"Nearly 200 firms named and shamed for minimum wage underpayment", 5 August 2021

The government has published a list of 191 companies, including Pret a Manger, John Lewis and The Body Shop, who all at some point broke minimum wage law between 2011 and 2018...

A spokesperson for John Lewis told People Management it was “surprised and disappointed” at its inclusion on the list...The firm had underpaid around 19,000 employees by an average of £49 each...[T]he spokesperson said. “This was a technical breach that happened four years ago, has been fixed and which we ourselves made public at the time.”

...[T]he Body Shop had underpaid around 960 employees by an average of £36 each. A spokesperson for the Body Shop told People Management it had fully cooperated with HMRC during a routine audit in 2018 that identified the need to reimburse a number of staff for uniform costs. “The affected employees, which include previous and current employees, were reimbursed and our case was closed in 2018..." the spokesperson said.

Pret, which had underpaid 33 employees by an average of £293 each, told the BBC its inclusion on the list was because of a case in 2019 and that it had since made all the necessary payments to staff and HMRC...