§ Mr. Nigel JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will commission research into the impact of the practice of retentions in the construction industry on the continuing viability of companies and individual traders; and what plans she has to promote legislation on this subject. [134238]
§ Nigel GriffithsThe DTI reviews all key research on retentions and has no plans to incur expenditure on duplicating independent research. The Government agree with the Trade and Industry Select Committee's views on legislation on retentions in that there is
"no attraction in the prospect of engineering their abolition through legislation".
§ Mr. Nigel JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment she has made of the number of employers in the construction industry who pay(a) less than the agreed national rate and (b) less than the national minimum wage; and what steps she is taking to prosecute employers who pay less than the legal minimum. [134240]
§ Nigel GriffithsThe Government does not have information on the number of employers paying less than the nationally agreed rate or the national minimum wage in the construction industry.
We are not being complacent on the enforcement of the national minimum wage. The Inland Revenue completed over 6,200 investigations in 2002–03, identifying more than £3.5 million in minimum wage arrears on behalf of underpaid employees in the economy as a whole. The National Minimum Wage (Enforcement Notices) Act 2003 also came into force on 8 July 2003. The Act makes it absolutely clear that Revenue officers can issue enforcement notices (an instruction to employers requiring them to start paying the minimum wage to workers and make good any arrears of pay) on behalf of former workers as well as current ones thus closing an enforcement loophole.