Government take-home pay figures 'perfectly sensible'

Most British workers have seen their take-home pay rise in real terms in the past year, the government says.

Ministers say new figures show everyone except the richest 10% saw their take-home wages rise by at least 2.5% once tax cuts were taken into account.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the Today programme's John Humphrys that these statistics are "a perfectly sensible set of numbers" to come to this conclusion.

He added, however, that "other sets of data", such as the average weekly earnings index by the Office for National Statistics, show a different perspective.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday 24 January 2014.