Huge shortage in minimum wage inspectors lets bad bosses off hook
BAD employers are being “let off the hook” because the UK Government has failed to fill posts designed to catch those not paying the minimum wage, it has been claimed.
Nearly one-fifth of the Government’s minimum wage inspection roles are vacant despite more than 200,000 workers being paid less than the legal rate, new findings show.
SNP MP Chris Stephens and the PCS trade union claimed some of the posts had been left unfilled for eight months.
The union branded the findings a “disgrace” and said it meant “bad employers were being let off the hook”.
Stephens, the SNP’s employment rights spokesperson at Westminster, added: “It’s little wonder rogue employers are getting away with paying poverty pay”, claiming Tory ministers were not serious about enforcing the minimum wage. He said: “These figures are astonishing. We know from previous written answers that the UK Government requires 3,765 staff to chase benefit fraud, and yet only 399 are currently in post and employed by the state to enforce the national minimum wage. With a vacancy taking eight months to fill to enforce minimum wage compliance, it is little wonder rogue employers are getting away with paying poverty pay.”
Treasury Minister Jane Ellison admitted there were 83 vacancies in HMRC’s National Minimum Wage (NMW) inspection teams, with 399 staff in post as of this month, in a parliamentary response to Stephens.
According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics there were 209,000 jobs paying less than the National Minimum Wage held by employees aged 16 and over in April 2015.
Lynn Henderson, national officer of the PCS union, which represents HMRC staff, said the Government was letting down low-paid workers. She said: “HMRC’s treatment of skilled workers who have been left in limbo over this latest fiasco is nothing short of a disgrace. While this continues, there are taxes are being left uncollected and bad employers being let off the hook.”
A HMRC spokesman said: “HMRC enforces the NMW on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). In 2015-16, we investigated over 2,600 businesses, recovering £10.3 million of underpaid wages for 58,000 workers.”