Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 12 February 2014.
If he will review the Government’s policy not to disclose the identity of companies that are made to pay penalties in respect of non-payment of the minimum wage. [R]
We are the first Government to name and shame employers that fail to pay the minimum wage. The name of the first company was published in 2011. We have revised the scheme to make publication easier, but I am not satisfied that that is going fast enough. The identity of companies that have been found to have broken the law will be made public very soon.
I thank the Prime Minister for that response. However, two employment agencies in my constituency have recently been found not to have been paying the minimum wage to their workers and have had to pay penalties, but the Government say that they have to protect the confidentiality of those companies. My constituents think that the Government are standing up for the wrong people—the rip-off agencies—rather than the workers. Will he look at that matter?
As I said, we will publish the names of those companies—something that never happened under the Labour party. We are taking action. When it comes to penalties for not paying the minimum wage, last year more than 700 employers received penalties for failing to comply with minimum wage law and the value of those penalties was almost seven times higher than in the final year of the last Labour Government. We hear a lot of talk about enforcing the minimum wage from the Labour party, but there is a lot of action from this Government.