Call to scrap the Worker Registration Scheme

On May 20th, as the latest figures for the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) were published, an alliance of employers, unions and migrant groups called for the Scheme to be scrapped. This follows a call by Labour MP Stephen Pound the previous week, ahead of a Westminster Hall debate.

From TUC press release:

The TUC, the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Federation of Poles in Great Britain have called upon Home Secretary Jacqui Smith MP to end the Scheme.

The WRS was introduced in May 2004 to prevent benefit tourism and to measure the number of workers migrating from the new European Union member states of Eastern Europe.

But the alliance of employers, unions and others claim the Scheme has outlived its usefulness and now produces inadequate statistics, at great cost to migrant workers and inconvenience to both them and their employers. The TUC-backed Commission on Vulnerable Employment, which reported earlier this month, has already called for its abolition.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘The Worker Registration Scheme is no longer necessary, effective or fair. It costs £90 to register – which is two days wages for someone on the minimum wage – and National Insurance numbers would provide much better information about where migrants are working.’

ALP chairman Mark Boleat said: ‘The Workers Registration Scheme has outlived the very limited usefulness it has ever had. Low paid workers should not pay £90 each for the Government to produce dubious statistics when it already has better information from other sources. The Scheme should be scrapped immediately.’

Federation of Poles in Great Britain chair Jan Mokrzycki said: ‘I believe that this tax is an unfair burden, and transgresses EU treaty obligations on the free movement of labour. It is certainly an additional tax on some of the poorest and most exploited people in the British workplace, and imposed at the time they can least afford to pay. Furthermore its application is so uneven that it actually distorts the true statistics on the amount of new EU citizens in this country and makes proper allocation of resources through local authorities that much more difficult.’

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The worker registration scheme: I am seeking to advance its abolition – indeed, if it were up to me, I would take it out into the street and kick it to death now.”

Ahead of a Westminster Hall debate on the subject, Stephen Pound said the scheme was an “absolute nonsense” that had brought only a “huge range of problems”.

The scheme was introduced in 2004 when 10 new nations, mostly from the former Soviet bloc, joined the EU.

It requires all those from the new member states, mostly Poles, wishing to work in the UK to first register and pay a fee of £90 until next year.

However in an interview with ePolitix.com, the Ealing North MP slammed the policy as a “waste of time” and “£90 for something that they were going to get free from next year anyway”.

“It gives a totally false and skewed impression of the number of Poles working in this country,” Pound said.

“Firstly an enormous number of Polish workers are self-employed, so they don’t register. Secondly, they take no account of people de-registering or leaving the country.

“If you have corrupted data, you get corrupt conclusions,” he added.

“We all know the sensitivity of immigration as an issue in this country. If you have bonkers data to start with, people can draw bonkers conclusions.”

He said he would be encouraging ministers in the debate that the scheme should be “abolished immediately now” as it “costs the government more to administer than they collect” and “causes an extraordinary amount of resentment in the Polish community”.

“I think the government should simply say, we are going to abolish it next year anyway, lets bring it forward, make life a bit simpler and easier [and] recognise the incredible contribution that workers from the EU accession states have made,” he argued.

“These are decent, hard-working Polish people having to fork out and it gives the government no discernible advantage whatsoever.”

source: epolitix.com and TUC.org.uk

read the Westminster Hall Debate here>>>