Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to (a) tackle the payment of illegal wages to workers in parts of Leicester’s garment industry and (b) ensure those workers are (i) compensated and (ii) reimbursed.

As a result of the allegations of labour exploitation in Leicester, a new multi-agency taskforce led by the GLAA has been set up to bring together the enforcement bodies to continue to work together to secure robust intelligence to enable appropriate enforcement activity. It consists of: HMRC National Minimum Wage; Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (BEIS); Leicestershire Police; National Crime Agency; Leicester City Council; Department for Work and Pensions and Immigration Enforcement (Home Office).

HMRC’s National Minimum Wage team are active participants in the Leicester Taskforce and are attending visits to textile businesses in Leicester. They have also set up a new dedicated team to investigate Leicester textile businesses and other potential non-compliance textile hotspots across the UK. Where appropriate, these cases will be investigated with HMRC tax colleagues and taskforce partners. While we cannot comment on individual cases, HMRC have a number of open investigations in the textiles industry in Leicester. Where non-compliance is found, they will take appropriate enforcement action. This can include issuing notices of underpayment, recovering arrears for workers, issuing penalties to employers and, in the most serious cases, prosecutions. Since 2012/13, HMRC have recovered over £215,000 in wage arrears for 411 textile workers in the UK and issued over £325,000 in corresponding penalties to employers.

HMRC are also undertaking outreach activities with local groups in Leicester designed to promote awareness of National Minimum Wage rights for workers, and support employers and agency partners in Leicester. This includes distributing multi-lingual advice leaflets for workers, writing directly to both textile workers and employers, and a bespoke webinar for textile sector employers.