George Osborne accused of stealing the living wage by money saving expert Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, levelled the accusation at George Osborne on national television

George Osborne has been accused of "stealing" the living wage by a money expert.

Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, levelled the accusation at George Osborne on national television.

"You stole the name 'living wage' from the Living Wage Foundation," Mr Lewis said. "Your national living wage for over 25s is £7.20, the Living Wage Foundation – and we’re a living wage employer, when we have interns we pay them the London living wage – that’s £9.20, it’s £8.25 outside of London.

"You call the living wage £7.20, in reality it’s just a minimum wage for over 25s. It’s a bit like saying like I’ve just invented cornflakes. The living wage wasn’t yours and you shouldn’t have called it that."

Osborne increased the minimum hourly wage in the UK by 50p to £7.20 on April 1.

This falls short of the wage needed to live on as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, which is £9.40 for those in London and £8.25 for the rest of the country.

Osborne did not address Lewis's point that a minimum wage of £7.20 is still more than £1 an hour short of the £8.25 needed to live on outside London.

"It’s not the same as the London living wage," Osborne said. "That’s because if you applied the living wage outside of London you’d get a lot of people losing their jobs."

Retailers including Waitrose, B&Q and Tesco have changed the way they pay staff this year. Each has said that the changes are unrelated to Osborne's living wage, but the changes show that big UK companies are looking to cut the cost of wages as the higher minimum wage puts pressure on finances.

Tesco has said it will pay staff £7.62, more than the living wage. But it reportedly cut overtime time pay six weeks ago by changing it from double to one-and-a-half times the usual wage for unregular hours.

Waitrose said it stopped overtime pay or higher rates on Sundays after it looked at the market and realised that competitors were not offering similar benefits. Meanwhile B&Q implemented a new pay structure in April but said this would be under review for two years.