Seeing the Chancellor and her team line up on Downing Street reminded me of my own spell as a junior minister at the Treasury, at the Budget and Autumn Statement.

My role at that time focussed on areas such as alcohol and gambling duties, and energy policy. But there are two Osborne reforms that stick in my mind as having an especially lasting effect.

The first was the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (better known as the Sugar Tax). It was controversial but now credited with having prompted re-formulation of a number of popular drinks and so helped in tackling obesity.

The second was the National Living Wage.

When the original minimum wage had been brought in in 1999 many (me included) thought it could only be set so high as to increase unemployment or so low as to make no difference. But it did.

Back in 1999, the minimum wage for over-21s was £3.60.

George Osborne’s plan for the National Living Wage (NLW) was a bold step that went a lot further. Initially set at £7.20 an hour the plan was that it should rise over time to 60 per cent of median earnings. That was reached in 2020 and a new target of 66 per cent of median wages reached in April this year.

As the last government left office, the NLW had risen to £11.44 an hour. This rise was substantially more than inflation and it meant that the proportion of workers in low-pay, having stayed stuck at around one in five throughout 1997-2010, had now fallen to one in ten.

In the Budget just now, the Chancellor has further increased the NLW by 6.7 per cent to £12.21 per hour. That is welcome but the Chancellor must also keep a sharp eye on the labour market: there is still a level at which any minimum wage will hit jobs.

Wage regulation cannot be viewed in isolation. Of particular significance now is that the latest NLW increase comes at the same time as two other relevant measures: the Employment Rights Bill, and the big increase in employer National Insurance contributions.

Although the government has painted the latter as ‘not a tax on working people’, economists are clear its effect in the end can only be felt through wage depression or lower employment.

The Resolution Foundation dubbed the NLW the ‘single most successful economic policy in a generation’. I want it to stay that way and keep on raising wage levels and helping productivity. The government needs to look at its wider approach, and remember that low unemployment is paramount.

This month’s national rise in unemployment is relatively small and we should never read too much into a single month’s data. But it should give pause for thought.