Agencies responsible not working together

I REFER to the letter concerning the report into sweatshops in Leicester and asking for more details to support the claims made in the Labour Behind The Labels report (“Faceless campaigners should name names”, Mailbox, July 4).

The authorities know the problem and have plenty of evidence available to them but fail to make a properly coordinated response.

I worked for over 25 years dealing with this industry in the East and West Midlands. The problems extend to Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton, although there is probably a greater degree of this kind of business in Leicester.

One business I dealt with used an invoice scam to pay more than £250,000 in off-record pay to employees in a 30-month period. The loss overall amounted to £80,000 in tax and national insurance, and VAT of more than £40,000.

In addition a check showed seven employees claiming benefits totalling £315 per week, using the lower incorrect pay figures to support their claims.

This was by no means unusual and was not the biggest fraud found – there were several others larger. Overall, about £750,000 was recovered each year from these businesses by four staff.

One person who supplied false invoices to businesses was found to have passed cheques totalling £2.6 million through an account enabling a number of businesses to pay off record money to the employees in a six-month period.

There has been a widespread failure to deal with this over at least 40 years by all the responsible authorities and government departments.

It seems to be considered too difficult to deal with and the level proof they want before a prosecution is sought is set too high.

They want an admission by the responsible employer as well as documentary proof. You will rarely get anyone holding their hand up to admit this kind of fraud.

The agencies, department and other bodies are reluctant to work jointly and pass information to other parties.

When going into these businesses it was not unusual to find people working entirely off record, mostly someone in the UK illegally, although employers have been required for many years to check passports and other documents before taking someone on and there are penalties if they fail to do so.

The former Immigration Service, now the Borders Agency, often failed to follow up on these failures.

Proper coordination and effective action by HMRC, DWP, Borders Agency, HSE, local authority trading standards and the police could make a real difference.

My experience is that this will not happen.

Perhaps Andrew Bridgen MP can be more successful if he can get the present Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to act and encourage the responsible people to get their act together.

Bob Baker, Leicester