Sir David Metcalf, director of labour market enforcement, has said that many UK companies are violating the living wage law by underpaying their employees and that the government must implement stricter enforcement and harsher penalties to combat the problem.
Describing his approach to the problem, Sir Metcalf said,
Do we have the right level of enforcement resources, and/or are the fines high enough? This is something I am going to properly look at,” Metcalf said. “It is the case that HMRC has had double the enforcement resources in the last two years – it has gone up from £12m to £25m. But it may be we need to do more.
