National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
Main Page: Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)Department Debates - View all Stewart Malcolm McDonald's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme
Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Kelly Tolhurst
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point about the differences between Departments. I do not personally have the details of that and I have not looked into it, but I will happily do so, and I am more than happy to write to her with a fuller answer.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Last time I spoke to the Minister about the use of unpaid work trials and the minimum wage, there had not been a single tribunal case anywhere in the UK in this regard that had been successful. Since that time, there has, but it was in Jersey, where a Polish woman took on her employer and won back the £30 that the tribunal said she was entitled to for the trial. What impact will that have on UK employment law? In the 20-odd years of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 we have only just this year had one successful tribunal. Does that not tell her that the law is deficient and needs amending, and that unpaid work trials should be outlawed in their entirety?
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Gentleman is a keen campaigner in the area of unpaid work trials. As I have said on many occasions, in most cases, unpaid work trials, if they are not a small trial that is conducive to the work environment, are illegal. On the back of his campaign and work that had been done before, we issued new guidance in December 2018. As I have said, where a worker feels that they have had a detriment, they are to report it to HMRC or ACAS. HMRC will investigate every complaint. We cannot just judge this issue on prosecutions. We need to judge it on where the detriment to the worker is, and then ensure that they get what is owed to them and that the employer is penalised.