At least half – and potentially more than two-thirds – of fines owed to the Home Office by employers using undocumented workers have gone unpaid in the last five financial years.



Many of these employers have exploited undocumented workers as a way to pay far below the minimum wage. The introduction of more stringent fines was part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” strategy when she was home secretary.

More than £170 million in illegal working fines have been handed out by the Home Office since March 2012, yet just £55 million has been collected in that time, new data shows. The figures were given out following a Freedom of Information request by the legal blog Free Movement.

The Home Office insists the numbers are not directly comparable because companies are incentivised to pay early with a 30% discount. But even in the unlikely event that every civil penalty was paid early, that would still leave £64 million unaccounted for.

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said the scale of uncollected fines showed the department was “enabling exploitative employers to profit from vulnerable people” while charging “unacceptably high” visa fees to those attempting to stay in the country legally.

David Wood, who was director general of Immigration Enforcement at the Home Office until 2015, said the uncollected fines showed it was “just a failed system.”