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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of people in the Calder Valley who will benefit from the recent increase in the national living wage.

We have not produced estimates of the number of people in the Calder Valley who benefitted from the increase in the National Living Wage on 1 April 2017. However, in Annex C of the Government’s published Impact Assessment we estimated that, at the time of the uprating, 172,000 workers in Yorkshire and Humber would benefit from the new National Living Wage and an additional 40,000 workers would benefit from the new National Minimum Wage rates.

The Low Pay Commission has recently published sub-regional analysis. This estimates that 7.4% of employees in Calderdale, Yorkshire and Humber are covered by the new National Living Wage or National Minimum Wage rates.

The Government’s Impact Assessment is available here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2017/42/pdfs/ukia_20170042_en.pdf

The Low Pay Commission analysis is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-pay-commission-april-2017-minimum-wage-rise-analysis