Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if she will make an estimate of the number of firms that have been prosecuted for not paying the national minimum wage in each of the last five years.

Criminal prosecution is reserved for the most serious cases involving deliberate underpayment or reckless pay practices. Criminal sanctions against companies can mean that workers end up waiting considerably longer for their lost earnings to be paid back. Our priority is to ensure that workers receive the money they are owed as quickly as possible. For this reason, in the vast majority of cases, HMRC pursues civil enforcement.

The number of National Minimum Wage prosecutions from 2017/18 to 2021/22 is as follows: