Are you happy with the progress of the GLA’s work to date?

Yes I am happy, as is the rest of the GLA board, which I speak for. We only really started a short time ago, as the first licences were only issued in April 2006, and we have only been in a position to enforce our regulations since October 2006.

In the 18 months since then, we have been doing everything we can to make an impact. When you consider our resources, and the fact that we have to cover the whole of the UK, I feel we are punching above our weight.

You have revoked 56 licences to date and 1,194 labour providers now hold a GLA licence. What does that represent for the GLA?

When I first got involved in this area, at the end of 2004, figures of between 3,000 and 10,000 were being bandied about as the number of gangmasters operating in the UK.

By April 2006, when we began to hand out licences, that had been refined to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. If you take the higher of those figures; some will have given up when the GLA licence came into force, some will have moved out of the sector, some have certainly amalgamated, and there is a small proportion inevitably that either don’t know about us or choose to run the risks. There was a large queue to get applications at one stage, and we do not see that issue now. I’d say we are not too far out.

Whether we are a success or not depends very much on how you measure success. I would say that if we can say that there used to be X amount of exploitation of workers, and now there is X amount fewer cases, then we are being successful. In recruitment, as in all walks of life, there will always be people who chance their arm. Our unequivocal message has been that we will catch up with you, and you could lose your business overnight. I think that has had the desired effect. Often our staff in the field are told where they were yesterday, which shows that the grapevine works well, and people are becoming aware that there is no point taking risks.

Has there been good general acceptance of the direction you are taking from the various involved sectors?

If we take our core business, which is agriculture and horticulture, then the answer is definitely yes. And when you look at the labour providers, we have a strong relationship with the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), the Recruitment Federation and trade unions, the big retailers and a number of trade representative bodies. There is certainly a wide acceptance of what we have set out to achieve. We would like to do more, but as long as we are continuing to improve and doing the best we can, then we are moving in the right direction. We have a lot of people who are not only very good at their job, but also totally committed to playing their part in achieving the GLA’s ultimate objectives.

Have labour providers been receptive, and have they responded to your actions?

The vast majority of labour providers have welcomed the GLA. If you have a profitable and, more importantly, legitimate business in any field, then you will be receptive to anything that goes about trying to set a level playing field. All honest people will be glad that someone has come along and tried to squeeze out the dishonest people that have been giving them a bad name.

What are your plans for the next few months; more of the same, or different strategies?

First, in the last couple of weeks we have announced that we are now working very closely with retailers. We announced our first joint action with Sainsbury’s last month, following a meeting to discuss ways to jointly resolve exploitation issues. We hope to formally sign an agreement soon, aimed at helping the workers affected by exploitation and other best practice. [The retailers] have always been involved in what we do, but now they are looking very closely at the detail.

We are also launching Operation Ajax on June 3, which will change the emphasis of our investigations somewhat. We have until now carried out a big operation roughly every month, and reported them all separately, and perhaps the extent of our work has not always been clear to onlookers. Now everything will go under the Ajax banner, and we will be publishing the facts and figures at the end of every month, so everyone interested will have a clear picture of what we have done to date. Essentially, it is a communications exercise - we will be saying similar things, but in a more effective way publicity-wise.

Where does the fresh produce industry sit in your perspective of illegal labour users? Is it a serial offender, or a victim of its labour providers? Or somewhere in between?

The answer to that is in between. There are some very large users of labour in this industry and, while there is no reason to believe that the vast majority are not doing their jobs right, there will be some that are not doing it so well. I know that getting the GLA licence can be like going to the doctor’s surgery - the doctor only sees the symptoms when you are in the surgery, he does not see what happens 10 minutes or a month later, when something could have changed. Standards can slip or mistakes can be made at any time, which requires users and providers to maintain their [monitoring] standards at all times.

There are obvious risks to the labour user if they think they have been doing everything right, and likewise for the user, it is important that they keep their eyes open and are certain at all times that their labour provider is not going to get caught for anything.

If labour users come to us and inform us of problems they see, then we are more than happy to give them the credit for that; no one wants to see their business in trouble because we have found the problem, so if they find it, they need to say. Things like the minimum advisory charge rate, which is on our website for everyone to look at, are easy to pick up. If you are paying that, then there is no real problem, but if you are paying less and we find out, we are going to be very unhappy. The retailers are fully aware of that too, as they have all received a letter from the GLA informing them.

Do you feel the high-profile naming and shaming approach you have taken risks alienating legal users of labour, who fear their name will be dragged into stories, even if they can demonstrate that the correct systems and procedures are in place within their own organisations?

I don’t think so. A good example is the work we have done with Sainsbury’s and its supplier Produce World. As a result, we revoked the licence of gangmaster ELS Recruitment, and mentioned Produce World in a very positive light. In that instance, if we are the people saying that they are the good guys, it is better than them saying it themselves. If we get people who do not want to play, it is difficult for us and therefore becomes difficult for them. We do not want to catch people, we want to stop exploitation, and we are certainly not in the business of turning people away who are trying to do their bit to help.

Do you feel that it is just to name and shame a company that has used a gangmaster whose licence has been revoked when they have little or no control over the gangmaster in question?

That depends. The labour user could feel aggrieved, but the labour provider might be quite pleased about it. Sometimes during our investigations, we have discovered illegal practices within the site of the labour user, and there is no excuse for the user to be unaware of that. I have no compunction about naming and shaming a labour user under those circumstances. Health and safety practices only work when there is a full understanding between the labour user and provider, and both are responsible for the welfare of the workers while at work.

But it is a fine line, I know, and we have no intention of putting labour users who are trying to do their best in a bad light. The way forward will become more obvious once we have a clear understanding with the retailers - the best practice guidelines should help labour users, and if they do not, they should give us a call and we will talk them through it.

Is there a policy at the GLA to steer clear of involving users in the investigation process? To work with the good guys?

Absolutely not, and again the recent operation is a good example, as is another one being carried out at the moment, that is not yet in the public domain. The benefits are twofold; it gives the retailers and their suppliers an opportunity to see how we work, and an insight into some of the things we do. And it helps us too, as we do not want to overload on staff, but this doubles our numbers on operations and means we can do twice as much as we would have been able to do ourselves. I can only reiterate that anyone who feels they have a problem and rings us about it will get an answer.

Do you have a formal procedure for communicating breaches, similar to the guidelines recently published by the Food Standards Agency, particularly to those companies that are to be named in press releases or otherwise?

It is my understanding that we would not normally put something out in the public domain that the companies concerned did not know about beforehand. Our policy is that we will not publicise revocations until they take effect. When we revoke a licence with immediate effect, we have to tell the labour user about it, of course. We don’t formally tell people there is going to be a press release, but they should be aware of that.

When a licence is revoked without immediate effect, that is slightly different. It would be unfair to publicise that, as they might win an appeal, although to date we have won 99 per cent of the cases that have gone to appeal. There is a discussion around whether we should change our position, but as things stand, labour users can find out the status of their provider via our website at all times. If you look up a user and next to their name it says ‘change of status’, then they will have had their licence revoked without immediate effect and are re-applying for the licence. A good labour provider who has their licence revoked with immediate effect for any reason will tell their users exactly what has happened, re-apply for the licence and put right whatever it was that went wrong.

It has been claimed that the alerts system that fresh produce companies can sign up for on the GLA website is not working, and that companies have been surprised by being associated with problematic gangmasters when they had been unaware that they were under suspicion. Is that true in your view?

It will work if you sign up for it. To my knowledge, we have not had anyone complain to us that it does not function properly, or that they are registered and have not been told of a change of status of a gangmaster. Nothing will happen, however, unless you register and make an active check. As it works through the government system, it can take some time to get through the process, but it is not unmanageable - about 10 minutes.

The GLA has been described in the fresh produce industry as “draconian” and “trigger-happy”. Does it worry you that people are saying this?

I don’t understand that at all. I myself am constantly saying that our powers are draconian, but that we use them proportionally. If someone wants to be legal, we will help them to be legal. If they are illegal, then we will not mess around.