Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many staff were employed by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate in (a) 2015, (b) 2016, (c) 2017 and (d) 2018.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The following information is based on the resourcing of the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (EAS) for the 31st March in each year:
2015 – 5
2016 – 11
2017 – 11
2018 – 12
The Department continues to review the resourcing needs both in the short term and in the context of wider, longer term reforms including the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices and the strategy of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to pages 62 to 65 of the February 2018 of the Government response to the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, what steps the Government has taken to improve support for self-employed people.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government has received over 400 detailed responses to the four consultations launched in February. We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to respond. Their insights have been invaluable in informing our policy development. We will be publishing our response to these consultations in due course.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which projects on business and human rights his Department has funded in each of the last five years; and what the total spend of each such project was in each of those years.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The UK’s National Action Plan to implement the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights sets out a rolling programme of actions requiring both legislative and non-legislative approaches. The Department has funded one project in the last five years. The Department matched funding from the Dutch Government toward the development of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, a private sector-led initiative that ranks some of the world’s largest companies by their human rights policies, processes, and practices. The total spend on this project from UK Government was £60,000 in 2014/15 and £20,000 in 2015/16.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he has plans to publish a summary table on www.gov.uk, with periodic updates, on progress made on (a) the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights and (b) additional policy commitments made by his Department on that plan.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Department, working together with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and other departments, aims to publish in due course a summary of the actions and progress within the Government’s National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights. Our focus is on implementing the Plan as it stands and there is no intention to review it before 2020. Any future development of the Plan must be informed by wide consultations and the Government welcomes discussions with business and civil society organisations about our approach and the delivery of commitments under the Plan.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he plans to publish the consultation document on the potential requirement for employers with more than 250 staff to publish parental leave and pay policies.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
We will consult in due course.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 29 July 2018 to Question 137053 on Parental Leave, whether the Government has now commissioned the survey data referred to; and whether the review will consider the eligibility criteria for shared parental leave for people in (a) new employment and (b) self-employment.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
We have started the evaluation of the Shared Parental Leave and Pay schemes and expect to be in a position to publish the findings of the evaluation in the Spring of 2019.
The evaluation will consider the barriers to parents taking Shared Parental Leave and Pay and how the schemes are being used in practice - including by self-employed mothers who qualify for Maternity Allowance. Whilst we are not planning to review the eligibility criteria at the current time, as part of the evaluation we will be speaking to range of stakeholders, including groups who are lobbying Government to extend parental entitlements to the self-employed.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the timetable is for commencing and concluding the planned three-yearly review of the implementation of shared parental leave.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
We have started the evaluation of the Shared Parental Leave and Pay schemes. We will gather and analyse information from a variety of sources, including survey data which the Government will commission.
Subject to the progress of data collection, we anticipate publishing findings in Spring 2019.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2018 to Question 127413 on Minimum Wage: Arrears, how many of the 169 employers instructed to self-correct further arrears in naming rounds 10 to 13 self-corrected a sum of arrears greater than the sum of arrears for which they were named and shamed.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Of the 169 employers instructed to self-correct further arrears in naming rounds 10 to 13, 96 employers identified a sum of self-corrected arrears greater than the sum of arrears for which they were named.
As part of a formal HMRC investigation where arrears have been identified, enforcement officers have the ability to instruct an employer to conduct a self-review across the remainder of their payroll. An employer will be required to correct any further underpayments found; and the review is assured by HMRC officers before being finalised. Self-correction is used to maximise the impact of enforcement activity, and frees up HMRC officers to start work on additional investigations.
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 23 January 2018 to Question 123622, how many of the 169 employers who were instructed to self-correct further arrears in naming rounds 10-13 owed arrears, including those for which they were named and shamed of more than (a) £25,000, (b) £50,000; (c) £100,000; and (d) £250,000.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Of the 169 employers who were instructed to self-correct further arrears in naming rounds 10-13:
Asked by: Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he plans to publish the regulations to implement the Government's policy of requiring listed companies to publish pay ratios; and whether those regulations are planned to be in force by June 2018.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
The Government is committed to introducing a new statutory reporting requirement to require quoted companies to disclose and explain the ratio of the Chief Executive Officer’s total annual remuneration to the average annual remuneration of the company’s UK employees. The regulations to implement this provision (along with the other new reporting provisions being introduced as part of the corporate governance reforms announced in August 2017) are being drafted and will be laid in draft in Parliament later this year subject to other Parliamentary business.