Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the oral answer of the Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility on 4 June 2019, Official Report, column 53, what the evidential basis is for her statement that in 2019, £118 million has been paid back to more than 220,000 workers who were underpaid the minimum wage.

We are committed to taking robust enforcement action to ensure that everyone who is entitled to the National Minimum or Living Wage receives it.

We have more than doubled the budget for minimum wage compliance and enforcement since 2015; it is now at a record high of £27.4 million.

To clarify, since 1999, minimum wage arrears worth over £118 million have been paid to 835,000 workers. In the year 2018/19 alone, £24.4m of wage arrears were identified, owed to more than 220,000 workers.

The transcript error within the Official Report has now been corrected.