The National Minimum Wage: historical background

This note provides an overview of the historical background to the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. It discusses the establishment of Trade Boards, which subsequently became Wages Councils; the abolition of Wages Councils; proposals for a national minimum wage in the run up to the 1992 and 1997 General Elections; and the enactment of the 1998 Act.

Further background information can be found in Library Research Papers 99/18, dated 19 February 1999, on the National Minimum Wage, and 97/133 dated 4 December 1997, on the National Minimum Wage Bill 1997/98.