The Immigration Bill has received Royal Assent to become the Immigration Act 2016 and will introduce a series of reforms to further crack down on illegal migration. The key employment-related provisions, which will be brought into force by regulations, are as follows:

Under S.1 the Secretary of State must appoint a Director of Labour Market Enforcement who must prepare a labour market enforcement strategy for each financial year which assesses the scale and nature of non-compliance in the labour market, principally in relation to employment agencies, the National Minimum Wage and the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. The strategy must include proposals on how labour market enforcement functions should be exercised.

S.34 creates a new offence of illegal working where a person works at a time when he or she is disqualified from working by reason of his or her immigration status, and the person knows or has reasonable cause to believe that he or she is disqualified from working for that reason. A person convicted of this offence will be subject to imprisonment for up to 51 weeks or a fine, or both and may be subject to a confiscation order of wages as proceeds of crime.

S.35 will extend the existing criminal offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker to a situation where the employer has ‘reasonable cause to believe that the employee is disqualified’ from employment by reason of the employee’s immigration status. The maximum term of imprisonment for conviction of offence on indictment will increase from two years to five years.

S.77 will require a public authority to ensure that each person who works for the public authority in a customer-facing role speaks fluent English.

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