Miliband plans “Home Office Enforcement Unit” to tackle illegal exploitation of immigrants

Ed Miliband will tomorrow lay out the five Labour principles that will underpin the party’s approach to immigration. In what the party are calling a “major speech” in the North West, Miliband will say that while he believes “immigration can benefit our country” he feels it necessary to say that “Labour got this wrong in the past”.

His message will be: “We have listened. We have learned. And we have changed.”

The five principles Miliband will set out are:

• Rebuilding trust
• Securing borders
• Restoring contribution
• Championing integration
• Ending exploitation

The Labour leader will set out plans to tackle exploitation of workers, which he he says drives down wages and drives up low skill migration. This includes setting up a Home Office Enforcement Unit of more than 100 people, which will specialise in rooting out the illegal exploitation of workers. The unit will bring together the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, specialised police units and additional Home Office enforcement staff. It will have full investigatory powers to set about ensuring that practices such as paying below the minimum wage and using zero hour contracts (which will be outlawed by Labour) are cracked down on.

Miliband will say:

“Too often, this is an anything-goes economy: people who live in the most appalling, cramped conditions, sleeping 20 to a house; people who are paid well below the minimum wage; people who have their wages stolen.

“It’s exploitation of the worst kind. But it isn’t just bad for those people directly affected, it drives down standards for everybody else, undercutting local workers, and making life harder for responsible employers. It is an epidemic of exploitation and we will end it.

“This Labour Party will fight exploitation wherever we find it. And to enforce this, I can announce today, that we will establish a new Home Office Enforcement Unit.”

Miliband will also set out the following proposals that aim to tackle exploitation and curb immigration:

•  Make it illegal for employers to undercut wages by exploiting workers
•  Ban recruitment agencies from hiring solely from overseas
•  Raise the National Minimum Wage to £8 an hour by 2019
•  Increase fines for failing to pay the National Minimum Wage to £50,000
• Close loopholes in agency worker rules to stop employers undercutting directly-employed staff
• Increase fines for employing illegal immigrants to £30,000
• Require large firms hiring skilled workers from outside the EU to train up an apprentice
•  Extend the Gangmasters Licensing Authority remit to more sectors
•  Ban exploitative zero hours contracts