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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what legal steps his Department has taken to (a) compensate workers and (b) ensure minimum wage compliance following the Levitt review of Boohoo wage practices.

As a result of the allegations of labour exploitation in the textile industry in Leicester, a multi-agency taskforce led by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (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. HMRC’s National Minimum Wage team are active participants in the Leicester Taskforce and are attending visits to textile business 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. HMRC are 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.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Home Secretary has written to Boohoo setting out her expectation that the company demonstrates long-term commitment to enhancing the protections for workers and preventing exploitation in its supply chains. The Home Secretary has said that she was deeply concerned by the allegations against Boohoo and expects the company to fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies and implement the commitments they have made after the Levitt Review. The GLAA has established a constructive working dialogue with Boohoo to help tackle labour exploitation in the wider textiles industry and they have subsequently begun providing information to help inform enforcement activity.

HMRC have a range of enforcement tools that they can use to tackle minimum wage offences, including issuing notices of underpayment, recovering arrears for workers, issuing penalties to employers and, in the most serious cases, prosecutions. While we cannot comment on individual cases, HMRC have a number of open investigations in the Leicester textiles sector and will take appropriate enforcement action where non-compliance is found. 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.