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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the compliance of employers with their requirements to pay the national minimum wage.

In April 2017, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) produced by the Office for National Statistics estimates there were 342,000 jobs with pay less than the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW) held by employees aged 16 and over, this constitutes 1.2% of all UK employee jobs. This represents a slight decrease from 365,000 jobs (1.3%) in 2016. Further information is published on the ONS website (copy attached), including important caveats in interpreting the data.

The Government is committed to increasing compliance with the minimum wage. We are clear that anyone entitled to be paid the minimum wage should receive it. We have more than doubled the enforcement budget for the NMW and NLW to £26.3 million for 2018/19, up from £13 million in 2015/16. In 2017/18, HMRC identified a record number of £15.6 million in arrears for over 200,000 workers.