Martin Lewis has thrown his support behind the increased Real Living Wage, saying it will improve "quality of life".

The Real Living Wage is a voluntary rate paid by thousands of employers, and more than 300,000 people are set to get a pay rise as a result of the increase.

In London it will be set at £11.05 an hour, with the rest of the country getting £9.90. This is a rise of 20p and 40p respectively.

The Living Wage Foundation, which sets the rates, said almost 9,000 employers across the UK now pay the wage, which is higher than the statutory National Living Wage of £8.91 an hour for adults, which will rise to £9.50 in April.

Workers paid the higher rate have benefitted from more than £1.6 billion in extra wages since the foundation launched its campaign 20 years ago.

This is something that MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis is a big fan of, and he appeared on the foundation's Twitter page in a video announcing the new rates.

He said: "I've long term been a supporter of that [The Real Living Wage] and the reason is really simple.

"When you spend your life looking at people's expenditure and trying to make them spend better, spend wiser so they can have more happiness from doing it right you get an understanding that if people don't have a basic subsistence income all of that's pointless.

"So we as one of the world's richest countries have a responsibility to make sure that people have at least a basic income when they go out to work."

'This is real quality of life we're talking about'

Lewis reiterated that this increase was more than just about helping people out of financial issues.

He stated that in one year around 400,000 people in England alone consider taking their own lives due to financial difficulties, and 100,000 attempt it.

"So this isn't a trivial bit of rounding with pound notes and arcane economics, this is real quality of life we're talking about," he said.