Tackling Exploitation in the Labour Market
LITRG has recently responded to a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (‘BIS’) consultation document that seeks views on a range of proposals to improve the effectiveness of the enforcement of employment rights to protect workers from exploitation.
In our response we remind BIS that labour market exploitation very often manifests itself in problems with tax and National Insurance (NIC), two topics which are not addressed in the consultation document.
We describe some of the tax and NIC geared exploitation that we are aware of and make recommendations about the proposed establishment of a new Director of Labour Market Enforcement and reforming the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) which we think could help close some of the gaps that workers currently fall through.
The suggestions that we make are mainly driven by our overriding feeling that HMRC are not currently doing enough to counter problems around unscrupulous employers and tax and NIC.
The consultation document can be found here.
The LITRG response can be found here.
Robin Williamson