Butcher fined over low wages

The owners of a Sheffield butcher shop have been ordered to pay over £11,000 in compensation for failing to meet the minimum wage.

David Jackson and his daughter Pauline Smout, of Jackson's Butchers, pleaded guilty to paying two former employees illegally low wages.

The pair was charged with non-payment of the minimum wage and failing to keep adequate pay records after they were investigated by HM Revenue and Customs.

"The appalling way you treated these employees meant that both [employees] lost out," said deputy district Judge Hatton in sentencing. "The simple fact was that they are entitled to this money, and they will get it."

The butchers are the fourth employers to be prosecuted for paying less than the minimum wage since the law was introduced in 1998, but the first to be prosecuted for doing so deliberately.

The minimum wage for workers aged 22 and over was set at £5.52 an hour on the 1 October 2007. It currently stands at £4.60 an hour for 18 to 21-year-olds, and £3.40 for workers aged between 16 and 17.