Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that social care providers can pay their staff rates above those set for the national minimum wage (a) generally and (b) for sleep-in shift arrangements.

The National Minimum Wage is the legal minimum employers must pay their workers. The Government is committed to creating an economy that works for everyone, and ensuring workers are paid fairly. It is the responsibility of all employers to pay the correct minimum wage to their staff, and HM Revenue and Customs takes enforcement action against those who do not.

The Government has received many representations from social care providers about the implications of being required to pay penalties or arrears relating to underpayment of the National Minimum Wage. The Government will waive the financial penalties faced by employers who are found to have underpaid their workers for “sleep-in” shifts. The waiver is to apply to any arrears of pay resulting from “sleep-in” shifts that took place before 26 July 2017.

The Government will continue to work with representatives of the social care sector to see how it might be possible to minimise any impact on provision of social care as a result of this situation. To allow this work to take place before deadlines of arrears of wages are enforced, the Government has adopted a policy of temporarily suspending enforcement activity of “sleep-in” shifts. This suspension will apply until 2 October 2017.

The stability of the social care sector is a key Government priority. Consequently, at the Spring Budget the Government announced that it was providing an additional £2 billion to councils in England for social care, including £1 billion this year.