“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of this Act being passed, commission an independent report on the extent to which workers on temporary visas are able to assert their rights under employment law.

(2) In commissioning the report, the Secretary of State must arrange for the report to meet the requirements set out in subsections (2) to (4).

(3) The report must examine the extent to which workers on temporary visas feel unable to assert their employment rights because they are dependent on their employers to sponsor their visas.

(4) The report must make recommendations to the Secretary of State about how the Secretary of State can support workers on temporary visas in the assertion of their employment rights.

(5) The report must be completed within three months of being commissioned.

(6) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is practicable after receipt of the report, publish the report and lay it before both Houses of Parliament.

(7) The Secretary of State must, within three months of receipt of the report—

(a) respond to the recommendations in the report, and

(b) publish the response and lay it before both Houses of Parliament.”—

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I believe this is the last of the new clauses to the Bill.

It is imperative that employment rights are universal. Everyone should have access to them, regardless of their circumstances. That cannot just be theoretical; it needs to be applied in practice too. Although the Bill increases workers’ rights for many people, which I fully support, it will make no difference to their realities if they do not have the ability to access those rights or to seek redress when they are breached. To make the Bill as worth while and effective as it can be, we must take every possible action to strengthen it and to ensure that no one is denied their rights. We must do our utmost to prevent scenarios in which denial of employment rights and exploitation can exist.

I have therefore tabled this new clause on access to employment rights for workers on temporary visas. I know that most of us in this room will have had constituents on those visas who have been exploited. If we accept the new clause, it will compel the Secretary of State, within six months of the Bill being passed, to commission an independent report on the extent to which workers on temporary visas are able to assert their rights under employment law.

Workers on temporary visas consistently report that they are unable to assert the basic rights derived from being a worker in the UK. Why is that? Because they are dependent on their employer for not only their job but their ability to live in this country. More often than not, they do not have the same safety nets that others benefit from. For people in that situation, the stakes are simply so much higher.

We know that migrant workers, who often incur large debts to migrate to the UK to work—to address labour shortages—simply cannot afford to report abuse, if doing so risks their jobs and visas. They are justifiably fearful that their employer, who sponsors their visa, will punish them and that they will be left without redress. Time and again, we see cases of workers who face unsafe conditions—including in my Constituency and, I am sure, in those of everyone in this room. Whether it is underpayment or sexual harassment, they do not feel able to do anything about it, for fear of deportation. That lets exploitation run rife.

By not addressing this issue, we are allowing a huge blind spot in the UK’s employment rights framework to continue unchecked. Until the Government address temporary and restrictive visas, the gap between workers only widens, entrenching the UK’s tiered workforce and leaving migrant workers behind. That is simply unacceptable. Restrictive visas have created a tiered workforce, where migrant workers face significant barriers to enforcing their rights, driving a race to the bottom in pay and conditions across the UK labour market.

Such visas often limit the sectors in which workers are permitted to work or the employers for which they can work. Workers’ immigration sponsors may also be their employers or responsible for placing them in employment. This results in a vicious cycle, in which migrant workers are doubly punished for speaking out, first by unscrupulous employers and then by immigration enforcement, with a resulting loss of work, income and immigration status. That has allowed a proliferation of abuses, from non-payment of wages to overwork and sexual assault, among a litany of other labour and criminal law violations.

It is important to recognise that workers’ experiences of exploitation can vary, but all these instances need addressed. At one end of the scale, there is decent, well-paid work, with bad practices such as breaches of employment rights culminating, at the opposite end, in severe labour exploitation, such as human trafficking and forced labour. Where minor breaches of rights occur and are not sufficiently addressed, it increases the risk of more severe exploitation further along, as well as driving down workplace standards. Surely the new Labour Government find that totally unacceptable?

In working on the new clause, I engaged with Focus on Labour Exploitation—I have a briefing from it here, which I am happy to share with the Minister. FLEX is a research and policy organisation working towards an end to labour exploitation, and its recent research and policy work has focused on sectors where workers are known to be at higher risk of exploitation.

The new clause, which is intended to be friendly and collaborative, would lead to an investigation into the extent of these issues and how they can be addressed. Any immigration system that does not proactively include mechanisms that enable workers to report exploitation—and ultimately leave an exploitative employer without jeopardising their employment, accommodation and immigration status—inevitably has exploitation baked into its design. To meet its aims, the Employment Rights Bill needs to address that.

It is especially important that the use of restrictive or short-term visas is not allowed to prevent improvements in working conditions and pay in certain work sectors by facilitating access to workers who, due to immigration restrictions, are unable to challenge poor working conditions. One option open to the Government to combat that would be to introduce a UK workplace justice visa, drawing on international best practice. Such a visa would provide 12 months of renewable limited leave for those who have visas dependent on their employment and who have experienced labour exploitation or lost their employment and limited leave through no fault of their own. That would ensure that migrants with work visas who experience such issues have a route to remain and settle in the UK, to enable them to leave abusive work situations and, most importantly, to access justice. The new clause does not propose such a visa, but it is one option the Secretary of State should strongly consider as a way of supporting workers on temporary visas in the assertion of their employment rights.

Importantly, and increasingly, other countries have recognised the need to address labour abuse, including abuse below the threshold of modern slavery, and have introduced similar measures. For example, in Australia, recent reforms introduced provisions that prevent visa cancellations where, at first sight, there is evidence of labour abuse. Those reforms also provide for a workplace justice visa, which permits work in any sector while the worker seeks redress. In our closest neighbour, Ireland, non-EU citizens who held a work permit but became undocumented through no fault of their own and who have remained in the country have access to the reactivation employment permit.

It is important to stress that the new clause is about workers accessing the employment rights in the Bill. Examples of restrictive visas that create the risk of exploitation include the overseas domestic worker visa for work in a private household and the seasonal worker visa for work in agriculture. The short-term nature of such visas increases the risk of exploitation, because workers, who often pay large amounts to migrate, know that their best option is not to complain or challenge poor working conditions, but to focus on earning what they can during the short time they are in the UK.

The adult social care sector is already under strain because of the lack of people available to work in it, and workers with a health and social care worker visa are often scared to speak out or seek protection due to their dependence on their employer for that visa. At present, if a sponsor loses their sponsor licence because of exploitative practices or non-compliance with their duties as a sponsor, the health and care worker has only 60 days to find another sponsor, who must be willing and able to sponsor a new visa. That has proved an impossible hurdle for many workers when they and their colleagues have simultaneously lost their employment, so they cannot support themselves and are prohibited from undertaking new employment until they have a new visa. It is an impossible situation.

The high level of dependency on the visa sponsor has contributed to the significant spike in labour exploitation in the adult social care sector. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority has confirmed that despite policy changes, demand for support has remained consistent. In that context, we have seen instances of workers experiencing significant abuse, from labour violations to, dare I say it, rape, as they feel too disempowered to ask the authorities for protection. The dependency created by sponsorship also creates a barrier to the workers’ ability to join a trade union or to engage in collective action to advocate for better conditions, out of the fear that they will be victimised for trade union activity and that they will lose not only their job but their immigration status as a result.

I am sure that the Secretary of State fully supports everyone having the protection of employment rights. This new clause does not ask for much: it simply states that the Government must commission a report. I urge the Minister to consider that to ensure that migrant workers on temporary visas are explicitly taken into consideration in the Bill, and to ensure that the Government take all measures to protect their rights.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I draw the Committee’s attention to my declaration of interests and my membership of the trade unions Community and Unison.

I will note a couple of useful points in response to the important arguments of the hon. Member for Dundee Central about migrant workers and the conditionality of visas. I have worked on migration issues for a long time, so I sympathise with the objectives and the direction that he puts forward.

The new Clause essentially proposes an investigation or information-gathering exercise. The new Government have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee, which is a body of experts that is independent of the Government or the Home Office, to look into issues around the conditionality of visas and the different types of worker visa to which he referred. The MAC is doing a lot of important work, and I think it is the appropriate location for that research. I am a member of the Home Affairs Committee, which is also looking into some of the changes that are happening. I reassure the hon. Member that a lot of the work and thinking on this issue is already getting under way.

The hon. Member raised some substantive points. First, on seasonal or temporary workers who find themselves at risk of exploitation, he referred to the distinction between those whose immigration status is permanent or secure and those whose status is conditional on their employer. I think the point he is driving at with that distinction goes to the heart of the immigration system overall. We have a system in which conditionalities are applied to visa status, whether that is for someone who has come to do a job, for someone who has applied to do a university course or for someone who is in a relationship. He is driving at a philosophical problem in the immigration system, rather than a technical one.

Where employers abuse the system, there are two points to address. First, it is a breach of immigration law and not necessarily of employment law. The hon. Member drew attention to the fact that they lose their sponsorship capacity. When that situation occurs, it is appropriate that we look at it through Home Office immigration regulations. That can be much more effective than trying to crowbar quite a specific point into the UK-wide labour market.

The hon. Member’s last point is an important one. When I approached this area of work to decide whether it fitted this Committee or whether it should be considered in immigration legislation, I took some advice. I appreciate, from a home affairs point of view, that this might not be the place for that point. However, it is the place for talking about it, and that is why the new Clause has been accepted by the Clerks for debate today. I appreciate that this might also be an issue for the Home Office, but it is clearly an issue for the Minister in charge of employment rights, because at the end of the day it is not immigration rules that need to be changed. This is about making sure that employment rights are fit for everyone, regardless of whether they are here on a temporary or a permanent visa.

That is a very helpful Intervention, because it draws me on to my final point. There is a distinction between what rights there are and what rights are enforced. We have seen from the discussion around the fair work agency and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority that the issue is that rights are not enforced. The good part of this Bill is that it sets up a fair work agency that will look at enforcement.

Not supporting the new Clause does not mean not recognising the objective that it puts forward. The argument is that this point should and could be dealt with more effectively through other legislative avenues, such as the modern slavery legislation brought in by the previous Government, which they then completely gutted. Looking at how the labour exploitation components of that legislation could be strengthened would deal more effectively with the issues that the hon. Member is raising via his new clause.

His Majesty’s loyal Opposition cannot support new Clause 51. The horrible practices outlined by the hon. Member for Dundee Central need to be tackled, but the Bill will already do that. I actually find myself in agreement with parts of what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said. There are other routes within immigration law where such things can and should be tackled. No matter how much we disagree with parts of the Bill, if we take the view that the law must apply equally to everybody whether or not they are a British citizen, it is unnecessarily to carve out a particular section of people through new clause 51, when there is other legislation to deal with the abuses that no one on the Committee or in the House wants to see.

Let me start by reaffirming our strong view that every worker has the full right to protection under the Laws of this country. That includes migrant workers, as is clear from our plan to make work pay, which recognises that particularly vulnerable sectors are open to abuse from unscrupulous employers. The immigration framework is an important part of ensuring that those who come to this country under visas and sponsorship are protected and that modern slavery abuse is tackled.

Sponsorship is a privilege that comes with certain responsibilities for sponsors to ensure that they adhere to employment rights in the United Kingdom. They must have full responsibility for the work that workers are conducting, and in all cases they must ensure that those they sponsor are paid appropriately and that they act in compliance with relevant legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh says, a lot of work is ongoing in this area, particularly from the Home Office, which recently announced that it would ban from future sponsorship any business found guilty of serious employment law breaches, including failing to pay the national minimum wage.

We are committed to strengthening the enforcement of rights more broadly through the fair work agency. The Committee has heard plenty of evidence that the current system of enforcement is fragmented. Unfortunately, as we know, that often means that not everyone gets the protection that they should have. One of the essential functions of the new fair work agency will be to produce a strategy setting out its assessment of the scale and nature of non-compliance with labour market rules. This is to ensure that the risks of abuse across all sectors and groups of workers are properly understood and captured. In producing the strategy, the fair work agency will need to consult with an advisory board made up of trade unions, business and independent experts. That will ensure that we get a broad view of the gaps and risks in the labour market.

The hon. Member for Dundee Central suggests that this area is a blind spot for the Government. I can assure him that it is not. I have had conversations with the Director of Labour Market Enforcement about the issue, and plenty of work is under way at the Home Office. The hon. Member need only consider the Low Pay Commission’s report to see that the issue is clearly on our radar. An additional report would not add anything to the work that is already under way. I therefore ask him to withdraw his new Clause.

I appreciate the comments that have been made in this short debate. Just to be clear, the new Clause is about issues that are not currently protected under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and are often under-reported. I welcome the Minister’s comments about the fair work agency and the recent Low Pay Commission report, but I must ask about the timeframe. My suggestion—I will try to work with him on this—is that the timeframe be six months beyond the passing of the Bill, so that we can get decisions made. Perhaps the Secretary of State could let us know what kind of timeframe we are talking about, to give us peace of mind that action will be taken for those who are most vulnerable and have come here from overseas. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.