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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he has taken in response to the recommendations set out in paragraph 50 of the Sixteenth Report of the 2017-19 Session of the Environmental Audit Committee entitled Fixing Fashion: clothing consumption and sustainability, HC1952, to (a) pursue a more proactive approach to the enforcement of the national minimum wage and (b) provide HMRC’s National Minimum Wage team with greater resourcing to increase their inspection and detection work with regard to workers in the garment industry receiving less than the minimum wage and suffering serious breaches of health and safety law in their workplace.

The Government is deeply concerned by the reports of illegal and unsafe working conditions for textile workers in Leicester, especially in light of the recent increase in COVID-19 infections.

The main labour market enforcement bodies (the HMRC National Minimum Wage team and the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority), as well as the Police and the Health & Safety Executive, have been working closely with Leicester Council to set up the Leicester Compliance Task Force. The key aims of the taskforce is to address broader labour market and health and safety issues by using local knowledge to improve understanding of the exploitation risks, increase awareness, support victims and ensure compliance.

Since 2017, a number of operations have been undertaken in the Leicester area linked to potential exploitation, including underpayment of the minimum wage. Where breaches have been found appropriate enforcement action has been taken, including warning letters, recovery of unpaid wages, penalties, and director disqualifications.

The Government has more than doubled the budget for National Minimum Wage compliance and enforcement to £27.5 million for 2020/21, up from £13.2 million in 2015/16. Increasing the budget allows HMRC to focus on tackling the most serious cases of wilful non-compliance. It also increases the number of compliance officers available to investigate minimum wage complaints and conduct risk-based enforcement in sectors where non-compliance is most likely.