December 2024, we don’t know for sure what the government is taking as its starting point. We’ve asked the government to confirm the exact baseline figures it will compare against and will update this page if we hear back.

What progress has been made?

For now we’ve rated this pledge as “Wait and see”, as it’s too early to know how disposable income per head has changed since the government made this pledge.

RHDI per head increased by 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and before that by 0.6% in the third quarter of 2024—the first two quarters under the Labour government (though Labour formed a government on 5 July 2024 and Q3 2024 began on 1 July).

As the pledge was made in December 2024, so far there is only limited data available for overall GDP per capita, which shows that in the first quarter of 2025 it increased by 0.5% compared to the previous quarter.

Regional GDP per capita data is published with a two-year lag, so we don’t expect to have relevant data for this measure for some time.