Review Operation Tacit in Leicester textiles sector, UK LPC recommends

27 Jul '22

2 min read

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The UK Low Pay Commission (LPC) recently recommended reviewing Operation Tacit (investigation into hundreds of factories) by the Director of Labour Market Enforcement (DLME) by engaging with a wide variety of relevant stakeholders. In a July report on the Leicester textiles sector, it urged DLME to take a view on whether there is a case for further regulation of the textiles sector.

It recommended that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) should address previous LPC recommendations made in 2018 to improve and promote third-party complaint protocols.

There should be a specific policy aim to increase complaint volumes. Retailers, auditors and non-governmental organisations LPC members spoke to remained unhappy about the responsiveness of enforcement bodies and thought intelligence they supplied had been ignored, it said.

Enforcement bodies, on the other hand, felt low levels of intelligence had been shared. These are irreconcilable accounts and therefore, enforcement bodies need to bridge this gap by making clearer the standard of information they require to act, the LPC report noted.

The problem of insecure work and uncertainty over hours and schedules was central to the difficulties faced by the workers LPC spoke to. Unpredictable hours and incomes meant workers were less likely to exercise their rights and more likely to find themselves trapped with exploitative employers.

Leicester is the United Kingdom’s largest hub for textile manufacturing and has long been characterised by the large number of manufacturers.

Rigorous auditing and restrictions on complicated chains of subcontracting have narrowed the space for non-compliance, but this consolidation has not only created opportunities for better jobs but also brought risks of a narrower manufacturing and employment base, the report noted.

While the exact impact of all this change on compliance is impossible to know, what’s clear is that the sector has changed substantially, it said.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that had Operation Tacit taken place before the COVID-19 pandemic, it would have identified more breaches. HMRC told LPC that large numbers of businesses closed either before they were due to be visited or part way through an investigation. It’s possible that some of these businesses were non-compliant and closed to avoid detection, the report added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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