Keir Starmer should smash the gig economy

Spectator

2 days ago

No Frenchman has been as critical as the recent 'one in, one out' migrant deal than Xavier Bertrand. A grandee of the centre-right Republican party (and also the president of the Upper France region), Bertrand has denounced the treaty as 'bad' for France.
He added that the small boats crisis is 'the fault of the English' because the migrants 'know they'll end up getting work there'. The only way to end the Channel migrant crisis, says Bertrand, is for the British government to 'put an end [to] illegal labour immigration'.
Bertrand has been banging this drum for a decade. In the summer of 2015, he wrote to David Cameron, then the prime minister, about the 3,000 migrants massed on the French coast, most of whom were young men from Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea. 'Let's put an end to the hypocrisy of pretending that we don't know that most of them want to go to England, where it is much easier to work without papers than in France,' said Bertrand.
Cameron did promise that year to crack down on the phenomenon, announcing his determination to introduce an immigration 'taskforce', the main purpose of which would be to make 'Britain a less attractive place to come and work illegally'. 'The truth is', Camerons said, 'it has been too easy to work illegally and employ illegal workers here.'
That never happened. On the contrary, it was on Cameron's watch that Britain's 'gig economy' exploded. Companies such as Deliveroo, Uber and Just Eat were regarded by the PM and his chancellor, George Osborne, as the exciting future of the British economy.
The companies portrayed their workers as students or mums and dads looking to make some cash on the side; for years they vigorously fought attempts to have their drivers and deliverers recognised as workers. That would give them rights.
It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that many of the people working for these companies are illegal immigrants. In 2023, a random Home Office screening of delivery riders found that 40 per cent fitted this description.
Earlier this year, an undercover reporter from the Sun, posing as a small-boat arrival from Afghanistan, was able to sign up as a delivery driver within ten minutes. 'When asked if having no documents was a problem, one 'Deliveroo dealer' told him: 'You will not be caught, inshallah'', reported the newspaper.
In France, on the other hand, you will be caught, which is why most migrants looking for easy work, once they have entered France from Spain or Italy, head straight to the Channel coast.
In December last year, Just Eat ceased trading in France, a victim not just of high operating costs but also 'pressure to improve working conditions for delivery drivers'. Just Eat's announcement came a month after the Paris Administrative Court overturned its redundancy plan to lay off more than 100 people.
Last month, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered Deliveroo to reinstate a delivery driver who had been fired in 2020 for 'discrimination on health grounds'. The British company was also ordered to pay the driver €93,000 [£80,000] in unpaid wages.
In 2022, a French court handed two former bosses of Deliveroo suspended one year prison sentences for 'abusing the freelance status of riders'.
Two years earlier a Paris labour court found the company guilty of 'undeclared work' by a delivery rider; his lawyer told the press that paying him as an independent contractor and not a regular employee 'was an attempt to skirt labour laws'.
In 2022, Joe Carberry, the head of corporate communications at Deliveroo, said that France was 'the most progressive example' of gig economy regulation because under its law employees were entitled to social security, pension contributions and unemployment benefits.
Carberry made his remarks at a fringe event at that year's Labour Party conference; before joining Deliveroo, Carberry worked for the party, first as a special adviser to David Miliband and then as Labour's head of research between 2015 to 2017.
The event was organised by Progressive Britain, described by the Guardian as a 'Blairite think-tank', whose board of directors include Kay Carberry, Joe's mum; she received a CBE in 2007 for services to employment relations.
The Deliveroo meeting was criticised by Alex Marshall, president of the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain. 'It is quite ironic that Deliveroo points to France as progressive… they have received huge fines and a suspended jail sentence there.'
France has also fined Uber 'for deceptive commercial practices', forcing the ride-hailing app in its own words to rethink 'its business model in light of local expectations'.
There has been no such rethink in Britain, but there needs to be in light of the mounting evidence that this business model is fuelling the migrant crisis. Perhaps smashing the gig economy and not the gangs should be Keir Starmer's priority.