I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, for their brief contributions to this debate. In response to the point made by the noble Baroness about inspectors, we are doubling EAS resources this financial year, with a view to increased resources for the financial year 2015-16. These additional resources will be used for targeted enforcement in high-risk areas to protect the most vulnerable agency workers. The noble Baroness also mentioned internet advertising for jobs, which is not just in the UK but worldwide. Most internet advertising is obviously in English as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned the minimum wage. He is quite right that there are a few companies which abuse the system and do not pay the minimum wage. We have in fact boosted the resources available for national minimum wage enforcement. In the new year, we will have the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill, which I will be taking through the House along with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. We are going to increase the penalty for people who abuse or break the minimum wage law from £5,000 to £20,000 by secondary legislation. This penalty will be applied not per company or on a per notice basis, but
on a per worker basis. So we are doing something to ensure that companies do not break the national minimum wage law and that their workers are correctly paid. We will wait for that Bill to come through but, having said that, we have made a couple of amendments recently to make sure that people are paid the minimum wage.