By Adis Sehic - 28 June 2024
The UK is gearing up for what could be a pivotal election in British history, with immigration policy and workers’ rights increasingly becoming key policy battlegrounds. As part of our WoRC Election Watch, we’ve produced this Manifesto Analysis to help you understand what the different political parties in the UK are saying about migrants and vulnerable workers’ rights. Here, we’ll give you a non-exhaustive breakdown of the key policy commitments made by each party along with our analysis.
Overall, it is positive to see that the parties have looked to make a direct pitch to workers. Most of the parties have attempted to do this by proposing to increase the baseline level of rights that individuals have when they first enter a workplace, taking into account recent trends such as a rise in gig economy work and the benefits that flexible working can bring. Others have attempted to make the case for greater retention of earnings and ensuring that workers see more of what they earn on a monthly basis.
Both of these approaches benefit the general population but also migrant workers, whose immigration status often interacts negatively with their employment conditions. It is also positive to see that numerous parties have acknowledged the exploitation of migrant workers as a specific, growing issue to be addressed.
On immigration policy specifically, there has been a real contrast between the parties. Some have opted to tighten the work migration system further, including greater pre-visa checks and application costs for migrant workers. Others have called for much greater liberalisation of the UK’s immigration system, including an end to Hostile Environment policies and scrapping visa conditions that prevent migrant workers from accessing state benefits. In all of this, it is notable that there was little discussion of our post-Brexit migration system structured around sponsorship, which we continue to demonstrate represents a bad deal for migrant workers. Though reform to immigration is highly likely, it remains to be seen whether any party will look to change this defining feature in particular.
By contrast, it is worrying that none of the manifestos really go far enough in acknowledging the intersectional nature of the barriers to justice that migrant and disadvantaged workers face. This is in part reflected by an over-reliance on single policy measures such as a Single Enforcement Body, or a repetition of measures that are already technically in place, like clamping down on bad employers, neither of which alone are enough to tackle what workers are experiencing.
This lack of detail also makes it challenging to properly scrutinise the plans that the different parties have set out. The ideas that have been included can be aptly summarised as reflecting a hotchpotch selection of policies, rather than a real strategy to tackle the various underlying drivers of worker exploitation.
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The Conservatives’ manifesto
Work Migration
With immigration a key focus since the turn of the new year, the Conservatives have announced further measures relating to legal and work migration in their manifesto document.
Migrants would be required to undergo a health check in advance of travelling to the UK and, if they are “deemed to be a burden on the NHS”, they would be required to buy private health insurance or have their Immigration Health Surcharge fee increased.
All visa fees would increase (though it is not certain by how much) and students’ discount to the Immigration Health Surcharge would be removed. A flagship cap on migration would also be introduced, allowing Parliament to vote on an annual cap of work and family visas, with the cap figure falling every year of the next parliament.
Importantly, the salary threshold and minimum income requirements for Skilled Worker visas and Family visas would rise with inflation automatically under a new government.
It is worth placing some of these announcements in context. As the manifesto document already notes, salary thresholds and minimum income requirements have already risen dramatically to £38,700 as a result of the government’s recent announcements. Similarly, migrants from certain countries are already subjected to medical screening as part of their visa application. For example, there are rules that stipulate that migrants from certain countries need to undergo a tuberculosis screening. If the results of the screening are not clear, they may also be required to provide a sputum sample for further analysis. It is not yet clear which migrants will be considered to be a ‘burden’ on the NHS, though this is likely to factor in pre-existing medical conditions.
A generic migrant cap has already been proposed in recent years, including by the recent Home Secretary, but has not been implemented. The Migration Advisory Committee has previously recommended that a migration cap on skilled workers should be dropped. In its 2018 report, the MAC said “[The cap] creates uncertainty among employers and it makes little sense for a migrant to be perceived as of value one day and not the next which is what inevitably happens when the cap binds.” A previous cap on skilled workers in 2018 set at an annual quota of 20,700, but this only led to a rush to recruit workers before monthly limits were exceeded.
Employment rights
The manifesto is sparse on any concrete announcements relating to workers’ employment rights. There is a commitment to maintaining the National Living Wage in each year of the next Parliament at two-thirds of median earnings, and a desire to retain the UK’s “dynamic labour market” to incentivise business investment.
In relation to social care, the Conservatives are committed to giving local authorities a multi-year funding settlement to support social care, while they are also committed to retaining a high-quality workforce, though there is little detail on what this would actually involve.
Beyond this, the pitch to workers is tax cuts, including National Insurance cuts for employed and self-employed workers. The Conservatives would not increase the rate of income tax or VAT, though as some commentators have noted, the effects of fiscal drag will mean that some workers will be paying more in income tax than they did a few years ago before the cost of living and inflation crisis.
Finally, unlike the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, there is no commitment to creating a Single Enforcement Body. This is perhaps unsurprising, as the idea was dropped as a policy proposal in the last Parliament, with the government instead opting to make the bodies already in place work effectively. This has arguably not happened, with funding for the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority set to fall and organisational/strategic restructures being a common theme in recent years.
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The Labour Party manifesto
Work migration
On immigration, much of the manifesto document that Labour has produced aligns with announcements made in the first few weeks of the election campaign. For example, there is a general commitment to reducing net migration, linking immigration and skills policy and reforming the points-based immigration system to do this.
On exploitation, Labour have said that they will not tolerate abuse of the visa system by employers and that those who do will be barred from hiring workers from abroad. A big part of Labour’s work migration plans is to strengthen the Migration Advisory Committee and establish a framework for joint working with skills bodies across the UK, the Industrial Strategy Council and the Department for Work and Pensions. Labour’s plans on work migration are intended to be supplemented by workforce plans for specific sectors such as social care and construction.
For migrant workers, there will be some comfort that Labour is clear that they will not stand for breaches of employment law by sponsors. However, as we have previously remarked, much of the exploitative practice that our frontline advisors have seen is already out of step with key employment legislation and guidance produced by departments like the Home Office and the Department for Health and Social Care. This means that punishments should already be applied where employers are breaking the rules.
To be truly effective, this position needs to be backed up by enforcement of those rules and a more preventative approach to tackling worker exploitation. This needs to be carefully considered in the context of workers’ immigration status and the extent to which workers can, and often are, negatively affected by action taken against their employers.
It also remains to be seen how Labour would reform the points-based immigration system. We’ve previously argued that the system of sponsorship specifically is in need of reform because of the precarious relationship of dependency that is created between workers and employers. Given that Labour has recently ruled out reversing a ban on migrant care workers bringing dependants to the UK, it is reasonable to suggest that more wide-scale reform of the immigration system that is directly aimed at improving conditions for workers will not be immediately forthcoming, or at the very least will be incremental in nature.
Employment rights
On the wider topic of employment rights and labour standards, Labour has promised to implement the policies set out in its Plan to Make Work Pay document released earlier in the general election campaign, with legislation being introduced in the first 100 days of a new parliament.
Consulting fully with businesses, workers and civil society, the party says it would:
As we identified in our evidence to the Director of Labour Market Enforcement last year, false self-employment is a big issue for migrant workers specifically. Our team has seen that it is common for individuals to be given verbal contracts, which in reality allow their employer to give them work outside of the initial scope of the agreed role or to change the terms of the job entirely as part of contract substitution.
This means workers are unaware of their rights in key areas such as holiday entitlement and holiday pay, working hours and sick pay. Many of our clients also work in the gig economy and will be affected by the bid to increase security. A ban on exploitative zero hour contracts suggests that this won’t be a blanket prohibition, with carve-outs for specific types of work.
The manifesto does include a commitment to create a Single Enforcement Body to ensure that employment rights are upheld. The Plan to Make Work Pay alludes to a new body being given proper powers to ensure that a new living wage is enforced, including penalties being given out for non-compliance. The precise scope of these powers is uncertain, but Labour wants the new body to undertake proactive enforcement work and bring civil proceedings upholding employment rights.
Interestingly, the new body would also work specifically on ensuring that National Minimum Wage regulations on travel time in sectors with multiple working sites is enforced. For example, we’ve seen how some care workers are paid only for contact time with clients, meaning hours spent driving between homes goes unpaid, and daily pay ends up being below minimum wage levels. At a governance level, the new body would have trade union and TUC representation too. This is a step change from our current system where for example the GLAA used to have trade union representation at a board level but no longer do.
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The Liberal Democrats
Work migration
The party has announced a range of measures in respect of work migration. The Liberal Democrats want a more “flexible merit-based system for work visas”, with the Home Office working closely with individual sectors to address needs as part of a long-term workforce strategy.
The party would end the Hostile Environment policies and invest instead in officers, training and technology to tackle smuggling, trafficking and modern slavery. The Lib Dems would also reverse the ban on care workers bringing dependant family members to the UK and exempt NHS and care staff from the Immigration Skills Charge.
We welcome the announcement to reverse the dependant ban - as we have previously evidenced, the inability to bring dependant family members to the UK is not just an emotional burden, it is a financial one, too. Half of adult dependants on the Health and Care Worker visa are estimated to be in work. Without this financial lifeline in a notoriously low-paid sector, migrant workers are more likely to acquiesce to exploitative conditions at work.
EU citizens will be pleased at the announcement that all Pre-Settled Status holders would be automatically granted Settled Status and that they would be provided with physical proof of their right to stay in the UK. The case for these policy changes has already been made on countless occasions by organisations including the3million, who have highlighted the issues concerning a potential cliff-edge for Pre-Settled Status holders that do not upgrade their status and the ability of vulnerable EU citizens to actually prove their immigration status when renting or working.
As our Head of Immigration Luke Piper highlights, migrants’ data is already stored and used by multiple government departments. Alongside the need for a physical backstop to prevent people from not being able to meaningfully demonstrate their immigration status, the Home Office needs to ensure that its transition to digitisation is fair, accessible and works in a uniform way. Otherwise, there is still a risk that we operate in a two-tier system, where rights are practically accessible for some but not for all.
The Liberal Democrats would like to see more accountability in the immigration system too. They would strengthen the powers of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), a far cry from the last government which removed the last ICIBI, David Neal, from post after he told the media that his reports had been withheld from publication.
They would also implement the Windrush Lessons Learned Review recommendations in full, allowing for greater external scrutiny of the Home Office. This stands in stark comparison to the last government which was taken to court for not fully implementing all of the recommendations in the Windrush review, including creating the office of a Migrant Commissioner.
Finally, the party would also introduce a firewall to prevent public agencies from sharing personal information with the Home Office for the purposes of immigration enforcement. This would mean that all migrant workers, regardless of immigration status, can safely report labour exploitation without the risk of immigration enforcement.
Given our, and other organisations in the Labour Exploitation Advisory Group ongoing campaigning for this policy, it is excellent to see this codified in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto. This would have a big impact on the visibility of migrant exploitation, and allow for greater options for frontline advisers to help clients resolve situations at work.
Employment rights
Much of the party’s commitments on employment rights have focused on making the UK ready for a new age of gig economy work. This includes:
Given the procedural and evidential barriers that migrants often face in the Employment Tribunal process, a shift in the burden of proof from individual to employer is a significant announcement that would have wide-reaching implications for the prospects of success in many client cases. Many gig economy workers, for example, lack the time, resources and documentary evidence to prove their claimed employment status - reversing the burden of proof will ensure that a greater portion of workers have a higher ‘floor’ of rights.
Though other announcements relating to driving rights for gig economy workers are also welcome, there is a need to be careful when introducing any new employment status. Though the intention is to better delineate between different working contexts and the acquisition of employment rights, there is a possibility that this leads to more confusion than clarity, including further litigation. Rather than equalising rights for comparable workers, this may muddy the waters further.
Away from the gig economy, the Liberal Democrats have promised to expand parental leave and pay, while also expanding the Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) system to low earners and ensuring that payments are available from the first day of missing work rather than the 4th. We’ve written previously about how expanding SSP would be beneficial for many workers, particularly women, who have previously been shown to be twice as likely than men to miss out on SSP due to the current earning limit of £123.
Similarly, while parental leave expansion is also welcomed, there are no specific announcements relating to access for lower-paid workers. Low-paid pregnant women can miss out on statutory maternity pay, either in part or in full, because of pregnancy-related illnesses in the qualifying period before birth which we have argued is both unfair and discriminatory.
The party would also introduce a general duty of care for the environment and human rights in business operations and supply chains. This is important because labour rights are a key part of the business and human rights context that businesses of all sizes are meant to operate in compliance with, as set down in the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
While this announcement goes further than the current reporting requirements of Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, it is unclear whether it would also mandate companies to carry out environmental and human rights due diligence within their value chains, to identify, prevent and remediate negative impacts related to their business operations.
On labour market enforcement, the party has announced that it would establish a powerful new Worker Protection Enforcement Authority to protect people in precarious work, with proactive intelligence-led enforcement of labour market standards and a firewall with immigration enforcement. This new body would unify responsibilities currently spread across different agencies, including enforcing the minimum wage, tackling modern slavery and protecting agency workers.
It remains to be seen whether the new Authority would unify the work of all of the enforcement agencies currently operating in the UK’s fragmented labour market enforcement landscape. The announcement seems to suggest that only the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, HMRC NMW Enforcement Team and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate would be combined, but it is not clear. Similarly, though the new Authority is anticipated to be ‘powerful, it is not clear whether the Authority would be granted any new powers or be resourced at a minimum level to allow for this. Much of this, it seems, will be decided at a later date.
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The Green Party
Migration
The Green Party has announced an ambitious programme of immigration reform. This would include:
These announcements would have big implications for all migrants and the entire structure of our immigration system, but there are currently few details about how all of these changes would be operationalised. For example, ending the Hostile Environment could entail rowing back on the Right to Rent and Right to Work checks that have been in place since 2016, it may also necessitate evaluating British citizenship laws which have been tightened over successive governments. There is a question over communities impacted by the Windrush Scandal, too, and how they would be impacted by an end to Hostile Environment policies, such as quicker and more generous compensation delivered under the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
This is not the first time that effectively abolishing the Home Office as we know it has been suggested, though it’s unclear how the culture of a new department would shift significantly away from decades of existing practice. That being said, it is arguable that a new department which focuses more on competent administration of our borders and immigration system rather than criminalising different cohorts of arriving migrants, including workers, would not only be more efficient but fairer.
For migrant workers, an end to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy would be a welcome announcement. The majority of workers arriving in the UK in recent years have been carers and senior care workers, lending their hand to a notoriously underpaid sector, with high attrition rates and where labour standards are underwhelming. Without dependants to financially support main applicants in the UK, migrant carers are in a financially precarious position and less likely to report malpractice in the workplace.
Being able to access supplementary benefits would prevent the current situation where migrants have to fall into severe debt or destitution before they have a reasonable chance of successfully applying to the Home Office to have the NRPF condition lifted. For exploited workers, we argue that it cannot be right that workers do not, by default, have state support available where they have been exploited by a sponsor that was granted a sponsor licence by the Home Office, itself a department of the state.
It is worth pointing out that employment agencies in the UK are already prohibited from charging individuals for providing work-finding services, nor are they allowed to induce individuals into purchasing additional services such as training or CV writing. The legality of agency fees overseas depends on the jurisdiction in question, but the UK has limited scope to influence this directly. Therefore it is not clear to what extent this announcement is ‘new’ or would substantially improve the situation of migrants who have been scammed into paying agency fees/ commission.
Similarly, it remains to be seen what is meant by giving workers freedom to change employers in the UK and what impact this would have. Care workers on the Health and Care Worker visa are already permitted to change employers to a different care provider while in the UK, but the problem is that the process for doing so is difficult, time-consuming and usually involves paying an additional layer of application fees. If workers have had their sponsorship curtailed, they generally have a maximum of 60 days in which to find another job with a registered sponsor, return to their country of origin or become undocumented.
If this announcement means that workers would be able to switch into different sectors or that workers would have more time to change employers once their existing sponsorship is curtailed, this flexibility could aid workers who have experienced workplace exploitation. However, this is not clear and further details on this policy change would be welcome.
Employment rights
The Greens have also made some bold announcements relating to employment rights and pay. This includes:
An obligation for employers to recognise trade unions would force employers to negotiate with bargaining units on employment conditions like pay and holidays. With that being said, many migrant workers including those seen by our frontline service provision team are generally not unionised - it remains to be seen whether this would boost membership in parallel.
An increase in the minimum wage would be a welcome change for our clients who, on average in the last year, were either earning just above the UK Living Wage of £23,400 per annum (men) or significantly below it (women). In line with the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, the Greens have committed to safe sick pay - this means scrapping the three-day waiting period before SSP is paid, scrapping the lower income threshold of £123 and increasing the rate of SSP significantly.
Equalising employment rights for all workers would significantly alter the balance of power between workers and employers in the UK, not least for migrant workers on shorter-term placements in the UK who are excluded from unfair dismissal rights because of the two-year qualifying period.
Though it is not clear whether carers’ pay would increase beyond the floor of £15 an hour that is proposed, the commitment to driving up pay in the sector alongside a career structure will be welcome news to migrant workers currently languishing in their career prospects.
There is no explicit mention of a Single Enforcement Body, but the commitment to increase funding for the enforcement of workers’ rights and the introduction of equal pay audits would be a dramatic shift from the UK’s current context. This context sees labour market enforcement agencies underfunded and employers frequently get away with non-compliance due to a lack of investigative capacity, alongside a culture of self-correction that means financial penalties are frequently not applied.
In regards to the commitment to abolishing tribunal fees, while employment tribunal fees are not currently in place, this is in the context of the most recent government’s plans to reintroduce fees at £55 to potential claimants. In March, we submitted evidence to the Ministry of Justice on why the reintroduction of Employment Tribunal fees would exclude the poorest from accessing justice, and therefore welcome the Green’s commitment to keeping employment justice free for all.
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Plaid Cymru
Migration
Plaid Cymru would oppose the recent increases to the salary and income thresholds for work and family visas. They would retain the Graduate visa, in line with the recommendations of the Migration Advisory Committee. There is a commitment to repeal punitive legislation part of the hostile environment, though only the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 are cited - it is unclear whether it would go further than this. Finally on immigration, there is a commitment to end the NRPF condition and restrictions on employment while awaiting decisions.
Reversing the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 would go some way to resetting how the National Referral Mechanism operates in practice for migrant workers, but there are no details on how the party would deal with the increased demand facing non-statutory first responders and how to professionalise the role that they play through training and increased resourcing. As we have outlined above, removing NRPF would be a welcome financial boost to migrant workers.
Employment rights
On employment law matters, Plaid Cymru would like to see this devolved to the Welsh government. In general, the party would repeal anti-strike legislation, provide paid bereavement and miscarriage leave as day one rights, outlaw fire and rehire, abolish zero-hours contracts and establish the right to disconnect. This is similar to the announcements that, in particular, Labour and the Green Party have made in their manifestos. Though it is unlikely that Westminster will devolve employment rights policy to Wales, it is nonetheless positive to see a commitment to boost employment rights across the board and ensure that workers’ rights are fit for purpose.
Plaid Cymru have also come out strongly on the issue of human rights in supply chains. Their manifesto suggests that the party would introduce a Business, Human Rights and Environment Bill that would mandate human rights and environmental due diligence in the supply chains of private companies. Enforcement would be modelled on the ‘duty to prevent’, as seen in the Bribery Act 2010.
This proposed legislation looks to be very similar in tone and content to the Commercial Organisations and Public Authorities Duty (Human Rights and Environment) Bill, a private member’s bill that was tabled in the last Parliament by Baroness Young of Hornsey. It remains to be seen whether some of the other major parties would follow suit in this area, given that mandatory due diligence legislation has recently been passed in the EU and is likely to be considered by a host of other nations. Mandatory supply chain due diligence is one of the ways that the UK could ensure its modern slavery agenda is in line with the times, rather than a relic of the past.
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Reform UK’s manifesto
Work migration
It is no secret that immigration has been central to Reform’s general election messaging thus far, and sure enough, it is the first topic covered in their manifesto. The party would institute a freeze on non-essential immigration, excluding only a minority of roles mainly related to healthcare. It would also impose a requirement of five years’ residency and employment to claim any benefits in the UK.
Similarly, employers’ national insurance rate would be raised to 20% for those businesses employing foreign workers - essential foreign health and care workers would be exempt as well as businesses employing five staff or under.
What constitutes “essential” or “non-essential” immigration has a subjective answer, and many sectors would argue that they require migrant workers in order to operate properly. For example, would migrant seasonal workers, on whom the UK almost exclusively relies upon for horticultural picking work, be excluded from these proposals?
Presumably, announcements relating to benefits access would mean migrants generally would no longer be able to apply to vary the conditions of their leave to allow access to state benefits. This is problematic because it would strip away a crucial lifeline for individuals who fall into destitution and have other compelling circumstances that mean benefits access is necessary.
An increased National Insurance rate would also have to be seen in the context that employers sponsoring migrant workers already pay the Immigration Skills Charge and frequently have to spend time and resources on managing their sponsor licence in keeping with Home Office rules.
As Reform wants a freeze on non-essential immigration, the increased National Insurance rate would presumably apply retrospectively to those employers who already have migrant workers on their books. This could be problematic as some sponsors may argue that they would not have offered sponsorship, in some cases for as long as five years, had they known they would be subject to increased taxation.
Employment rights
Rather than focusing on bolstering employment law, Reform has blamed employment laws and protections for stifling business growth. Though the document is thin on specifics, the party suggests that employment laws are part of a cohort of wider legislation “that hold back British business and damage productivity”. To this end, Reform has noted that it must be easier to hire and fire so that businesses are allowed to grow. In addition, employment law is set to be targeted as part of Reform’s bid to rescind over 6,700 retained EU laws that are still part of the UK’s legislative books.
Though the previous Conservative government initially committed to scrapping many EU laws under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, it came under intense pressure from businesses, unions and civil society to drop the plans to ditch thousands of EU laws. Instead, the government produced a list of around 600 laws to be repealed at the end of 2023, but this did not include any major employment law changes.
EU-derived employment law covers a wide range of areas, including relating to permitted working time, discrimination rights and the rights of agency workers. It is hard to see how a plan to revive proposals to drop these laws en-masse won’t attract a similar level of opposition. Similarly, it is not clear that long-term unemployed workers, who Reform want to get back into work, would be incentivised to enter employment in a context where employment rights are being stripped back, notwithstanding their proposals for lower taxation and a more punitive benefits regime.
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Scottish National Party’s manifesto
Work migration
Similar to Plaid Cymru’s stance, the SNP would like to see immigration policy devolved so that Scotland is able to design its own bespoke migration system away from the rest of the UK. The party says that this would allow Scotland to address specific demographic and economic needs. The introduction of a ‘rural visa pilot scheme’ is one of the key ways it would seek to do this.
First proposed by the Scottish government in 2022, the rural visa pilot scheme would look to meet the needs of specific sectors and communities across Scotland. This includes particularly rural communities like in Shetland where an ageing demographic and a shortage of key skills means that there is a real risk of economic stagnation in the medium to long term.
There is international precedent for the sort of pilot visa scheme the SNP has proposed. In Canada, for example, the Canadian Atlantic Immigration Program allows skilled foreign workers to live, work and permanently settle in one of the country’s four Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland and Labrador.
More broadly, the SNP would also review the immigration rules and expand shortage occupation lists so businesses have more generous access to overseas labour than is currently possible.
Employment rights
The party has made some similar proposals on workers’ rights to that of the other major political parties. This includes:
Though employment law is currently a reserved matter for the UK government, Scotland has made some important strides towards closing the gender pay gap already. For example, in November, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that the gender pay gap in Scotland had closed to 1.7%, the lowest figure since records began, while in the UK more generally the gap actually increased to 7.7%.
Ending age disparities in the rates of national minimum wage would also benefit many young workers in particular who are paid substantially lower than their older colleagues. For example, the National Living Wage rates of those young people in work aged under 18 or in roles at apprentice level are currently set at £6.40, meaning they can earn around £5 less per hour than someone aged 21 and over.
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