Last week I reported that the Immigration Bill had received the Royal Assent and become the Immigration Act.
However, no commencement date had been given. We now know that three of the provisions of the Act come into force on 12 July 2016.
These are:
Sections 1 to 9, which require the Secretary of State to appoint a Director of Labour Market Enforcement to oversee compliance in the labour market, principally in relation to employment agencies, the National Minimum Wage and the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. S.34, which will create a new offence of illegal working where a person works at a time when he or she reasonably believes that he or she is disqualified from doing so because of his or her immigration status. A person convicted of this offence will be subject to imprisonment for up to 51 weeks or a fine, or both and may be subject to a confiscation order of wages as the proceeds of crime. S.35, which extends the existing criminal offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker to a situation where the employer has ‘reasonable cause’ to believe that the employee is disqualified from working because of his or her immigration status. The maximum term of imprisonment for conviction of offence on indictment will increase from two years to five years.Whilst the first of these is really limited to the agricultural industry, the second two are relevant to all employers and we recommend readers take note of the potential penalties. I have not been in prison myself, but am told it is not an experience to take lightly.
Interestingly, over £21million was raised in penalties from employers hiring illegal workers in the second half of 2015. With 1217 penalty notices being issued in this period, it represents an average penalty of £17,255. These figures were taken from the UK Visas and Immigration and Immigration Enforcement quarterly report.
This goes to show that tackling illegal immigration and illegal working is being taken very seriously.
GOV.UK has published An employer’s guide to right to work checks which details:
what a right to work check is why you need to do right to work checks whose documents you should check how to carry out checks when to carry out initial checks, follow-up checks and what happens under TUPE what documents are acceptable.We await notification of the remaining commencement dates.
