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Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to refer to the national minimum wage, an issue covered by Amendment No. 2 and also by the Employment Bill. For my sins, I participated in the National Minimum Wage Bill in the other place, where we had one of the longest Committee sittings ever—over 24 hours—to discuss it at great length. It is good that the issue has been addressed again in the Employment Bill, and vital that compliance is achieved, as many of us will know from our contact with small businesses and those working in them. Usually we would be concerned about information being passed from one hand to the other, but on this occasion, in view of the great need to ensure that we tighten up on all the possible avenues for things to go wrong, we on these Benches support what has been put forward. I wonder whether this could not be classified as a way of tracking down people. In that connection, were we in a different place, we might be wishing to track down Joe the Plumber, a case which has recently received a lot of publicity. I am not sure whether Joe was a mythical figure, but I welcome the fact that we will be able, through these means, to contact those not implementing the regulations as required. I urge the Government to pursue this matter and to continue to keep their eye on the implementation of the national minimum wage.