Oral Answers to Questions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

As at the end of December 2019, the east midlands region produced more than 5,500 GW of electricity from renewable resources, including nearly 1,600 GW from offshore wind. To break that down, 1,534 of the 88,000 renewable electricity installations were in the Kettering constituency, including photovoltaic, onshore wind, anaerobic digestion, landfill gas and plant biomass. This is generating 173 GW, or enough power to power 45,000 homes.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to tackle minimum wage non-compliance in the labour market.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that anyone entitled to be paid the minimum wage receives it. Since 2015, we have more than doubled the enforcement budget to almost £30 million and ordered employers to repay £100 million to 1 million workers.

[Gill Furniss]

The Low Pay Commission has called on the Government to recruit a new director of labour market enforcement as an urgent priority, but the Government have dragged their feet for almost a half the year while claims are falling and waiting times are rising. Can the Minister inform the House when that vital post will be filled? And “in due course” simply does not cut it.