Draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 General Committees

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I am genuinely delighted to see the hon. Member for Halifax in her place as the Minister; I congratulate her on her achievement. She has been sent here to speak to a straightforward piece of delegated legislation that raises the minimum wage levels but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs outlined, the situation is becoming more complex.

It is worth saying a few words about what we see in the real world. My constituency is Wetherby and Easingwold, and it does what it says on the tin: I represent the two market towns of Wetherby and Easingwold, as well as other towns such as Tadcaster and Boroughbridge, surrounded by lots of villages. There are lots of small businesses in those towns, and although it would be wrong to say that they are not hiring young people, they have stopped hiring as many young people as they used to.

It is all well and good to compliment the changes and say that wages are rising for the poorest paid, but that does not take into account the other tax changes that have taken place, such as the changes to rates and employers’ national insurance contributions. All these things, when added together, have resulted in businesses cutting back on the number of young people who work for them.

I remember my very first job at WHSmith, when I was still at school. I went for a Saturday job, but I ended up getting a job doing the newspapers and magazines before the shop opened every day of the week. I would get up at half-past 5, and leave WHSmith at half-past 8 to go to school. It was a real experience for me as a 17 to 18-year-old to have to have that discipline and to go to work in the real world. As I have often said, I have never had as much disposable income as I had then—the clubs and pubs of Gravesend were very welcome to it.

The experiences that a young person can gain from short-term or Saturday employment, or part-time employment during school holidays, are vital. I fear that looking just at the rises in the minimum wage, and talking about how much people can earn a year, does not take into account the other pressures on business. For all the importance of raising people’s wages, it does not achieve anything if the jobs are not there.

[Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)]

Having run a business on the high street for the last 21 years, I can safely say that we have not had Saturday jobs around for at least the last 10 of them. That is not to do with the national minimum wage; it is due to a lack of support from Government over the last 14 years. Hundreds of ideas came forward, and numerous consultations were never acted on, so does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a bit of a leap to say that it is the minimum wage that is creating the issue?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she illustrates the point I am making. It is not about the minimum wage; it is about the other taxes that have gone alongside the minimum wage and put huge pressure on businesses. Lots of people say that raising the minimum wage is great, because it puts more money in people’s pockets, but it is the other pressures at the same time that are the issue. I could name five businesses in just one town in my constituency that did hire young people to work on a Saturday but have reduced the number of people they hire because of the other costs.

I will move on, because I am sure we were not expecting to be here in the Committee Room for too long. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs mentioned the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne. I raised this issue on Second Reading of the Employment Rights Act. I do not know how many Members on the Government Benches stood for election before 2024, but Labour party manifestos before 2024—it was not in the 2024 one—said the party would ban unpaid internships. I have fought to ban unpaid internships in every single term I have been in this place, and I have never got anywhere. Every Prime Minister came to the Dispatch Box and said, “I don’t see why we are not doing it,” and then it did not happen.

I brought forward an amendment to the Minimum Wage Act 1998 so that it would include unpaid internships. One would have thought that a Government who keep talking about paying young people, getting them on the ladder and doing things for them would have included a simple minimum wage—whether the apprenticeship wage or the minimum wage for the youngest, a minimum wage—in that Act for people who are exploited. Anybody who works for a company for four weeks is adding value to the company, no matter what anybody says. Being asked to go and work, perhaps in London, for a year—having to sort out accommodation and bear all the costs—and not getting paid is exploitation.

I am afraid that, again, I push back on the Government. They parrot that what they are doing for people is great, because they are raising the minimum wage, but that does not take into account the other tax rises that have put pressure on business, and it does not do anything to move things forward for young people who are missing out on opportunity because they do not have the ways and means to work for free. The Government should take a close look at themselves. They have talked about their Employment Rights Act and have come here today to boast about rises in the minimum wage, but they have not ensured that a whole section of young people actually get paid for a day’s work. My party has always believed that work should pay.

[Kate Dearden]

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, for his contribution and for his kind words at the start of his speech. However, I am not sure that I am defending the indefensible. I am defending the decision to uplift our national living and minimum wages. On 1 April, when the regulations come into effect, we will be delivering a direct uplift of around £900 for a full-time worker on the national living wage and £1,500 for someone on the minimum wage for 18 to 20-year-olds. That is not insignificant.

On the national minimum wage rate for 18 to 20-year-olds, we are absolutely committed and determined to raise living standards for working people and ensure a genuine living wage, and our manifesto made our direction clear. When recommending the 2026 youth rates, we asked the LPC to consider the risk of employment impacts, while balancing those risks with the ambition to remove the discriminatory age bands for adults. The LPC carries out extensive consultations, commissions new research and considers a range of economic, labour market and business data to assess the impact of the national minimum wage on young workers, and it concluded that there is no clear evidence that the recent increases to the national minimum wage

“have affected young people’s employment overall.”

It assesses that a range of factors are driving recent trends among young people, including the sectors they are more likely to work in.

On what the Government are doing about the situation and the figures that the shadow Minister alluded to, we announced at the Budget more than £1.5 billion of investment over the spending review period for employment and skills support, to deliver the youth guarantee and to reform the growth and skills levy for young people. I agree about the significance of jobs at a young age, and I thank the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold for sharing his experience; it is one that I can sympathise with from my own journey and career. The skills learned in those first jobs are invaluable.

That is why the youth guarantee is so important. It will provide 16 to 24-year-olds across Great Britain with enhanced support to move into work or training, including by improving employment support through expanded youth hubs and increased support in jobcentres. I have seen the impact of that in my constituency, where the youth hub has transformed the lives of over 70 young people in the year that it has been running. The hubs are clearly of significant benefit across the country, creating nearly 300,000 additional work experience and training opportunities.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Does the Minister agree that unpaid internships should be banned?

[Kate Dearden]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has campaigned on that for a number of years. I am going to come to unpaid internships shortly, so I will respond to him then with an update on our work in the Department.

To finish on 18 to 20-year-olds, we have committed over £500 million to youth programmes and support from 2026-27 to 2029. I want to touch on the wider package, and how we are looking at opportunities for young people and their employment prospects, because it is really important. It includes over £60 million for a new richer young lives fund to improve activities and youth work; £15 million for youth workers; £70 million to rebuild and improve local youth services; £350 million to refurbish or build up to 250 youth facilities; and £22.5 million over three years to create a tailored enrichment offer in up to 400 schools, as well as the work that we are doing on apprenticeships training, which will be completely free for small and medium-sized enterprises that hire eligible young people aged 16 to 24. I wanted to spend some time responding to that point, because this is a clear Government priority and we are working at pace on it.

I thank the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold for raising unpaid internships. I know that he has been campaigning on that for a number of years, and I pay tribute to all his work on it. He will know that we ran a call for evidence from 17 July to 9 October 2025. We had hundreds of responses, which was brilliant to see, and we published our response on Friday. We committed to three key actions to tackle non-compliance: reviewing and expanding national minimum wage guidance; strengthening enforcement through the new fair work agency; and bolstering communications so that young people are aware of and understand their rights. That is a significant bit of work, and something that we are committed to reviewing and keeping an eye on. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will hold to account on that, and I thank him for that.

The regulations represent clear, discernible progress towards our manifesto commitments of delivering a genuine living wage and expanding eligibility for the national living wage to all adult workers. It is not entirely clear whether the Opposition will vote against them today and try to prevent these 2.7 million workers from getting a pay rise—we will see.

I extend my thanks to ACAS, which offers impartial and expert assistance on employment issues, and to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which enforces the minimum wage on behalf of the Department for Business and Trade. We are confident that the creation of the fair work agency, which will be set up from April this year, will ensure a more effective, less fragmented enforcement system.

In closing, I again thank the Low Pay Commission; we are grateful for its expertise and its collaborative social partnership model, which brings together the perspectives of workers and businesses. The minimum wage is one of the most successful Government policies in recent decades and remains one of the cornerstones of our plan to make work pay. I commend the regulations to the House.

Question put and agreed to.