Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to page 8 of the consultation document Tackling Exploitation in the Labour Market, published in October 2015, if she will publish research conducted by her Department that shows that there has been a shift from abuses of employment regulation towards increasingly organised criminal activity engaged in labour market exploitation over the last 10 years.

Operational information, which is not publically discloseable, received from the Gangmasters’ Licensing Authority indicates that, since the Authority began operations in 2006, it has seen an increase in the number of vulnerable people being exploited by organised criminals and criminal networks for profit in the sectors it regulates.

Further information about the role of organised criminal activity would come from the proposed new role of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement who will have a role to gather information on worker exploitation and publish a strategic approach to tackling it.