National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanations. He has gone some way to answering some of my questions. The amendments seem reasonably straightforward. They are very welcome in so far as they incorporate changing work patterns into the minimum wage regulations. Thinking about the current coronavirus situation that besets us, more and more of us will be working irregular work patterns, including, of course, working from home.

As long as the worker performs to the requirement of the contract, I am not sure why you would not measure the amount of work in total hours, or even, more radically, in outcomes achieved. However, outcomes might be a stretch too far away from what we are talking about today, except for those for whom performance bonuses comprise part of their remuneration. My understanding is that performance bonuses would be excluded from the basic minimum wage calculation. Can the Minister confirm that?

The instrument’s main thrust is to accommodate the changing work payment cycles that people have today—for example, fortnightly or four-weekly—and ensure that their pay is fair and falls within the minimum wage regulations. Basic hours might indeed vary, as the Minister said, but the employer must ensure that when these are divided up by the number of pay periods, the average payment paid each month equals at least the minimum wage. For workers who work on, for example, bank holidays and receive premium payments, the rules currently do not allow for premium payment arrangements in respect of a worker’s basic hours. As I understand it, the regulations rectify this.

Finally, could the Minister elaborate on the relevance of the calculation year? I fully understand the change from the worker’s initial start date as a reference point for calculation to a point where the employer can specify when the year will be calculated from, but does that mean that a worker will need to wait nearly a year to determine whether they have worked any overtime? I am sure this cannot be the case. I would be very grateful if the Minister explained that a little further.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister talked about being the best in the world. We on this side of the Committee obviously support that aim. Six countries pay a higher or better national minimum wage than the UK—Australia, Luxembourg, France, Germany, New Zealand and Belgium, according to the House of Commons briefing. We will happily work with Her Majesty’s Government to leapfrog those countries. Could the Minister outline when he believes the UK will surpass those countries?

I gave a number of my questions to the Minister earlier so that we could try to get some answers on to the record. In fact, the noble Baroness has asked many of the technical questions, so I will not repeat them.

Since the introduction of the national minimum wage in 1999, the Government have ordered employers to repay more than £118 million to 835,000 workers. The Government have issued more than £40 million in financial penalties and completed more than 78,000 investigations. A large number of companies and businesses out there are obviously still not paying the national minimum wage. The SI touches on a number of specifics; the intention behind it is that the Government will be able to reduce non-compliance rates since companies will be able to monitor the hours worked by salaried workers and identify potential underpayments of wages. If that can be done, we obviously support it, but how will the Government enforce or monitor this compliance? Does HMRC require any additional resources to cope with these rule changes?

Before the SI was brought forward, a consultation by BEIS took place and of its 60 respondents, 43 agreed that the rules regarding the salaried hours worked—as touched on earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt— caused difficulties when making premium payments. Of these 60 respondents, 23 suggested that salaried hours rules make the national minimum wage calculations complex and increase the risk of non-compliance. If these rules can help to reduce that complication, without penalising the workers, we would obviously be happy to support them. Will the Government be monitoring this to ensure that there are no detriments to the workers?

The SI widens the range of pay arrangements that are compatible with the rules on the national minimum wage. Again, I will not repeat the questions we have heard on the payment cycles, so I look forward to the Minister’s answer. The SI also proposes to enable employers to specify the calculation year for their salaried workers. Currently, the calculation year depends on the individual’s starting date. Again, does the Minister see the possibility of any detriment? How will the Government protect against any detriment to individual workers if the calculation year could change?

In April 2019, the Low Pay Commission estimated that 424,000 people were paid the national minimum wage, the national living wage or less. Do the Government have any separate departmental figures, or are the figures we are working from the LPC’s? Those 424,000 people are about 1.5% of those aged 16 and older in the UK job market—an awful lot of people. What activity is going to be involved with the expenditure of funds that the department will use to monitor any abuses in the enforcement of the national minimum wage?

On businesses themselves, the Government have stated that HMRC will visit selected new, small businesses to educate them on the national minimum wage and support them in getting the process right. How many businesses have been selected and how many will HMRC visit before April?

I finish by noting that the Government have stated that a new single enforcement body to crack down on employment law breaches will be part of a new employment Bill. Can the Minister say when that Bill will be laid before Parliament?