Stakeholder online seminar 16 July 2025

Here you will find a recording of the GLAA Stakeholder webinar held on 16 July 2025 along with related slides.

Transcript

Suzanne

Good morning everyone again and welcome to this online webinar which is being recorded and afterwards that recording will be shared. Please can I ask you not to use any AI tools to record this session?
If we have any groups or attendees who are logged in on one device today, could I ask you to use the question box to tell us how many additional people are taking part? For example, if there are three of you taking part as a group, then please type.
Two in the question box, the seminar we expect will last for about an hour to 90 minutes. The information you're going to hear today from the various speakers is correct as of today, Wednesday the 16th of July 2025.
will be sharing a number of slides on screen, but if you have joined by audio, don't worry. Please be assured that these are for reference only and you won't be missing any information and the slides will be shared after the event. GIAA guidance as
You probably know is updated regularly and we strongly advise you to sign up to our bulletin or refer to gla.gov.uk for regular updates. Please use the chat function to ask questions.
And we do have colleagues online who can answer your questions during the webinar and will attempt to do so. However, sometimes we will have to go away to find the answer you might watch and and that we will advise you of that.
Sometimes we are asked questions that are specific to individual circumstances. We are unable to answer those. For that reason, we ask that you don't post any personal information in the question box.
We're going to try to answer as many of your questions as possible throughout the session, and to enable us to do this, we ask that you only ask your question just once. Now I'm shortly going to be handing over to Samantha Ireland, the GLAA Director of Strategy.
and Impact, and she's going to be sharing some important information about the GLAA's business plan and also performance updates. That will be followed by Laura Thomas, who is the Head of National Partnerships and Communications, who will then share an overview of our gathering
Of information about how labour exploitation impacts women and girls. We will then hear from Investigation Manager Neville Bradbury on the work that GLA is doing with countries involved in the seasonal workers scheme.
And finally, we are joined today by Ed Walkington and Jackie Carroll from the Department of Business and Trade, who will provide an update on the Fair Work Agency. So now I'm very happy to be handing over to Samantha.
Sam, take over.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Thanks, Suzanne, and hi everybody. It's really nice to be here with you this morning and talk to you about what our business plan is for 2526 and also to give you a bit of an overview of how we ended last year's performance, which was really positive. So on screen here you can see a really beautiful infographic.
Designed by our comms team, which describes our priorities for the business plan. So in purple you can see they're a reminder of what our goals are for the our strategic goals. So to be a robust and effective regulator, be known as experts in addressing worker abuse and exploitation and be an essential.
Enforcement partner. So our priorities are around there. If I take goal one is to maintain that work that we've been doing so far to be that consistent, reliable and give a quality licensing service. I'll talk to you in a moment about some of the impacts of the work that we've been doing there.
We also want to really focus on stopping unlicensed gangmasters. That is a continuation of our ambitions and continuation of our efforts. We see this as a core piece of work and again, we've been able to look at our processes to enable us to do more of that, to do more inspections.
We also want to increase our awareness, increase awareness of the work that we do across the regulated sectors. So we have been delivering briefings. We've got through our policy team looking at information that's coming out and how that can be utilised by labour users and labour providers.
Or the stakeholders and also what it means for us. What? What are the gaps? What do we need to know? How do we get that call for action? So really about giving that information.
We want to focus more on our intelligence as well. We've got a a really strong intelligence team here and we also have a really strong intelligence network, but we can always do more and we are striving to really maximize every interaction that we've got to gather that key information what we find.
And in our cases is lots of times there's little subtle nuances and there's bits of information here, there and everywhere and things that come up later on and you know it's very different for different sectors. So we're really working hard with key partners to really maximize those opportunities to gain every bit of information that we can use strategically.
And tactically to stop worker exploitation.
As I mentioned before around being an essential enforcement partner, we want to share that information with you as well. Now as I've just said as well, our policy team have been pulling some information and you may have seen on our Facebook page recently some information which talks about the risk of homelessness on labour exploitation.
Things like this are really important and really useful to kind of give those information, to give that information to you that you can then use in your daily business and what you can identify. If you see something it gives you, it empowers you to then be able to to call in and to have that little bit more knowledge.
So look out for more of those things because we'll be sharing a lot more in the future. We have our analytical team are also developing products and profiles to assist with highlighting what some of that key information is and how we can utilise it. Again, I mentioned at the top.
This call things like you know what we don't know because that's where you guys can come in. If we can highlight where our gaps are and what we're trying to find out, you will have lots of that information and it will give you that that knowledge on how to share it back to help us give a broad overview.
And a lot more detail around what is happening in the UK around labour exploitation. Obviously underpinning these goals are our people and resources. They're fundamental to how we succeed. We have our.
People strategy and that really does emphasise how we are maximising our people, how we are creating a really inclusive culture and a great place to work. We recognise and fully believe in diversity and inclusion and it gives us a really brilliant platform to.
Have innovative thoughts to be creative, to be a lot more efficient and effective.
As a public body, we are restricted with our finances. Should we say we don't have, we don't have the ability to make money. We don't have the ability to, you know, just just access lots of.
Lots of money from everywhere. So we have to be really careful and considered with the public money that we have in order to make sure that we are spending it in the right areas and getting the biggest value for the for the work that we do. We're also working on strengthening our organizational governance governance and that is key to enable that we.
Have the right risks and the right decisions discussed at the right times. And again, we're doing a lot of work around the data that we have to make sure that we are maximising those opportunities with that data to be able to tell the story and to drive us in the right direction.
I think the organisational governance piece is also really important as we transition into the Fair Work Agency to make sure that we have that smooth line as we progress.
So our top three sectors, if we can just skip on one, please, still remain around care, agriculture and food processing and packaging. Now Neville will talk to you in a little while about agriculture and some of the work that we're doing there. But when we're doing our analysis, these are the top areas that we see.
Now there may be other areas that are Oh yes.

Suzanne
Excuse me, Sam, can I just stop a moment? There's a note from Tom Eason and maybe those who are running the webinar can help. It says is it just me or can everyone see the graphic screen behind Sam? I'm not quite sure what he's referring to, but I just thought I should bring that up if there's a problem.
And while I'm doing that, I should also say that we've asked that people do not use AI note takers during the meeting that a transcript and recording of the session will be available on our website as soon as possible. I have to say the slides look normal to me. He says he can't see the graphic screen, but I should say, Tom, that we are going to.
To be circulating the the slides. He says it looks fine to him now, so we confirm that. But as I've said, don't use AI note takers, please. The transcript and recording of these sessions will be available on the website as soon as possible so we can continue. Sam, I'm sorry to have interrupted you.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
No, that's fine. And thank you. Yeah, we will share the slides. So you'll you'll see it. But yeah, we have these top three areas. This doesn't mean that this is the only, these are the only things that we're looking at. There are other sectors that we hear about and we get information about, but these are the ones that are consistently highly reported on.
Um.
We do link in with other partners and other agencies, so we do a lot of check and challenging to make sure that we're not missing things and care and agriculture and food processing and packaging is in the top of other partners as well.
Now we do have a really strong foundation for the business plan, so if we can just skip on to the next slide, I've got a few key.
Performance metrics here that we ended on last year. So when I was talking about the business plan, I was talking to you about, you know, how we've changed some of our processes and how we've looked differently at how we can achieve what we want to achieve within our financial envelope and within the small number of people that we've got.
So what you can see there is a huge amount of work for a relatively small organisation that has a huge national footprint. So doing delivering 200 and or tasking out 222 investigations. Now not all of those will be modern slavery, not all of those will be labour exploitation, but as they come in, we have to.
To deal with those and have to identify what those what those issues are. So it's a it's a big chunk of work that our team team undertake. 21% of the work that we've done has been joint working investigations and this is a really important priority for us.
We cannot do everything on our own and we really appreciate the partners that we work with and their skill set and their knowledge and the different levers that they have to tackle some of the same issues that we have. We've closed 228 investigations and they will each have their own outcomes, so for.
For instance, we might have prosecutions, we might have warning notices, we might have STROS. So we have a lot of civil and criminal powers that we can use to draw a conclusion to these investigations.
Now the key to these bottom two ones are really key to me and really demonstrate the impact of some of the work that we have been doing. We know our regulated sector is, it's our flagship, it's our USP, it is.
You know, a a high priority for us and we've managed to reduce our licensing decision time down to 42 days. And I think previously it was, I forget now I've met my brain because it's so good now my brain has has tried to restrict knowing what it was before, but it was over 200 days.
So really we've made a real positive impact and we are continuing as we come into this financial year, we are continuing to see that that licensing decision time is being maintained at a really at a low rate. We're not seeing those peaks and troughs and we work really hard on that to make sure that we can balance our resources.
To deliver that, to get businesses up and running quicker and we've also delivered 30 inspections per quarter. Now previously that was a lot lower and again, we've been working hard to really prioritise this and make sure that we can be more visible and we have ambitions to deliver more inspections as well.
So moving on to the next slide, please.
We're always interested to hear from you when you read any of our information, when you see any of the documents that prompt anything, if you have information or you have concerns or.
Anything that you think is relevant to stop worker exploitation, we would really like to hear from you. If you see anything that is suspicious, if it's actually spidey sensors off and you're unsure and you think that there are some vulnerabilities, please get in touch.

Suzanne
Sam, there are a number of, yes, there are quite a number of questions. People have been stimulated by your presentation. The 1st to come together in some ways. The both of these people are keen to know if the GLAA regulations will be implemented for the construction sector.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I will take any questions.

Suzanne
Or possibly the garment sector. Can you speak on that to start with?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I can we at the minute to expand that regulation. It's not something that we can do. It requires secondary legislation and as we are working with the Fair Work Agency, this is something we are talking about with the Employment Rights Bill around.
What scope can there be? So should other other sectors like construction or like garment or care for instance, warrant that level of inspection and warrant that regulated scheme that there is more flexibility in that, but as of today it is not something we can do.
When I did some work five years ago now with the construction sector, they were really keen to have regulation. It works for them. They there's a lot of risk assessment and a lot of auditing and and box ticking. So they're used to a regime of of regulation. So I I believe that there would be.
Appetite. But I would say watch this space. We we believe in regulation and we think it can be really an effective and efficient tool to stop worker exploitation. So yeah, we would like to see it expanded.

Suzanne
And we now have a question from Joanne Young, who says are agriculture and food processing and packaging consistently highly reported because they are, I've just lost it because they are generally whiskier sectors or is it because they are regulated sectors and so people are more likely to approach GLA with?
Reports of issues.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I think that's an interesting question and I I I can't give you the answer to that. We consistently have agriculture as a as an issue and I think you know we have the seasonal worker scheme and I think it could be that people know how to report and who to report to. I know for instance there are other sectors.
If we take the government sector, I know somebody's mentioned that earlier, we know that from a risk point of view that there are, there are risks around that, but we don't get a huge amount of reporting. Similarly with the construction industry, we know that there are risks, but we don't get the same level of reporting.
What I would say with the construction industry is that there is a lot of knowledge around there around how to report and we find that the police know a little bit more about construction. So yeah, I I can't answer that, but we are keen to.
Make sure that we've got links in the right areas to make sure that people are reporting and getting the information to us.

Suzanne
And Joanne also asks, in relation to the 30 inspections 1/4, can you tell us the split between compliance inspections and enforcement inspections?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Oh, that is a good question. I might need to come back to you on that. I believe they're all compliance inspections.

Suzanne
And Eliza asks, what were the key changes to reducing licensing decision time? So she just wants to know what did we do specifically that helped reduce that time it took to handing out a license?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
So we looked at the IT was a huge process that we looked at. First of all, we mapped out every single step around application inspections and looked at where we can make better decisions, quicker decisions where we could.
What what resources were available to make those decisions. We had always gone through a certain process and that when we looked at it, there was a bit of duplication. Sometimes there was like things that happened that that didn't need to. So in some instances we can do now virtual inspections.
We can do, we can grant the license because we've done our desktop checks and the risk is, the risk is low and therefore you might then just have an inspection later on. So really before we would do an inspection absolutely everywhere, but we now take a risk based approach and decide I've made the decision that based on all the other factors and.
Information that we get, we can make a judgment on what needs to be done and what doesn't and also who can do those inspections. So it's brought that down, but we've got controls around it. So it's not just like, oh, everybody can have a license, it's fine. We've got controls to make sure that.
You know, we can, we can check and we can make sure that things are implemented and things are operating effectively. We did set that up first as a something called a model office. You might have heard us talk about that before and that was basically we had like a few cases going through where we would test it and that was on for quite, quite a few months I can't.
I don't remember exactly how many, but quite a few months to test how it was working, if we were getting the right information, if the decisions we were making were the right ones. So we could check and challenge that and we found that it was really effective. We had to make a few tweaks here and there, but that process is now embedded in BAU and.
I'd say getting it, getting it down to that, to that time frame is really phenomenal and the leadership has been absolutely key in making that, making that work.

Suzanne
I'm going to bring up David Camp's question because it allied to that and you may not be able to answer it, Sam, but we can take it away and come back to him. And he's asked the last. The list of GLA compliance inspections on the GLA website was last updated on the 8th of December 2023.
Why is it not kept up to date and when will it be updated? Now you may not be able to answer that or we may have to come back to him on that.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Yeah, this is. I know that it was something we were putting on and I think the processes that we have in place, our priority at the moment is getting the information in and is using it to drive our business forward. It is something we can definitely look into.
How frequently we we update that is is another matter, but we've been doing a huge amount of data quality work around our compliance, our compliance data and making sure that we've got got the right information in the right places and that's where our focus has been.

Suzanne
Thank you, Sam. We've got a question here saying how many cases were closed to the satisfaction of the workers affected? Is that data ever captured?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Oh, I'm not sure on that. Nev, can I call you in on that from your cases? Do you do we capture that data?

Neville Bradbury
Depends on the circumstances, Sam. Obviously each case is different. Certainly if we've provided any sort of assistance to to workers along the way, then that will be captured. But as you appreciate every case.
That runs its course won't be won't satisfy everyone that's concerned in it.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Yeah. Thanks, Nev.

Suzanne
Thank you. I'm going to move on to Courtney Forbes's question because I think it's quite interesting. How can businesses in key sectors such as food retail improve their dialogue and ways of working with the GLAA? This was strong, she says, some years ago. Now we have 0 engagement or response from.
GLAA, where we require support on enforcement.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
What I would say is.
I think based on this, if you can e-mail into like that contact us with your with your request, we can direct you to the right people. It depends what you are wanting and how we can set up that dialogue, what what you're wanting from us and how we can.
Engage with you, we have during the target operating model. So I know years ago there used to be the like retailer forum retailer protocol and that kind of like we moved away from it.
But if you if you drop in an e-mail, Courtney, what you would, what you're interested in and how you want to engage with us, someone from our comms team will be able to pick that up and we'll be able to look at that if you feel that setting up something like that retailer protocol or some sort of forum would be helpful and is is required.
We're more than happy to look at that. It's just a conversation about how we deliver that.

Suzanne
The next question goes somewhere in line with that. It says this is from Maya Kirby. Could you tell us which partners you work with most frequently? Do you have an estimate of how much of that 25% joint working is done with immigration enforcement?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I don't have the I can't give you a an estimate of what that 21% is made-up of. But we work with and never again shout up if I'm getting this wrong. So we work with the National Crime Agency, we work with police, we work with.
We do work with immigration enforcement. We work with who else? Nev is legal bodies, isn't it? EAS, National Minimum Wage Team.

Neville Bradbury
Yeah, like you said that if you have all that, most of them said police, mainly immigration does take up quite a bit of our our work as well, but there's people like the food standards agencies as well that we'll we'll work with.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
He wants son.
Yes.

Neville Bradbury
And I don't know if it goes in back to the other question, but we if we have a, you know if we if we have a request from anyone for joint working then we will try and we will try and oblige wherever we can obviously resources permitting.

Suzanne
OK. The next question, it might be that this might come to Neville at some point. So if you feel it's the right way to go, we'll keep it for Neville. But it was from Sam who asks, please direct resource to actively addressing online scams, particularly for migrant workers. Anecdotally, this feels like the largest area of exploitation.
Examples include illicit actors advertising on Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, selling fake services to expedite visa processing. Neville, was that one for you later?

Neville Bradbury
I I will talk about scams and morning Sam I I know we've we've spoken quite quite a lot about it. We've if you're looking for a dedicated resource we I mean you you're always reporting to us anyway and we've got a a.
Now a designated resource within our intelligence to monitor for scams, but I think as you've highlighted, there are quite a considerable number, so it's not always easy to get to get round those.

Suzanne
OK. Well, we'll come back to that when you do your presentation. Sam, just a few more questions and then we're going to go on to talk to Laura Thomas. The next one is with respect to affected workers, is there any information with which is accessible to stakeholders about the outcomes?
For example, were they signposted for specialist support compensated? She's this person says. I'm particularly interested in outcomes for irregular migrants found in labor exploitation.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I don't, I don't think we have done anything on that, but I think that is quite an interesting analytical piece of work that we could do. And I think I saw Savannah, who's from my team on this call earlier, I think I saw her join.
And I would ask Savannah if you could take a note of that and then we can have a discuss a conversation in my team about that. So I think that would be quite interesting. The thing that would prevent that from happening. So we have a victim navigator that we'd be able to get some qualitative information from.
But obviously from an operational point of view, we're dealing with the evidence in the case. So we wouldn't necessarily log everything that happens with as an outcome that happens with a worker because we're trying to get the case case through to through a legal process.
But it is definitely something we could have a look into. I think that would be quite interesting. So thank you for that.

Suzanne
I'm only going to do 2 more questions. The others that have come in will answer after the webinar. The next one was about the the GLAA, it says, decided to drop public private protocols such as the A GMPPP on textiles.
This was so that the GLAA could move to quote putting our resources into developing and supporting more focused partnership activity, which is business owned with the GLAA providing the strategic oversight and expertise.
Could you explain what has happened since then and what concrete business focused partnership activity has happened within the garment sector or more generally? Now that may need you to come back to that issue.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
I can give, I can give a brief answer on that. So yeah, we did, we did have quite a few protocols in place. So one of you, so like I led on the construction one for instance and that got to a point where really the the sector knew everything that we could give them and they had they were empowered.

Suzanne
OK.

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Enough to know where they could go and plugged into the right people and had a really solid network. And from a resource point of view, as I mentioned before, we're quite a small organisation and we have to prioritise where we can put that week. We haven't got dedicated resource to focus on one on this sector, one on that sector, one on that sector and kind of take them through.
Through a whole kind of culture change process around human rights, due diligence and you know prevention work and I think it's from a risk based point of view. So some of the work that we have been doing around business focused partnership activity, we've done some work in the care sector. So we've had round tables where we've discussed with practitioners.
And and other key stakeholders like some of the intelligence that we have, some of the things that they know, some of the gaps we've looked at coming together with recommendations to present to government about ways forward which included regulation in care. So we are doing work, but it again it depends where it comes from and what the basis of the risk is.
We have to be really strict with the resources that we have. But again, like I said to Courtney, if there are things that you think, do you know what, this would be really helpful. We've got this network here that is really invested, but this is what we need from the GLAA. Let's have that conversation, like drop us an e-mail and let's have that conversation and see what can be done and how we can.
Do that.

Suzanne
And that's a good place for me to call your section to an end. There are some other comments and questions, many about how to work productively with the GLAA. There's a mention of a forum on seasonal workers schemes working with immigration.
joint working with immigration and so forth. So I will leave you later, you and the team, to look at those comments. Umm But I think we shall move on now. Thank you very much. And we're going to now move to Laura Thomas, who's head of National Partnership and Communications, who's going to give us an overview of gathering
of information about how labour exploitation impacts women and girls. Over to you.

Laura Thomas (GLAA)
Thank you, Suzanne. So for anybody who has joined our previous online seminars, you will have heard Rob Stenson and other members of the analytical team talking about our intelligence profiles, the information that we're gathering and.
How we can use this information. Now a lot of that has quite often been spoken about in a very sector specific way and we're very aware that it's important that we look at this from a humanitarian aspect as well. So we're looking at.
What vulnerabilities people may have. Ultimately, people are the workers. It's the workers who we're trying to help.
You'll also know that we've spoken a lot about our intelligence gaps and where we need better information and so as part of our aim to identify.
What more information we can learn? We've started specifically directing some of our resource to looking at the additional vulnerabilities faced by women and girls within labour exploitation settings.
So the aim of this is to develop our data set. Firstly, we want to know exactly what women and girls face within the labour exploitation area.
We want to use this then to inform our strategic and operational decision making. So that's looking at our policies, it's looking at our procedures, it's looking at what we're doing, how we're doing it, why we're doing it.
We also want to use the information to help train our people. We want to make sure that everyone within the GLAA from our finance teams through to our operational teams, our contact centre staff, everybody is cognizant of the different vulnerabilities.
That different people may face and we want to use the information that we build from this to better inform our approach to the potential vulnerable victims.
In turn, this will also help us and our officers to identify where there is potential increased risk and to share that information with our organization and where appropriate, we can then send out to our partners such as the police, such as the NC.
So that we can get that joined up working.
As I say, we know that violence against women and girls is an important prevalent topic. We know that it is a topic of for the Home Office, for the government, it is of interest.
And we want to look at what enablers there may be that are unique to the vulnerabilities for women and girls. So we're looking at what current information we have, the information and the data that we've collected from our investigations.
The information that we've collected from reports from our partners, from other vulnerable workers, which whilst they may not form part of an investigation for the GLAA, they do highlight specific trends and patterns that we can look into.
Alongside that, our analysts are doing some research work, looking at what information is available through academic research and also from our partners.
And we want to really bring all of that together so that we can produce an informative paper, which as I say, will help us as an organization to better inform our responses, but also to help.
Industries across the UK to make sure that you have information available to you to better inform your policy and decision making. So with that in mind, I know a lot of people have already spoken to some of our analysts about.
The information that you hold about the suspect suspicions that you have and we're looking at where we can qualify that. But we're also aware that there will be others of you who do have information that we don't know about.
With that in mind, you've got the contact at gla.gov.uk e-mail address there if there is any information that you feel would be useful, if you feel that it would be useful to set up a conversation over teams meeting or in person to talk about.
Where you're collecting data and how we can bring this data together so that we're not duplicating work, that would be really, really useful and helpful for us.
Thank you.
New runs.

Suzanne
Thank you, Laura. I'm just going to see before we move on. We do have a comment from a person who says we specialize in supporting migrant women in the UK, including migrant women workers. It would be useful to have a chat and she's given her e-mail address. So I assume Laura.
That you and your team will follow that up. And that's exactly the whole point of one of the reasons we have this webinar is to in fact have people come forward who say I have information, I can work with you and we can in fact together help to stop labor abuse.

Laura Thomas (GLAA)
We will. Thank you.

Suzanne
And then we have a question. She has a question on what is the position on outsourced sectors such as cleaning on your analysis of vulnerabilities?

Laura Thomas (GLAA)
So with this piece of work, we're not looking to say we're only covering certain sectors. So we will look at the outsource such as cleaning. We will look at hospitality. We want to look at where the vulnerabilities are, where the gaps are and where we can make some informed changes.
To help stop the exploitation of workers across the whole workforce. So this is very much about those personal vulnerabilities as opposed to the sector vulnerabilities. So we will look at.
All areas and see where there are the biggest vulnerabilities. Kate time frame for collecting the information. I will be perfectly honest. I didn't think to ask our analysts what their time frame is. However, I will get back to you on that.

Suzanne
Thank you, Laura. I don't see any other questions at this moment coming in to you, so I will move on. And we go now to Neville Bradbury, the investigation manager, has already gave us quite a lot of information that was extremely helpful and will pick up, I'm sure, on various issues. Um
Before I go, Laura, I'm sorry, can you come back in?

Laura Thomas (GLAA)
Of course.

Suzanne
Laura, we've got something from David Camp. She, he says it's worth a conversation on the seasonal workers scheme, tax force and IO and safe migration of seasonal workers from Central Asia to the UK project work, et cetera, et cetera. So he also asked that you be aware of the ETI draft set of principles and so forth.
So I'm sure that you will take on the comments that David Camp has made.

Laura Thomas (GLAA)
Absolutely. Thank you, David.

Suzanne
Fine. Then we will move to to Neville now. Thank you for popping back in, Laura. Neville, handing over to you now.

Neville Bradbury
Thanks for that. Morning everyone. I'm Neville Bradbury, National Investigations Manager covering the southwest of the UK. I've got a team of enforcement officers and compliance officers covering that area.
I've also got an additional responsibility for the seasonal worker scheme, which is obviously one of the GLAAS controlled strategy plans. Since the implementation of the scheme, it's meant the thousands of citizens from many countries.
Have entered the UK each year and are unfortunately exposed to many kinds of exploitation. One of the main downfalls of this scheme is that it's very popular.
In the countries and there's a lot of competition for places. So if anyone can see an opportunity to get ahead of the queue as it were, then they they're quite happy to take that regardless of of what the risks are around that. So that's what we.
Ultimately we'll be looking to to stamp down on. Can I have the next slide please?
Thank you. So that one of the risks of exploitation was highlighted recently with certain issues in Uzbekistan which were brought to our attention. These centred around the use of third party agencies who were charging.
Fees to workers to apparently assist them at various stages through the recruitment process as I've as I've just alluded to things like you were you were charged 150 U.S. dollars to get.
Ahead of the queue as it were, and then X amount of dollars then if you got into the first interview and that sort of thing. So unfortunately workers were paying in some cases up to 3000 U.S. dollars.
To go through this, obviously from a GLA perspective, it's important that the scheme runs properly and that there's no risks. So we take those matters seriously, the the third party for an interference.
But it raises the, you know, the risk of exploitation to anyone concerned. It immediately puts them in debt even before they've set foot in the UK debt that they may not be in a position to pay off even when they start working.
As a result of what happened, we decided to review our current memorandum of understanding with the Uzbek Migration Agency and also to put the consideration in a temporary suspended him.
As part of the review, we engaged with Uzbek ministries, the Foreign Office, the scheme operators and and this culminated in the visit to the Uzbek capital to to actually speak.
With the Migration Agency representatives around these matters, we were looking for assurances that the issues that had been raised had been addressed or were being addressed or were certainly in the process of being sorted out.
We did get that to to some extent. I can't go into the detail of it, unfortunately.
But to suffice to say serious issues which we which we took very seriously and dealt with it. If you can move on to the next slide please.
So I've mentioned some of the issues, other issues that that we've seen previously with regard to the scheme, the national minimum wage, workers entering the UK not being paid the national minimum wage.
Holiday pay to some workers either wasn't being paid or became an issue. The hours that they were working, the the workers were even working too many hours or.
In some cases, not enough hours. Poor accommodation was also reported in some of the caravans fees. I've mentioned already excess fees. It's not just for fees to jump the queue, but people were.
Being exploited by the additional extra charges regarding visas and and flights, things like that. Transfers across the farms was also a major concern for for workers here.
Overbearing supervisors was also.
Mentioned with us now all those I've mentioned, I'm pleased to say that reporting has been lower each year as we we're learning to deal with this. There's a lot of work gone in.
It's due to, it's not down to us solely. I can't take all the credit, but it's due to the work of all the stakeholders together to deal with those problems. Unfortunately, as it's been mentioned already, scams are still.
Massive risk and we cannot raise the awareness of that of those scams enough. So we're looking at pushing out material to to raise awareness of that we.
We're visiting farms, speaking to workers to try and identify issues around scamming, but it is a it is a major problem. We've now got a dedicated resource, as I said earlier in our intelligence department who.
Look for scams. I know that the scheme operators have got people looking for scams, but unfortunately, as I said earlier, it is a down downfall of the scheme that it is so popular that people will still risk being scammed just to get a chance to come to the UK and earn some money.
Um, so if we can move on, please.
Thank you. So we visit farms, speak to workers, we also speak to the farmers and the managers there and the scheme operators, but to recognise the the risk really to the workers and ensure that the proper running of the scheme.
We need to fully understand the recruitment processes and the views of the countries that are supplying the workers to us. So we've adopted a more international approach if you like, and the GLAA now has.
Memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, I've mentioned issues of Uzbekistan. We are, we have reviewed it and we are due to re-sign that at some stage and more recently the photograph there is.
The signing of the MOU with Tajikistan, having engaged with representatives from all the countries that I've just mentioned, it's clear that they all see the importance of the scheme and its successful management.
That they see it as a good opportunity for citizens to improve their lifestyles, but also for the country's status and economy. Some of the countries I've I've spoken to have meetings with have introduced schemes now and grants.
That will assist the workers with business proposals when they return to from the UK. It's also used as an extra incentive to to ensure that workers do comply with their visa regulations and return.
After their six month posting to next slide please.
So the our international approach has allowed us to and a number of the countries to engage regularly to discuss issues, processes and of course best practice. I've now seen first hand some of the recruitment processes.
From Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, I haven't seen all of them. That's that's part of the plan going forward.
But we've also held meetings with representatives from all those countries now on on that you see there on the list. We've met with the Ministry of Labour in Kazakhstan. We've met with the Centre for Employment in Kyrgyzstan.
The Migration Agency in Uzbekistan, Ministry for Internal Affairs in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and we're looking to develop that further in the other countries as well. And the reason around that is, is because of the scamming and how to deal with those and putting a report porting mechanism in place.
For when we get information through and likewise that that information information is shared as quickly as it can be so we can stamp clamp down on those the we've also met with.
IOMS in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
And it obviously discussed the work around raising awareness of of the risks to workers and their rights in the in the UK and a lot of that focusing around who people can speak to. I know that there's been from from from the.
The experiences I've had speaking to workers on the farms that there's been a reluctance for people to come forward and actually say there's a problem. A lot of workers want to just want to get on with the work, do do the job and then return back to to to the home country with with some money in their in their pocket but.
We we try and encourage them to speak up and give them a reporting process to to if they have any problems, concerns or issues that they'll know exactly who they need to speak to, who they need to make aware aware of them.
We've also held further meetings with Ministry of Labour for Tajikistan, the OMU covering Tajikistan and sorry, the IOM, I should say in Tajikistan and also in London. More recently we've spoken with the Kenyan High Commission because we now have.
A fair number of Kenyans coming in to the UK under the scheme.
We haven't just visited those countries now. We've held the follow-up meetings with Kazakhstan, in particular Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan will be will follow and the other countries will follow in suit there. So it hasn't just been a quick meeting and and left of that.
Thanks for the MOU and leave it there. We are actually developing and engaging further more than we have been recently with with representatives from those countries. They all have different approaches, views and values, but they all maintain.
But they want to ensure worker welfare, so at least we're all seeing from that same hymn sheet as it were there. There does need to be a more consistent approach to the protection of workers prior to their departure.
Whilst they're in the UK and also when they return to their home country, the GLAIC can play an integral part in that process with the regular engagement I've spoken about with the ministries.
And the agencies in all the countries with the scheme operators, which was I'm trying to to to progress with the IOM and obviously with the workers themselves. So part of my my plan going forward will be to hopefully conduct more visits to farms.
Uh, sorry.

Suzanne
Thank you, Nick. I'm going to, we've got some questions which I think we need to look at. David, I know you asked whether the GLAA can share its MOUs with the Senior Worker Scheme Task Force. I think we'll take that away because I don't think that's a matter that the speakers can actually answer.

Neville Bradbury
OK.

Suzanne
But that will be taken away and come back to you. We do have a question from Andre, who's from the Worker Rights Centre, and he says we observe routine breaches of national minimum wage regulation at farms that recruit seasonal horticultural workers, and he gives some particular examples.
And he he notes that some of these could be cases of blatant exploitation, of unawareness of laws by the workers. Others are a lack of understanding of the law by smaller growers and lack of access to employer facing legal advice. Is the GLAA looking into tackling this issue? And if so?
How?

Neville Bradbury
But we we always look at that issue, but if we, I mean if you take it again it has to be done with on a case by case basis. If you're looking specifically around national minimum wage that is actually dealt with by another agency and not and not ourselves, but if you take all of those.
Factors that have just been mentioned as a whole, then that would that would indicate to me as an enforcement manager that there are indicated model slavery there and we would look to investigate that.

Suzanne
Thank you, Neville. Sam, can you come back in if you're still with us?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Yes.

Suzanne
Because I think the next question is more for you than for Neville, but if you two want to find out who it should be for, please do. And it's from Maria Maya, sorry, who says what due diligence do you do on the firms you issue licenses to?

Samantha Ireland (GLAA)
Oh, I'm going to hand back over to Nev.

Suzanne
OK. I wasn't sure because he's talking about international, so I wasn't sure if he's talking generally. Please, Neville, it's yours.

Neville Bradbury
OK, basically in a nutshell the the the license process has a number of a number of factors in it that the the first bit is that you apply for your license, the number of checks are done at that stage and then if.
If they are satisfactory, then you will have a either a physical interview or an online interview regarding the application to ensure that everything is intact. Once we're satisfied with that, an application inspection report will be then submitted.
To our licensing department who will then review it, review everything, may raise some questions that we'll have to go back to to the license applicant for. If that is, if that is all satisfactory, the license will be granted.
But it will be followed up after a certain period of time, depending on certain risk factors. A compliance inspection will be held to ensure that everything that you've said during the application inspection is is.
True.

Suzanne
Thank you, Neville. I think we should move on now. Thank you both, Sam and Neville, coming back on. We're going to have now to Ed Walkington and Jackie Carroll, who are coming to us from the Department of Business and Trade. They're going to talk about the transition to the Fair Work.
So I'm over to you. I leave it to you to decide who's speaking on what.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Good morning, everyone. So hi, my name is Ed Wilkington. I head up the Employment Rights State Enforcement Policy team within the Department of Business and Trade. So my team has two key roles. Firstly, it is the sponsorship of the existing system of state enforcement for employment rights.
And then secondly, it's thinking about changes and reforms to that system. And that principally at the moment is through delivering Part 5 of the Employment Rights Bill, which will look to set up the Fair Work Agency. Jackie, do you want to introduce yourself?

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
Thanks, Ed. Hi, I'm Jackie Carroll and I'm I'm the programme lead for setting up the the Fair Work Agency. So I've got a team of project specialists around me who who are looking at the nuts and bolts of of how we do that.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Thank you. So if we go on to the next slide, so I mentioned that my team has responsibility for the existing system and this is that system and yes, it is this complex. So most employment rights in the UK are currently enforced by the Employment Tribunal.
And that is to that is essentially where workers take their employers to court. That is very slow. It can be very time consuming. There is a lot of pressure on the tribunal, so there's quite long waiting times to take any action.
And you know, that's costly for the worker. It's costly for the employer. It's also frankly costly for government as well, as you know, court systems frankly cost a lot of money. But that is how most rights are enforced in the UK. Some rights are enforced by the state and there are some advantages to this. It can often be.
Faster and cheaper to sort of get get get workers what they're due. And you can also the advantage of state enforcement is you can take a whole employer view. You know the employment tribunal, it's focused on the individual workers and their rights. So in theory if you're sort of a very large employer with hundreds of thousands of employ of employees.
Then each of them might be taking separate cases to the tribunal, whereas the state enforcement system you can look at the behaviour of the employer as a whole. So the UK's got a bit of a hybrid model. Most of our European neighbours, much more of the employment rights landscape is enforced by the state.
For in the UK, it's just some quite limited rights and that's sort of in the middle of the diagram on the left. So obviously no one on this call needs an introduction to what the GLA does in terms of licensing in certain sectors and tackling serious labour exploitation and modern slavery.
HMRC enforces the national minimum wage and the arrow that's pointing to nothing on this diagram actually points to DBT because at the end of that enforcement process, DBT names and shames employers who have underpaid their workers the minimum wage.
And this definitely links back to the question that Andre was posted in the chat earlier about how there is sort of overlap because of course national minimum wage non-compliance underpayment is an indicator that there might be some more serious labour exploitation at play.
And then the third key state enforcement body is the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, which regulates employment agencies. And the rationale for why these rights, why these areas are sort of enforced by the state is that the workers concerned are seen as being perhaps maybe more vulnerable.
So, you know, agency workers, they've got this particularly complicated employment relationship, they've got their employer in the agency, but then they've also got the places that they've been posted to. People who might be underpaid the national minimum wage will of course be low paid workers. And there's evidence to suggest that people who are low paid are less likely to.
Feel able to take their cases to the tribunal. And then of course the work that the GLA does in terms of tackling modern slavery and serious labour exploitation. Clearly the individuals involved, many of the migrant workers are simply not going to feel able or or indeed willing to take their employer to court.
But that's an incredibly piecemeal system. It's sort of been built up over several decades. The previous government tried to sort of bring it a bit closer together and introduced this organization called the Director of Labour Market Enforcement.
Which sort of oversees the work of the three main bodies and sort of aims to revise some strategic direction. I think it has been sort of effective and like helping the bodies join up a bit to together, but it's also quite a toothless organisation and it's not replaced the sort of the sponsorship relationships that the bodies have with their sponsor departments.
And you know that leads to you can see on the on the right some of the complexities in this and that you've got two bodies that are sponsored by DBT, got the GLA sponsored by the Home Office, they've all got different budgets, different reporting mechanisms, they've got different sort of you you frankly using different language to think about workers or victims.
Individuals, they've got different powers from different decades, they've got different overlapping remits. And then of course, if you are the worker in the middle of all this, trying to work out what to do if you're you're not getting your rights, you're going to be really confused.
And more than that, if you're the an employer actually trying to work out how do I comply with labour and employment law, it's also it's also going to be quite confused as to who you go to to get some advice. So the solution is and if we can go on to the next slide please.
The solution is the Fair Work Agency. So this was an organisation that will bring together the existing remits from this complicated state enforcement landscape. So bringing together the functions of the EAS, the GLA, HMRC and that strategic oversight function of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement.
But then it will also be greater than the sum of its parts, and this is what differentiates it from the proposal that the previous government has on a single enforcement body. So the fair work agency will also take on enforcement for holiday pay, statutory sick pay with strengthening the fair work agency's ability to tackle.
Serious labour exploitation by including parts of the Fraud Act in its remit. And that has been sort of something that we've developed, been able to put into the bill as a result of really, really close working with Sam and her team in the GLLA. And then also subject to consultation, we plan to expand it out to fair pay agreements, which is a.
A new system of pay and rights regulation in the social care sector that the bill was introducing. And then there is this delegated power we're taking in the bill to expand out further to other rights in the future, which we do following, you know, sort of extensive engagement of course and via.
Legislation.
In terms of the governance of the body, it's going to be an executive agency of the Department of Business and Trade, which means that it's sort of somewhere a bit in the middle between the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, which has its own legal identity. It's an arm's length body.
And then the status of the employment agency standards inspectorates and the and HMRC which of course are part of sort of central government departments. So an executive agency means that it will be sort of have a sort of closer relationship to DBT and that is something that ministers really push for because they want to be accountable for the work of this body, you know.
One of the big challenges we have the current system is who is responsible for enforcing employment rights and ministers have been clear that they want to be accountable for that in the future and that you know it's on them. The body will be advised by a social partnership board and this is a big sort of wider priority for the government.
To try and make sure that although this is going to be an executive agency of DBT, it's going to be a creature of the labour market. So tripartite body means it will have equal representation from trade union worker representatives, from employers and then also from independent experts.
And that's taking the model that the low pay Commission and ACAS have used for their governance for several decades. And the aim there is you actually got the, you know, the experts who are in the labour market, not the Whitehall civil servants who are sort of deciding what the direction of the body should be, where its priority should be, what the balance is between.
We've been sort of you know taking a compliance based approach which is a hard line approach. So that is what we're sort of creating through the bill. We're also sort of improving the transparency around the organizations. Currently there is actually you know there was a mention previously about some of the stats on the GLA website. There's actually quite.
Limited requirements for transparency around the work of the existing bodies. There's no requirement, for example, for us to publish anything about HMRC's enforcement of the minimum wage. We do do that in practice, but we're taking the opportunity to actually put in some legislative requirements on transparency. So the wider social partnership, the people on this call can really.
See what the body is doing and hold it to account for that. So there's going to be a requirement for annual reports on the work of the body and then also a three-year strategy outlining what are the priorities for the Fair Work agency, which sectors might it be going after? How does it want to make make use of its powers?
And then we're also making sure that, you know, we're bringing together three different organisations, 4, if you count the deal and me into this, into this body, the Fair Work Agency. But of course there will still need to be lots of joint working with other organisations. You know, I think I mentioned the Food Standards Agency earlier, the Health and Safety Executive.
And of course the police. So we're also giving powers in the bill to enable that sharing of information so that we know where the fair work agency identifies that there's sort of other breaches beyond employment rights and labour abuses that it identifies in the course of an inspection that you can pass that on to the right regulator to take some action.
And alongside the remit, what we are doing is creating a single set of powers for the body. So as I mentioned, all the bodies currently have got different powers. They come from different legislation. The EAS relies on legislation for the 1970s, which means it has some sort of, you know.
It reflects that like the EAS's legislation, its powers of investigation aren't switched on until it actually physically visits a visits A premises, which in today's world where information is stored digitally and also frankly many more, many more businesses are sort of run quite remotely. That's actually just.
Just a real sort of barrier to them being able to effectively and efficiently investigate. So we're bringing together all the we're bringing together and creating a single list of one one single set of powers that the Fair Work Agency will be able to use across its expanded remit.
So with that, some of them are leaving unchanged. You know, clearly the gang masters licensing powers that the GLA relies on, the EASS agency regulation powers, they are working well, sort of leaving them where they are, but then doing some reforms to some of the other existing powers.
So, you know, for example, the investigatory powers, I mentioned some of the limits and some of the other bodies, but sort of bringing that all together into one place. Critically, we're sort of making sure that the full scope of investigatory powers, including the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority's, police style powers.
Will be available to the body, but we're also making sure to introduce safeguards around that. And you know, just as now, some of the stronger investigatory powers that the GLA has access to will only be able to be exercised by a sort of a small sets of specially trained officers.
And it also introduces some sort of additional safeguards as we're doing that. So for example, at the moment the EAS and HMRC, they can enter any business premises and they don't need a warrant for that. We think that's broadly right when they're sort of doing that by consensus, but we are introducing a new warrant requirement when they're.
Dwellings that they'll have to get a warrant before they exercise any power to enter a business premises. That's also a dwelling. We're also then introducing a common civil penalty regime and we're basing that on the civil penalty regime that national minimum wage has used for the last 25 years, but we're expanding that out, so in addition to.
To sort of taking penalties against underpayments of the national minimum wage, it can apply to holiday pay, to statutory sick pay, to any other pay rights that might be in the Fair Work Agency scope. And then we're also taking the labour market enforcement undertaking and order regime and updating that and allowing it to apply to a slightly more broader.
Range of criminal offences. And then finally we're giving the Fair Work agency a couple of new powers. So we're giving it some powers around civil proceedings and that means the Fair Work Agency will be able to bring cases itself to the employment tribunal to test sort of complicated areas of employment law and currently has.
There's no ability for the existing bodies to do that. And that's based on some precedents that the Equality Human Rights Commission have. And that'll be a really sort of, I think, useful tool to, you know, to create some case law, to create some precedent to really sort of understand exactly if, for example, what the worker status is for someone.
So the Fair Work Agency knows what action it can take to help individuals and help workers. And then we're also taking a cost recovery power for the agency and that's based on the sort of polluter pays principles. So the Fair Work Agency will be able to recoup the costs of its investigation.
From employers who are found to have been in breach of employment law, and that again is based on existing powers, in this case powers that the Health and Safety Executive have, and we'll set that out in detail in secondary legislation. Of course, we'll be consulting very widely ahead of that.
So in terms of next steps, the Employment Rights Bill is in report stage in the Lords at the moment, so it's still undergoing parliamentary passage. We are expecting Royal Assent in the in the autumn.
And then ministers have now confirmed we are planning to set up the Fair Work Agency in April 2026, which is not very far away. So really the hard work starts now because we will need to take that law, consider it, consider how the Fair Work Agency wants to interpret that.
What its priorities are going to be and you know, there will be a sort of a set of public policy documents which will set out exactly how the Fair Work Agency uses its powers. And that will be to replace the existing documents, such as there's an enforcement policy document for the national minimum wage, there's a labour market enforcement undertaking in order code of practice.
So we'll be replacing that with a single set of guidance and on that we would be will be engaging very closely and widely across social partners, across the people in this call and that is what we're planning to do over the summer. So do watch this space. We are then taking, oh, sorry, sorry, I've just got one more point.

Suzanne
Thank you, Andy. And can I can I go to? OK.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
And it's quite important. We are taking a phase approach to this though. So April is obviously very soon and we can't bring all this together at once. So we're taking a phase approach. We're first going to be bringing together the existing agreements of the bodies and bringing together the existing powers and then later on we will be expanding out to the new rights.

Suzanne
OK.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
The new powers and we will be doing lots of engagement on that.

Suzanne
Thank you, Ed. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I wanted to make sure if Jackie wanted to add anything before I bring in some questions that she had a moment.

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
Good.
Yes, thank you. That was very thorough, Ed. I I don't have a huge amount to add to that. I would just say briefly that as as Ed says, we're a programme team. Our goal is to set up an agency that effectively enforces rights for all workers, including the most vulnerable victims of labour abuse and that we help businesses that that want to work with us.

Suzanne
Yeah.

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
To comply with the law and that we challenge those that don't. So to do that we've set up a programme team to to to do the the the mechanics of of the legislation and and to to set it up in practice. As Ed says, the initial go live date will be April 2026, the 6th of April 2026.
And yes, it will be a phased approach in the in the first phase, we want to bring together the existing state enforcement bodies and then we want to make sure that, you know, we create a clear identity, a clear branding that we have a close relationship with businesses, civil society, trade unions, etcetera. So we talked about the.

Suzanne
Yeah.

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
Tripartite approach. So to do that, we've got a programme team, a programme board, and we've got IT experts that are exploring things like how do you create an IT platform for a new organization? What's the domain name be? What will our brand? What will our logo look like? What will our digital presence be?
And and we're we're we've got till April to do that in the first phase before we think about how we bring on board the the new powers. We're really keen that we are in touch with people to get views so that we know how to reach most vulnerable people, so that they know how to access our services, how we can make that work. So we had some round tables early.
Year in the year, but we also we have some user researchers that we've onboarded so that they can think about the the journey of the user of the services and and that they're they're planning how we we're going to engage more with stakeholders to make sure we get your views on doing that. So that yeah, that's my bit. Thank you.

Suzanne
That's really helpful, both Ed and Jackie, and in fact that feeds into two questions that Dominique has asked about consultation. She says she's great to see a tripartite model for the FWA. What opportunities will there be for regular consultation with other key stakeholders such as CSO involvement?
Given the low level of unionization in vulnerable exploited workers, and then she also asked, when you say you will be engaging widely before the policy documents come out, will this be a public consultation?

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
I'll hand over to Ed. Ed.

Suzanne
Who wants to take that? Ed?

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Absolutely. So we're not planning to do a formal public consultation. The reason for that is that actually it can often just slow things down because you have to go through various sort of hoops and steps our side in order to publish that. So we're planning to do that as a, you know, a programme of stakeholder engagement.
Round tables. I imagine many people on this call have been engaged with the dealer me and it's sort of rounds of engagement that it does in advance of its strategies and we are planning to be using the expertise and the network of the dealer me to make sure we are reaching a wide, a wide range.
Of stakeholders on that and in terms of sort of broader consultation beyond the tripartite board, clearly the tripartite board is just going to be the very core of the state, how the state, the fair work agency brings in the broader social partnership.
I think quite a lot of these decisions we want to let the fair work agency leadership who aren't in place yet for them to really decide how, when they, how they want to bring people in to inform the work of the agency. But we are building in that capability and building in the sort of, you know, the specialist.
Teams who hopefully will be able to undertake that work.

Suzanne
Another question is will there be a published enforcement register? Currently HMRC does not publish information on NMW penalties.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
So on this one, the HMRC doesn't publish that information, but DBT does name and shame employers who want to pay the minimum wage. We issued the the most recent.
Naming, naming register, I guess you could call it on the 31st of May and I do encourage people to of course go and check that out on gov.uk. I think we haven't yet made an exact decision about how much data gets published and whether it's at individual level and when that happens.
But you know, this is again something that we'd want the leadership to have a think about when it's in post in terms of what the best format is. And certainly I envisage business has made clear to me that they would want to see that the programme of naming employers for minimum wage being potentially looking at maybe we'd want to expand that out to other breaches of employment.
And that's definitely something that they would want to continue to promote and you know, continue to use the opportunities to, you know, create sort of a bit of press coverage around that as well.

Suzanne
Another question here is, do you expect that Fair Work Agency inspectors will inspect across all types of businesses and breaches, or do you think there will be a specialist inspectors who will be assigned to particular types of businesses or breaches?

Jacqui CARROLL (DBT)
But I take that one ahead. We've got a team of OD consultants, organization design consultants, and we need to work through exactly how that we need to come up with options for for the best thing there. So we're not quite at that stage yet.

Suzanne
Thank you. And then one from Kate Roberts. How frequently do you foresee the power in clause 113 of the ERB for the s s to bring ET proceedings on behalf of a worker being used in practice?
How might cases be prioritised? What would be done to ensure this is only used without the consent of the workers concerned? Or I think she meant with the consent of the workers concerned. It's almost an essay question for examination. Please discuss.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Please discuss. Well, I think first of all, Kate, what I say is we do plan to discuss. As I mentioned, we're not planning for this power to be turned on with the first iteration of the Fair Work Agency. And that's because there's a lot more thinking that we need to do, you know, in discussion with all stakeholders about this power.
I think probably the starting point for that would be looking at how the EHRC uses its power currently, which it does very rarely and in quite strategic cases, and it is to clarify points of law.
And to sort of you know where where actually it would be useful to set some legislative precedent. And I I imagine that is probably how we will exercise the the power in 113, but that will be, yeah, there's lots more to get through on that. And then I just think the only the only final thing I'd say on it is this is going to be a state.
Enforcement power. And you know that means rather than focused on the individual workers, on individual rights of workers, it's going to be looking at the behaviour of an employer as a whole and you know if you are actually testing.
The entitlement to rights for, you know, an employer who's got several thousand workers who work for that employer. It may not always be practical to get the consent from each of those individual workers. That's not how the.
That's not how other state enforcement powers work currently. It's not the case that, yeah, that's not. That's not how state enforcement works. It's focused on the employer rather than the individual.

Suzanne
I'm I'm coming to the end now, but I think it's probably a good idea to just put out there Dominic Muller's point because she wants to make it again, I think, and others have agreed, she said. The last consultation often does not reach key stakeholders at all, especially workers and their representatives.
She, Word and others agree with her, strongly urge for a clear, transparent call for engagement, even if it's not a full public consultation. I think I leave that at your doorstep, Ed and Jackie, to take away with you as you're working up this new department.
And then there's another one agrees with Dominic. It'd be good to know that the firm work agency transparency considerations were evidence-based. So I think that brings us Ed and Jackie, I don't know if you want to add anything to close this part because it's obviously stimulated many people's.
Consideration of what is coming next on the horizon.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Yes, I mean, I think those, you know, agree entirely with those points and that's precisely why we don't want to go down the sort of, you know, publish a consultation document on gov.uk, which then, you know, doesn't actually create the kind of discussion that we're having here, the discussion that we want to have between different groups of stakeholders.

Suzanne
Mm.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
So that's why we're going for a sort of program of bringing people together for discussions rather than, you know, individual responses to consultation. Because I absolutely agree with you, having worked so many consultations, it very rarely seems to reach the people who really need to contribute to them.

Suzanne
Thank you and I hope this this webinar has helped. And the question is how can we input our recommendations? No doubt the department is putting out information about that.

Ed WALKINGTON (DBT)
Yes, as I mentioned, there will be a programme of engagement over the summer and that will be the opportunity to do that. So watch this space.

Suzanne
OK, well, on that positive note, I'm going to bring this webinar to an end. I want to thank all the speakers, especially Ed and Jackie, external speakers, but also our internal ones, Sam, Neville and Laura. We I'm coming to a close if we haven't answered your questions or you want to ask more or you want more information.
Do get in touch with the GLAA. As many of our speakers said, we are willing and happy to engage with you and give you what information is available. Our next webinar is on Wednesday the 7th of October. I do hope you join us and I'm closing the webinar now.
Thank you very much.

Click here to return to the top of the page