Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many business owners have been charged with employing illegal workers in each of the last three years.

The government takes illegal working very seriously, and we are determined to clamp down on the employment of individuals with no right to work in the UK, including the sectors highlighted by the Rt Hon Gentleman.

Since this government came to office, Immigration Enforcement’s Criminal and Financial Investigation teams have charged six individuals with employing illegal workers, compared to just four in the previous two and a half years combined. Those six charges may represent progress on the dismal record of inaction seen under the previous government, but they still add up to an unacceptably low rate of enforcement against businesses employing, and in many cases exploiting, illegal workers, and we are therefore determined to go further over the coming months and years.

As part of this, we are also determined to establish a more comprehensive, accurate and up to date evidence base of the scale and nature of illegal working in the UK, which we hope will in due course allow us to provide robust answers to the questions raised by the Rt Hon Gentleman concerning the estimates of the number of people working illegally in specific, high-risk sectors and industries.