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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of UK labour market inspection performance against International Labour Organization benchmarks for (a) the number of labour market inspectors per 10,000 persons employed and (b) the average number of labour inspection visits conducted per inspector.

This Government has an excellent record on enforcement of employment rights. As part of this we have more than doubled the budget for minimum wage enforcement and compliance, which is now over £27 million per year. In 2020/21 HMRC concluded over 2,700 minimum wage investigations, and returned more than £16.7m in arrears to over 155,000 workers. HMRC issued 575 fines totalling more than £14m to businesses who had failed to pay the minimum wage.

The Government also continues to invest in the work of the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate (EAS) and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) which protects vulnerable and exploited workers.