Employment Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 24A: 24A: Clause 8, page 7, line 1, leave out subsection (8) The noble Baroness said: This is a probing amendment among a clutch of probing amendments, and it is intended to draw attention to a retrospective calculation that the Government intend to use to calculate the remuneration that an employer will have to pay if it transpires that he is paying less than the minimum wage. Retrospective provisions are generally considered as something that should be avoided at all costs. The idea of incurring a new or heavier punishment for an activity that at the time of occurrence did not result in such a penalty is a breach of one of the most fundamental principles of law. Yet in the Bill, if I am reading it correctly, we see that arrears that have been built up before the new provisions are implemented will be subject to the new formula for calculating arrears, not the old one, if the new one will result in a higher total. This would seem to result in a situation where an employer who is served an enforcement notice immediately after the provisions have been enacted would be forced to pay considerably more in arrears than an employer who had been underpaying by the same amount over the same period of time but who was served the day before. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me that that is not the case. It is possible that I have misunderstood the legislation. I cannot work out whether the retrospectivity will apply just to a tax year that overlaps when the provisions are implemented or to the whole period of the underpayment. I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to clarify that for me. I beg to move.