Nick Timothy and JoJo Penn: We need to end Deliveroo visas. We can and here’s how

Baroness Penn is a Conservative Peer in the House of Lords and a former Treasury Minister.

Nick Timothy is the Conservative MP for West Suffolk.

The Employment Rights Bill goes to the Lords today despite being criticised by businesses for the massive damage it will do. At the same time, the Bill fails to address genuine labour abuses and immigration crime.

That is why we have put forward an amendment to stop Deliveroo visas – once and for all.

Big taxi and delivery companies in the gig economy have been indirectly employing immigrants with no legal right to work here under “substitution clauses”. These clauses have been traditionally used to give flexibility to businesses, such as plumbers. But in the gig economy, they are being used to allow rampant criminality.

Our amendment would force big firms to take responsibility for the people working for them just like any other employer normally does. This would be done by establishing a legal responsibility for these companies to keep a comprehensive register of all dependent contractors on their books.

The minister offered some warm words in the debate when the amendment was first proposed in the House of Commons, and we hope the Government chooses to listen and adopt the proposal in the House of Lords. The Government says it is consulting on changing the definition of employment status to help identify people who are genuinely self-employed, but this would not solve the particular problem with substitution clauses.

Under the current law, employers can turn a blind eye towards the abuse of substitution clauses with illegal migrants doing work below minimum wage and without employment protections. There is no transparency, no accountability, and employers ask the authorities to simply trust that they are doing their due diligence. But the evidence overwhelmingly shows this is not the case and demands a strong response from government.

This is not a small portion of the workforce or a niche sector. The UK has 4.7 million gig economy workers, including 120,000 official riders, and many more non-official riders, at Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Journalists have been investigating abuse and fraud in the gig economy for years. Other big companies, such as Amazon and Just Eat have been caught up in accusations of related labour market abuses.

With its substitution clauses, Amazon tells couriers that it is their “responsibility to pay your substitute…at any rate you agree with them”, and “you must ensure that any substitute…has the right to work in the UK”. These massive companies are offloading responsibility for legal compliance onto their workers, especially criminal and right-to-work checks. Deliveroo and the rest have no interest in ending a status quo that enables illegal migrants to undercut wages.

Last month, Deliveroo sacked more than 100 riders who shared their accounts with illegal migrants. But that is a drop in the ocean. The Home Office found that two in five delivery riders stopped during random checks in April 2023 were working illegally. That same month, 60 riders at Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat were arrested in London for immigration offences, including working illegally and holding false documentation.

Undocumented migrants are renting rider accounts for between £70 and £100 per week. In some instances, profiles have been bought for fees as high as £5,000. The i Paper found that over 100,000 people were in Facebook groups in which identities have been traded over the past three years. One group gained around 28,000 members in less than 18 months. Insurance companies have also reported unauthorised riders involved in motor and personal injury cases.

People working legally have reported problems to the police and the Home Office, but this has helped to fuel tensions as riders compete for orders. It sometimes even leads to violent clashes between those working legally and those working illegally in places such as Brighton and London, including physical beatings and damage to some riders’ bikes. It is shameful that riders who are working legally and following the rules are being intimidated for reporting on illegal working. They should not be punished for helping to tackle a problem that Parliament itself has failed to resolve.

A spokesman for the App Drivers & Couriers Union has said “this loophole…allows some bad people to come through. They are not vetted so they could do anything.” Undocumented workers have been found to commit sexual harassment and violence against women, but they cannot be tracked by the authorities because they have been using other riders’ accounts.

In May last year, a delivery driver forced his way into a young woman’s home where he sexually assaulted her. Last June, ITV reported that a woman was sexually assaulted by a Deliveroo rider who lured her out of her home by claiming to be lost. ITV found further examples of inappropriate texting, verbal abuse, indecent exposure and even rape involving Uber Eats and Deliveroo drivers.

A freedom of information request discovered that, between 2020 and 2023, 12 cases of sexual harassment in the West Midlands and seven cases of indecent exposure in Devon and Cornwall involved delivery riders. Sadly, most of the forces did not record this data, so they were unable to give the researchers a national picture.

Substitution clauses enable a culture of maximising profit at the expense of workers and without any regard for the law or the wider community. They have created an illegal workforce without access to the rights that should underpin the labour market. Amazon, Uber, Deliveroo and the rest should have to do their due diligence and, just like everyone else, ensure that all their riders are who they say they are and have the right to work in this country.

Introducing such a change would reduce abuse, protect our communities, deliver a fairer labour market, and cut immigration.