Thousands wrongly cleared to work

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Title – Thousands wrongly cleared to work
Source – www.bbc.co.uk
Date – 13th December 2007

The problems surrounding the issuing of licenses to individuals not cleared to work in the UK continues to deepen at a time when the Home Office is under fire from all quarters and scrutinised on the front page of every newspaper.

This negative impact that is then deflected on the security industry is in some cases deserved. The responsibility does not just lie with the issuing of licenses, but also with employers employing individuals who are ineligible to work in this country. It is the responsibility of every employer to check the eligibility of their staff to work in the UK, as both they and the staff themselves will face sanction if found to be in breach of employment law, in what is clearly going to become a witch hunt over the coming months and years.

Those who fall foul of employment law have very little recourse, every employer, be they in the security industry or outside of it, have a responsibility to ensure that they are taking the steps they need to ensure the legitimacy of their staff. However in a day and age where security is close to the top of every agenda and for an industry always being scrutinised and legislated against, there is even more reason to pay particular attention at the point of employing staff.

Always in the firing line both from negative publicity and from the very nature of the security industry, those working within it have a responsibility to the industry itself it, to legitimise their business and make people see it for what it is; an essential service to the country, without which the police simply would not cope and without which the country would be substantially worse off. Those working in the industry need to remember they are the solution and not the problem; it is for all of us to prove that statement to be correct.

If all 11,000 suspected 'illegal foreign workers' are stripped of their SIA licence the industry will face further staff shortage to compound the shortages still being experienced in many areas as a result of the introduction of licensing in the security industry. This is a situation that will only improve with the overall image of the industry improving and therefore attracting more people to seek training in order to join the industry and work within it.
Employers have to remember that an SIA license does not provide a guarantee of eligibility to work in the UK and they have to satisfy themselves under employment law, all their staff are eligible before offering them any form of employment.

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