The Association of Labour Providers (ALP) has urged government to rethink its last-minute decision to preserve the Worker Registration Scheme, under which workers from eight EU members have to pay a £90 fee when they start work in the UK.
 
In a letter to the Home Secretary, the chairman of the ALP, Mark Boleat, said: “This last minute decision, without proper consultation with affected parties, will cause practical difficulties for businesses, which have been entitled to assume that the scheme ends automatically on 30 April.
 
“The government believes that it can extend the scheme because there is ‘serious disturbance’ in the labour market.  However, the scheme itself is not the cause of serious disturbance.  The Migration Advisory Committee in its report accepted this: ‘the evidence reviewed does not indicate that any substantial negative labour market impacts are likely to result from removing the WRS.’  

“These are very flimsy grounds for maintaining a scheme that costs low-paid workers £90 just to register and cost employers millions of pounds a year to administer. All that the scheme does is to encourage some workers to operate in the flourishing informal economy.”

Boleat added that ALP had also protested about the continual failure of the Home Office to consult on the scheme and has requested an urgent meeting with the Home Secretary to discuss these issues. It will also be urging MPs to reject the statutory instrument that seeks to extend the scheme and asking the European Commission to investigate the legality of the decision.