Gangmasters Licensing Act 2004 Introduction of Offences
The provisions of the Act are being brought into force by Commencement Orders, the first of which brought various sections of the Act relating to the establishment of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) into force with effect from 1st December 2004. The GLA started operations on 1st April 2005 and started to invite applications for licences in April 2006. The first offences under the Act come into force on 1st October 2006.
The Act provides for the registration of all gangmasters (including employment businesses) that supply labour for work in the agriculture, shellfish gathering and associated processing and packaging sectors, defined in a broad sense.
On implementation of the relevant sections of the Act (see timetables below) it will become a criminal offence for anyone in the UK to engage in this activity without a licence (maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment on indictment) and it will also be an offence for anyone to use an unlicensed gangmaster unless they can show that they took specified reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the gangmaster had a valid licence (maximum of 51 weeks’ imprisonment in England and Wales/6 months in Scotland or Northern Ireland).
This legislation may therefore affect a number of our clients who act as gangmasters, e.g. employment agencies and employment businesses who supply workers in the relevant sectors and those of our clients who use their services, e.g. Agricultural Wages Board employers and clients involved in processing or packaging agricultural produce, shellfish or fish.
Although the Act was drafted in broad terms, the Government recognised that in certain circumstances the supply of gang labour would not involve a significant risk of exploitation. The Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations 2006 came into force on 6th April 2006 and specify the particular circumstances in which a licence is not required. The Government decided that several mainstream agricultural activities should be excluded. It also decided that the supply of workers to undertake the processing and packaging in catering, wholesale and retail outlets should be excluded. However with regard to the food and drink processing sector, the Government decided that, apart from a couple of technical exclusions determined during the consultation process, there should be no exclusions for labour providers operating in this sector.
Agriculture, horticulture and processing and packaging, including fish:
| • | first applications accepted 6th April 2006; |
| • | first application licence inspection May 2006; |
| • | first licence issued 2nd May 2006; |
| • | GLA Register opened 2nd May 2006; |
| • | labour provider offences introduced 1st October 2006. and |
| • | labour user offences introduced 1st December 2006. |
Shellfish gathering:
| • | first applications accepted 1st October 2006; |
| • | first application licence inspection October 2006; |
| • | first licence issued October 2006; |
| • | Licence holders added to GLA register November 2006; |
| • | Offences introduced 6th April 2007. |