Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many vessels the HMRC has assessed for compliance with the minimum wage; and what resources HMRC has allocated to undertaking those compliance assessments.

The Government is determined that everyone who is entitled to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) receives it.

HMRC will not hesitate to take action to ensure that workers receive what they are legally entitled to and continue to crack down on employers who ignore the law. Since 2015, HMRC have secured over £115 million for more than 1.1 million workers.

HMRC considers all complaints from workers. If anyone thinks they are not receiving at least the minimum wage, they can contact Acas, in confidence, on: 0300 123 1100, or report their employer online here: www.gov.uk/minimum-wage-complaint.

HMRC do not just rely on complaints. They also undertake proactive enforcement activities, such as selecting cases for investigation based on their own risk modelling and undertaking outreach activities to help employers understand their obligations and making sure workers know their rights. Alongside this, they consider all intelligence and/or information shared with them.

When HMRC investigates for potential NMW breaches, they look at the whole workforce for an employer. Between the 2015-16 financial year and the 2021-22 financial year, they carried out 18 investigations into employers working in the maritime sector.

HMRC deploy resources to risk, flexing deployment to respond to complaints from workers and using their own detailed risk identification processes to assess and respond to the level of risk in a sector.

On 1 October 2020, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy changed the law so that seafarers, and other maritime persons, who work or ordinarily work in the UK or in UK territorial waters (generally 12 nautical miles from the seashore) are generally entitled to NMW. This is regardless of where the vessel is registered or whether the worker ordinarily resides in the UK.

HMRC has worked with maritime worker representatives and employers to raise awareness of the new NMW legislation that came into force on 1 October 2020. HMRC have written to employers in the maritime sector, asking them to check that they are paying all their workers the correct minimum wage and pointing them to available guidance.