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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, further to the Answer of 16 January 2020 to Question 2530, on Pay, if he will publish data on the minimum wage (a) arrears and (b) penalties issued in each constituency in each of the last six financial years.

The Government is committed to cracking down on employers who fail to pay the NMW. HMRC follows up on every worker complaint it receives, even those which are anonymous. The Government publishes a regional breakdown of National Minimum Wage enforcement activity, including arrears and penalties, as part of the annual Enforcement and Compliance Report. The most recent report can be found here.

Caution is required when analysing Minimum Wage enforcement by geography. Enforcement data is reported based on employers’ details, not workers’. This means HMRC may identify arrears for workers who live outside of the immediate area where their employer is based. Similarly, for large employers, arrears and penalties may be attributed to a specific head office location.