Gangmaster has licence revoked

By Martin Shankleman
Employment correspondent, BBC News

The migrant workers were picking leeks in the field when officers arrived

A gangmaster at the centre of the biggest human trafficking raid by police in the UK has had its licence revoked.

The company, A14 Vehicle Hire, based in Kettering, has been stripped of its permit with immediate effect, which means it must stop supplying workers or face prosecution.

The decision was taken by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), which claims A14's workers were housed in overcrowded and unsafe accommodation.

It says 15 workers and three children were living in a four-bedroom house in Kettering.

Dangerous living conditions were found in the migrants' home.

Photographs released by the GLA show exposed live wiring, an unsafe boiler and a broken toilet at the house, which was closed by the local authority because of beaches of safety regulations.

The GLA also claims that one worker was injured at work when he was run over by a leek rig - a mobile conveyor belt - used to harvest the vegetables.

The rig lacked an emergency stop button to protect workers in distress.

Paul Whitehouse, GLA chairman, condemned the treatment of workers as "a scandalous set-up with no regard for the individuals who suffered".

He said that "we are satisfied that the evidence gathered to date justified the immediate revocation of the licence," but warned that there was a possibility that further abuses could be uncovered.

The Minister for the East Midlands, Phil Hope, applauded the actions of the GLA, saying: "No individual should have to suffer these conditions."

A14 acted as a labour provider for Emmetts UK, which supplies salads and vegetables to Waitrose and Tesco.

Emmetts has insisted it is not implicated in the police investigation, codenamed Operation Ruby.

Sixty migrant workers are being cared for at a reception centre in Northamptonshire after being removed from a field near Holbeach in Lincolnshire.

It is alleged that the workers, who had been recruited in Eastern Europe, were trapped by the gang who placed them in squalid accommodation and forced them to work up to 16 hours a day, picking vegetables.