Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department is taking steps to identify businesses that engage in labour exploitation.

The Immigration Act 2016 creates a new Director of Labour Market Enforcement. They will be responsible for overseeing and setting priorities for the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, National Minimum Wage enforcement and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. This will strengthen efforts to identify businesses that engage in labour exploitation.

To enable more effective enforcement, we are creating:

• A new intelligence hub so that enforcement is targeted at areas of risk; and
• A new regime of Labour Market Enforcement undertakings and orders, backed up by a criminal offence and custodial sentence, to allow us to tackle repeat labour market offenders and rogue businesses.

We have already reformed the Gangmasters Licensing Authority into the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority with the ability to tackle labour exploitation.