Two Government ministers have slashed the budget of the quango set up in the wake of the tragic drowning of 23 exploited cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 – just when the authority was having a string of successes in prosecuting illegal activities by gangmasters.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles scrapped his department’s entire funding to the organisation from April – which will force it to sack enforcement officers and end a detailed and successful intelligence operation with 80 local councils to trace potential law-breakers.
Caroline Spelman, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has also cut her department’s contribution to the organisation by 5 per cent.
And a Whitehall freeze on recruitment has meant that the authority has not been able to replace skilled staff who left and are crucial to its work.
Details of the financial plight of the organisation became public this month when it published its annual report and accounts. The organisation is able to raise money by charging fees for registered gangmasters – but it is its work fighting illegal operations that has now been put at risk. The fees have been frozen for two years to save “business costs”.
Plans for a national exploitation index revealing the level of non-compliance in Britain have also been put on hold.
A spokesperson for the authority confirmed it had not been able to meet two of its main targets last year. It had to end its work with individual authorities and replace it with a national gathering operation. It also missed a target to plan 18 high-profile operations against illegal gangmasters – only being able to manage 12.
Where it has taken action, it has been very successful – intelligence operations against gangmasters resulted in a 91 per cent success rate in discovering serious non-compliance with the law.
Recent arrests include three in Northern Ireland, where a gangmaster was running a shellfish business, and in Kent. The authority also blocked an attempt in Lancashire by a gangmaster to get a licence because it suspected it was a front for an already banned gangmaster convicted of abusing his workforce.
Like much of Whitehall, the authority has also had to divert money from operations to pay redundancy to six staff – at a cost of £106,000 – to meet the cost of cuts imposed by the Government.
The report concludes: “The authority faces a major challenge in seeking to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable workers with the prospect of fewer resources.”
