Crack down on illegal working

In a recent parliamentary statement the UK’s Prime Minster (PM) announced a renewed focus on tackling illegal working.  

In the statement, PM Rishi Sunak has pledged to improve recruitment at the Home Office so that more resources can be allocated to immigration enforcement. He further hopes that checks on businesses to assess their compliance with right-to-work checks will double from the current level. The initial plans will involve the on-boarding of 200 new Home Office staff.

Illegal working has a wide definition, and can vary from hiring an individual who is in the UK without any status to breaches of minimum salary and/or maximum working hour requirements. All UK employers, regardless of whether they are approved by the Home Office as a licenced sponsor for overseas workers, have a duty to prevent illegal working. Penalties for falling foul of the UK’s illegal working rules can be both civil (in the form of substantial fines), and/or criminal (in the form of a prison sentence).

With heightened scrutiny on illegal working, it is highly likely that the number of in-person compliance visits conducted by the Home Office on registered sponsor licence holding businesses will also increase. This would include not just a check of the right-to-work processes they have in place, but also a check on all other, wider, sponsor duties. If you are a registered sponsor, it may therefore be prudent to consider a ‘health check’ on your HR processes and systems.

Source: PM statement on illegal migration: 13 December 2022

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