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 is taking to reduce the pay gap between (a) young and (b) older people who are doing the same job.

For younger workers, the priority in those first years is to secure work and gain experience, and this has always been reflected in the National Minimum Wage (NMW) rate structure. Distinguishing between younger and older workers is not new: there have been age-related rates in the NMW structure since its introduction in 1999.

Last year, the Government announced inflation-beating increases to the NMW rates for younger workers and apprentices of between 4.6% and 6.5%. The Government has also announced The Kickstart Scheme, a £2bn fund to create hundreds of thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs for young people.

In order to improve fairness for younger workers, the Government has pledged to lower the National Living Wage (NLW) age of eligibility to 23 by 2021 and 21 by 2024.