Future of Workers Registration Scheme

Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP

Home Secretary

Home Office

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

date: 18 March 2009

Dear Jacqui

Future of the Workers Registration Scheme

Given the current review of the above, I am writing to you to register the views of the TUC.

The TUC believes that whatever the merits there might have been in setting-up the scheme, those are now more than outweighed by what subsequently have proved to be its inadequacies.

The TUC is a co-signatory to a paper resubmitted to this review by the Association of Labour Providers (ALP). The key point of the TUC/ALP paper is that the WRS was set-up as a monitoring tool to count the number of A8 workers active within the UK economy. The WRS does not however adequately achieve this objective. A substantial number of A8 employees clearly choose not to register in part because of the £90 fee. The WRS does not include the self-employed. These two factors lead to undercounting. The fact that there is no deregistration process distorts the figures in the opposite direction. The TUC shares the view of the MAC that there are more reliable exiting tools for accessing A8 workers involvement in the UK labour market e.g. National Insurance Numbers.

In addition to its inadequacy as a monitoring tool, the introduction of the WRS has had some unintended adverse consequences. In particular, it is a widely held legal opinion that failure to register on the WRS means that such A8 workers cannot enforce their employment rights. It puts such A8 workers in a position where they are easy to exploit, leading to possible undercutting of other more established workers. The more unscrupulous employers have manipulated the scheme to make money out of A8 workers by charging them unjustifiable sums for completing the forms on their behalf in English. Employers have even used the process of registering as a means of taking employees passport and holding on to them.

The TUC therefore believes that the WRS should be allowed to lapse.

Yours sincerely

BRENDAN BARBER

General Secretary