Woman admits to gangmaster charge

Clark supplied workers to pick, process and pack potatoes

A woman who supplied workers to Scottish farms has become the first to be convicted under laws designed to catch unlicensed gangmasters.

Fiona Clark, 34, pleaded guilty to acting as a gangmaster in November 2006, without a licence from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA).

Forfar Sheriff Court heard she had earned £20,000 from the venture.

Clark, from Perth, had applied for a licence but was turned down. She is due to be sentenced on 29 May.

The court heard the application was refused due to a lack of identity checks on the workers to ensure legal working.

There were also no deductions for tax and national insurance on several payslips and there was no evidence that tax and national insurance had ever been paid to HM Revenue and Customs.

There is no hiding place for unlicensed gangmasters. We will seek them out and use the full force of our powers to deal with them Paul Whitehouse GLA

Even though the licence was refused, Clark continued trading by supplying workers to pick, process and pack potatoes.

The Gangmasters Licensing Act was introduced in 2004 after the deaths of Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay.

The GLA launched enforcement investigations against Clark shortly after the offence of operating without a licence was introduced in October 2006.

The person Clark was found to be supplying workers received a written warning for using an unlicensed gangmaster.

This offence was introduced in December 2006.

Further prosecutions

Paul Whitehouse, chairman of the GLA, said: "There is no hiding place for unlicensed gangmasters. We will seek them out and use the full force of our powers to deal with them.

"Any gangmaster operating without a licence needs to be lucky all of the time, we only need to be lucky once to catch them."

He added that lawyers were already looking at further prosecution cases.

David Howdle, area procurator fiscal for Tayside, said: "Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service take crimes of this nature very seriously indeed.

"We will continue to work closely with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in the future, as we did in the first case, to secure all available evidence and to ensure that we bring these cases to court where there is sufficient evidence to do so."