Britse regering geeft namen 500 bedrijven die van dwangarbeid profiteren

The names of hundreds of major companies and leading British charities who used a benefits scheme to employ people without paying them have been revealed after the government lost a four-year legal battle to protect their identities. Well-known high street firms were among more than 500 organisations who used the free labour of welfare claimants, after they were forced to take unpaid work under rules brought in by David Cameron’s Coalition Government. Their names were revealed after the Court of Appeal ruled against the Department for Work and Pension’s attempt to keep them a secret – at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees (…) Under the Mandatory Work Activity, about 120,000 jobseekers had to work for free for 30 hours per week or they would have lost their £73-a-week benefit payment. The scheme was criticised by the Work and Pensions Select Committee when it was introduced in 2011 and was scrapped by the government in 2015. However the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to let the names of the companies who participated in the scheme be known. DWP officials argued that revealing their identities would “hurt their commercial interests” because protesters might boycott them, despite the Information Commissioner ruling just a year into the scheme that the public should have access to the list. After holding out for four years, the DWP was overruled by three judges at the Court of Appeal by a vote of two to one.

Jess Staufenberg en Jon Stone in Revealed: The High Street firms that used benefits claimants for free labour (Independent)