I want to develop the theme of how we can make prosecution and enforcement quicker and easier. I am aware that a number of Members who wanted to speak earlier have not yet been able to do so, and I shall therefore keep my remarks short.
I want to speak about new clauses 16, 17, 18 and 19. Let me begin with new clause 16. At present, it is very difficult for police in areas such as Wisbech in my constituency to identify houses in multiple occupation. The presence of 20-odd people in a two-storey house often does not meet the legal definition of an HMO. One of the ways in which we can make life easier for the local police is to give them clearer powers and rights to inspect letting agencies, and require gangmasters to keep records in the form of rent books and tenancy agreements. At present, when there is a breach of a tenancy agreement, it falls to the tenant to bring a private prosecution. How realistic is that? How realistic is it to expect someone who has been trafficked, who does not speak English and who does not understand the law to bring a private prosecution against his landlord?
We need to make it quicker, easier and therefore cheaper for the police to identify concentrations of HMOs. They need to be able to go into those houses, establish whether the law relating to, for instance, rent books is being adhered to, and take action if necessary. That will necessitate rights of access to the records of letting agents, and a requirement that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority can then use for leverage in relation to gangmasters.
New clause 17 seeks to build on the lessons this House can learn from scrap metal merchants being forbidden from taking cash payments and asks how we can create an audit trail for financial investigators in terms of the known abuse around the minimum wage legislation and the way people are being paid. At present wage slips will often simply show that someone was on for one day—it could have been seven hours, it could have been 12 hours—and when payments are made, they are made in cash. Straight away, deductions are taken for accommodation and for vehicles, so the abused worker never actually receives that money. Often they are told when they come into the country that they are not allowed a bank account. Obviously that is erroneous information, but they do not know otherwise. New clause 17 therefore addresses how we can make it easier for the police to follow the money—follow that audit trail—so that once money goes into an account, it is with the worker and it becomes harder for the rogue gangmaster to deduct it at source, which is what currently happens.
New clause 18’s provision is, I fear, almost a well-worn theme. I had a debate on it in Westminster Hall in 2012 and 2013. The measure was being blocked by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, although I was told privately that the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs was supporting it. The reality is that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority does not have the full range of tools available. It has draconian penalties available in terms of criminal sanctions, but they are almost never used because the standard of proof is high and the amount of time required is extensive.
To put this in context, do Members know how many inspectors the GLA currently has? It has 35 for the whole country. There is one covering the whole of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. An inspector could spend their entire time just driving around my constituency, never mind the rest of the county and the two counties combined. The LGA has 35 inspectors and a budget of £4 million. We need only think about how much a supermarket makes in a week to see how well resourced the GLA is.