Both employment agency and employer are required to carry immigration checks before hiring staff. Apart from anything else, if both parties do the checks there is unnecessary duplication of costs and delay. The government is proposing to lift the requirement on the agency to carry out the checks.
The government consultation paper makes the point that many such agencies do their business on the web, and it seems likely that many agencies are not carrying out the full checks at the moment in any case. Enforcement of the regulations may prove difficult for government and impede legitimate business of these types of online agencies. As these agencies are seen as an important enabler in a dynamic and flexible economy, this outcome is not desirable.
The downside of this change is that the obligation would then fall on entirely on the employer. The problem with this solution is that the potential employee may go a long way through the recruitment process before the employer establishes that an employee may not be allowed to work in the UK.
Perhaps this is a simplistic argument. Presumably if employers find themselves in such a situation they will tend to use agencies that ,by one means or another (eg some sort of basic filtering), are able to provide a generally reliable source of qualified candidates.
Still, nice to see the government planning ahead for once...we look forward to the day when our vibrant economy actually needs to hire rather than lose staff.
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