date: 20 May 2008

embargo: For immediate release

Employers and unions call for end to migrant registration scheme

Today (Tuesday) as the latest figures for the Workers Registration Scheme (WRS) are published, an alliance of employers, unions and migrant groups has called for the Scheme to be scrapped.

The TUC, the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Federation of Poles in Great Britain have called upon Home Secretary Jacqui Smith MP to end the Scheme.

The WRS was introduced in May 2004 to prevent benefit tourism and to measure the number of workers migrating from the new European Union member states of Eastern Europe.

But the alliance of employers, unions and others claim the Scheme has outlived its usefulness and now produces inadequate statistics, at great cost to migrant workers and inconvenience to both them and their employers. The TUC-backed Commission on Vulnerable Employment, which reported earlier this month, has already called for its abolition.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'The Worker Registration Scheme is no longer necessary, effective or fair. It costs £90 to register - which is two days wages for someone on the minimum wage - and National Insurance numbers would provide much better information about where migrants are working.'

ALP chairman Mark Boleat said: 'The Workers Registration Scheme has outlived the very limited usefulness it has ever had. Low paid workers should not pay £90 each for the Government to produce dubious statistics when it already has better information from other sources. The Scheme should be scrapped immediately.'

Federation of Poles in Great Britain chair Jan Mokrzycki said: 'I believe that this tax is an unfair burden, and transgresses EU treaty obligations on the free movement of labour. It is certainly an additional tax on some of the poorest and most exploited people in the British workplace, and imposed at the time they can least afford to pay. Furthermore its application is so uneven that it actually distorts the true statistics on the amount of new EU citizens in this country and makes proper allocation of resources through local authorities that much more difficult.'

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Contacts:

Media enquiries:
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Press release (500 words) issued 20 May 2008