Minimum Wage

(asked on 17th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many national minimum wage enforcement staff were employed by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in each region in Financial Year (a) 2019-20 and (b) 2020-21.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 20th January 2022

HMRC enforces the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage in line with the law and policy set out by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). BEIS funds HMRC to deliver this activity.

For the year 2019-20, HMRC were given a budget allocation of £26.3 million. In the year 2020-21 this was increased to £26.4 million. The vast majority of the NMW funding allocation is invested in front line NMW compliance activity so that HMRC can provide adequate coverage across the UK. HMRC aim to keep their resourcing level at a minimum of 410 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. There are many factors that impact on their level of resourcing, including staff moves and pay settlements.

The total number of FTE staff employed by HMRC, working out of 12 regions across the country, to carry out NMW enforcement and compliance in the years 2019-20 and 2020-21 is provided in the table below.

Region

2019-2020

2020-2021

East Midlands

24.81

22.2

Greater London

40.07

41.2

North East

33.74

37.2

North West

106.06

100.5

Northern Ireland

25.23

26.2

Scotland

63.95

55.1

South East

12.34

11.2

South West

13.46

11.0

East of England

3.00

2.00

Wales

24.05

23.4

West Midlands

51.98

47.3

Yorkshire and Humberside

43.36

42.6

Total

442.05

419.9

The table shows where the staff were located but this does not necessarily mean these staff were working on cases linked to the locations given. HMRC deploy a national resource deployment model, to enable them to flexibly deploy their resource to deal with the highest risk area.

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