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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many businesses have been (a) charged with and (b) successfully prosecuted for non-payment of the minimum wage in each year from the minimum wage coming into force up to 2010.

Prosecution is reserved for the most serious cases. In most cases the Government applies civil sanctions, of up to £20,000 per worker, which are appropriate in the great majority of cases, and ensure a worker is paid back the arrears they are owed as quickly as possible. There is no guarantee that prosecution will result in arrears being paid back to the workers.

With the agreement of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, HMRC started considering prosecution for minimum wage offences from May 2006. The first prosecution for an offence under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 took place in 2007. Table 1 sets out the number of NMW prosecutions in each year since this date, all of which were successful.

Table 1: Successful NMW prosecutions