Fines for Employing Illegal Workers Not Being Paid

Apparently more than four out of every 10 fines that are imposed on companies for hiring illegal workers are still not paid. Out of the 3,164 illegal labor penalties handed out to companies by the UK Border Agency over the past 18 months, many of them have yet to even be collected - mostly from restaurants. This leaves some experts to ask what kind of message this is sending to companies.

Almost £6.5 million in fines are still believed to be outstanding right now. The average fine imposed on the average guilty employer was only £5,000, which is half of the maximum penalty. A Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, has now called on the government to tighten up their fine collection procedures. This would ensure that firms could not just bypass rules.

Huhne continued to say that the government has been cracking down on identifying employers who are benefiting from hiring illegal workers. However, they are not cracking down on collecting the fees, so what is the point? The UK needs to clamp down on these rogue employers, and the only way to do this is to make sure that they have to pay the fees that are given to them in light of what they have done.

A spokesman for the Home Office, said that they are determined to crack down on illegal workers and those who employ them. The civil penalty system is one of the ways that they are going about doing this. The civil penalty system was introduced back in February of 2008. It forces employers to pay a sliding scale of penalties based on how diligently they researched their employees' backgrounds.