Gordon Marsden – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-07.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many times failure to pay the minimum wage has been (a) reported, (b) prosecuted and (c) penalised in the maritime sector since the Equality Act 2010 came into force.

Mr David Gauke

The Government takes the enforcement of national minimum wage (NMW) legislation very seriously and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) enforce the NMW legislation on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and has done so since the introduction of NMW in April 1999.

HMRC investigates all complaints made about employers suspected of not paying the minimum wage, in addition carrying out targeted enforcement where it identifies a high risk of non-payment of NMW across the whole of the UK.

Since 2006, HMRC started considering prosecution for minimum wage offences. Since then, there have been 7 investigations into employers in the Water Transport sector. None of these were identified as having failed to pay the minimum wage.