The UK Labor Market Czar has called for a crackdown on fake self-employment

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The UK government must act to stop bogus work if it is to succeed in improving workers’ rights, the official charged with combating labor exploitation has warned.

Margaret Bales, director of independent labor market enforcement, told the Financial Times in an interview. Employers If ministers continue to delay legislation to clarify the status of workers, they could easily sidestep new obligations for workers.

“I would like to see a little more urgency. . . “You can consult until the cows come home, but sometimes the government just wants a decision,” Biles said. Concern is echoing. Actions by unions and business groups over the inclusion of key measures from the Employment Rights Bill.

The bill presented to Parliament last year includes wide-ranging reforms to protect UK workers more. But it doesn’t solve the issue Labor has promised to solve in the past: employers taking advantage of ambiguities in UK law on workers’ status.

Instead, the government said that there is a need for broad consultation to create a simple framework with one level of employment, distinguishing between employees and self-employed.

Bills said there is a risk that leaving this issue until later could cause employers to shirk their new responsibilities by hiring gig workers.

It is unusual for the UK to have three types of employment status: employed, self-employed and a category between “limb(b)” workers, and it is often difficult for people to know how to behave.

Workers in the third group have more protection than the self-employed, but lack some of the important worker rights that the Labor government plans to strengthen through the ERB, such as statutory sick pay, redundancy rights and fair dismissal protection.

Crucially, they are treated as self-employed for tax purposes, creating a huge incentive for businesses to use contractors instead of employees, especially with a £25bn budget boost to Employers’ National Insurance.

But the proliferation of fake self-employment is just one of the dangers Bills sees looming, as the government enshrines new rights in law without yet specifying how much money will be available to enforce them.

The complexity of the UK’s employment system, where workers are hired by one agency, hired by another and told what to do by someone else, has made it difficult for individuals to enforce their rights, she said.

But the UK’s thinly resourced enforcement agencies struggle to enforce existing labor market laws. The three main bodies – HM Revenue and Customs’ minimum wage enforcement team, the Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority and the Employment Agency Standards Control – are to be merged. New Fair Work AgencyWith a wide mercy.

The Figs role was created by the former Conservative government to improve coordination between agencies, strategize and prepare for this merger.

She stated that it is disappointing that ministers have repeatedly failed to follow through on their commitment to create a body.

“Prepare the way, this great thing is coming,” I described myself as John the Baptist. . . And it never came,” said Bells, former chairman of the GLAA and former director of Scottish Gas.

The Fair Work Agency is now being run under Labor and Bills, who will be disbanding his own office when the agency is created, intends to make the case effective.

Raising the profile will be crucial. “Transparency is very important. . . Employees are getting to know what the agency is doing and how effective it is,” she said.

Although there is no new funding, she insists that the creation of an executive body will allow resources to be allocated more efficiently.

Funding for all three agencies in 2023-24 totaled no more than £40mn – of which £31.2mn was for HMRC’s minimum wage group. Resourcing for FWA will be determined by a rigorous spending review this summer.

Existing problems meant the GLAA and EAS were unable to “lift the rocks” and investigate the extent of exploitation in the construction sector, she said, hinting that resources would come under new pressure as the agency’s remit expanded. .

Bells said this message to MPs earlier this month, who openly left it to party members: “If anyone thinks we’re going to raise standards just by throwing three budgets together . . . That’s not the case.”

He added: “There needs to be a step change to address the resources available to the Fair Work Agency.”