Our CEO, Elysia McCaffrey shares an update on our HMRC Counter Fraud Partnership

I’m really proud to share the remarkable progress of our Counter-Fraud Partnership with HMRC, a collaboration which exemplifies what can be achieved when organisations unite around shared objectives.

The aim is to create a level playing field for compliant businesses and support their growth by promoting ongoing tax compliance while increasing tax receipts to fund public services.

This partnership is not simply about ensuring compliance but also about ensuring every worker is treated with dignity, paid fairly and employed by businesses that operate responsibly. Together we are tackling the root causes of worker exploitation, from undeclared profits to fraudulent practices such as non-payment of the National Minimum Wage.

Our joint efforts with HMRC have created a framework for identifying and disrupting bad actors through intelligence sharing, joint investigations, and by aligning our strategic objectives. Increased focus and capability across HMRC and the GLAA has identified failures against the GLAA’s critical Licensing Standards and our Counter Fraud Partnership activity has supported the delivery of earlier and more robust interventions. Workers make contributions from their wages in good faith, trusting that their employer will declare and pay those contributions to HMRC. This joint work ensures that payments deducted from workers are being made to HMRC, safeguarding workers’ entitlement to appropriate benefits.

By sharing information our Licensing team ensures that only tax compliant businesses are granted, hold and retain a licence. We’ve also seen improved tax compliance in the agri-food labour supply sector.

We believe that holding a GLAA licence shows that a business is committed to ethical practices, tax compliance and treating workers fairly. Our strengthened licensing processes which include income regularity checks and data sharing with HMRC, help to ensure that only compliant businesses run by individuals in a fit-and-proper manner are licensed. In doing so we aim to ensure that there is a level playing field for responsible labour providers and that the non-compliant do not gain a business advantage over those that seek to comply with rules and regulations. It sends a clear message that there is no room for exploitation and non-compliance in the GLAA regulated sector.

Today (2 September) I signed our new partnership agreement with HMRC, setting the scene and affirming our commitment to ongoing partnership working.