Britain's illegal farm workers

Krystyna collapsed on to a freshly-cut furrow, rolled a cigarette and sighed. Lured to England with the promise of a nonexistent job and ripped off by a criminal gang, the young Pole had despaired of finding work until she got this job on a Norfolk farm.

Earning less than £20 a day and working illegally, she still considered herself lucky. That day, she was one of five illegal workers hacking away at pungent coriander, mint and fenugreek. On other days, there were many more.

All were being urged on by the boss they knew only as "Mr Singh", a Norfolk gangmaster, who uses cheap and often illegal labour on British farms.

Not all gangmasters operate illegally, but he is one of many who move gangs of workers around the UK according to demand and in defiance of immigration laws.

A stocky Sikh in his fifties who talks little, he organises people to pick herbs from fields he rents from local farmers. He houses his workers on rundown housing estates, sometimes cramming as many as 15 people into one dwelling. The work is cash-in-hand.

In the small hours of each morning, the herbs they have picked --earning just 45p for 20 large bunches - will line the aisles of London's two biggest fresh produce wholesale markets: New Spitalfields in Leyton and Western International in Southall.

From there they will be sold at great profit to London's corner shops and big restaurants. Coriander picked on the farm will be sent to a factory where it will be dried and packaged for leading supermarkets like Tesco.

Meanwhile, as Krystyna worked, 100 miles away in Kent, more illegal workers were frantically packing fruit destined for the country's major supermarkets. Banned from talking while on the job, harangued by stressed-out supervisors, many work 10 or 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage. They are often asked to change sell-by dates on fruit destined for Safeway and Sainsbury's.

As summer nears its peak, the Standard has undertaken an investigation into the use of illegal labour in British farms and packhouses. I worked alongside Krystyna on the farm in Norfolk and at Cross and Wells Ltd, a fruit-packing house in Sittingbourne, Kent.

I expected to find harsh work and low wages, but the stories of poor treatment and conditions surpassed that. On the farm, where I earned £10.35 in one day, I gained an insight into the murky world of illegal gangmasters, Polish middlemen and labour-starved farmers. I discovered a trail of immigrant labour that starts with advertisements in Polish newspapers and often ends with would-be illegal workers finding themselves penniless, passportless and helpless on London's streets.

Only the lucky ones, like Krystyna, get a job. In four days at Cross & Wells, I found how easily English employers accept false work permits and the lengths to which packhouse bosses go to save money. Like thousands of others, Krystyna, 27, found herself in the UK after answering an advert in a Polish newspaper simply saying, "Work in England".

The Polish woman who answered her call told Krystyna she'd be working on an Oxford flower farm, earning up to £70 a day. Accommodation and "work permits" would be provided. The woman demanded £100 for the name of a contact in England who would pose as Krystyna's relative in case immigration wanted proof that she was
here to visit, not work. Krystyna considered the money worth it. The way the lady told it, English farms could be mined for gold.

Krystyna's bus arrived in England from Krakow in August 2001. She passed through immigration as a tourist on a six-month visa - Poland has yet to join the EU - but then, like so many illegals, simply disappeared. At Victoria coach station, she was met, as arranged, by a Polish man who demanded another £100. He gave Krystyna another phone number and told her to take a train to Slough.

Speaking little English and very much alone, she complied. In Slough, a third Pole answered her call and demanded more money before taking her to a house. "The house had 12 people, all waiting for work," she recalls.

"Every day, the boss would arrive and say, 'I need you and you and you'. The others just waited. All the time we are paying rent and buying food. Some people went a month with no work."

So Krystyna was happy to hear about Mr Singh through a friend and secure a job with him, even though the three-bedroom house she was put in cost £30 a week and she shared it with five other Poles and me.

It was also filthy and insecure. When I arrived, there was no hot water, the toilet was broken, windows were smashed and there were no handles on the doors. Krystyna said 15 people had lived there last summer.

Martin, another worker in the house, smiled when I asked him about a work permit. "We are all tourists here," he said.

Later, when I asked Mr Singh about his employment of illegal workers, he said two of the Poles in my house had work permits and the rest were their friends visiting from London who had worked on the farm for only three or four days. Both replies were untrue.

Our investigation began at Victoria station, where up to 20 coaches arrive daily from Poland and men approach hopeful youngsters looking for farm work. Other youngsters can be seen catching coaches back to Poland, penniless and clutching emergency passports issued by the Polish consulate after theirs were stolen by the gangs.

The stories they tell are devastating. I have heard from people who had been driven into a forest and abandoned after complaining about working conditions.

One young man paid a Polish agency for a flat and farm work in England only to discover the address he was given was a London shopfront and no one was expecting him.

Others had been beaten up after asking for their passports and money back. One Polish community worker says he has met young women who were raped by the gangs but are too scared of deportation to tell the police.

One Polish immigrant who did find work ended up on the payroll of one of this country's most respected employment agencies. Mariusz, 29, was lured to England after answering a Polish advert on the promise of a part-time hotel job, a student visa allowing him to work 20 hours a week and a place at college to learn English.

When he arrived, he was met by a Polish middleman who charged him £160 and bussed him to Langford Farm in Somerset, where he was put to work full-time, harvesting mushrooms for a company on-site called Monaghan Middlebrook Mushrooms. He and seven others were housed in a caravan in Brean, Somerset. The student visa and the college course never materialised.

Mariusz's first week payslip was on headed paper from Angel Human Resources, a family company and CBI member. As well as recruitment, the company also supplies business consultancy and specialises in payroll management, training services and recruitment legislation.

Mariusz was paid £98.43 for a week's work. This was after deductions for rent totalling £30, income tax at £2.39, National Insurance at £2.63 and something called a cheque charge at £2. He was paid in cash.

He says he never met anyone from Angel, but always answered to the middleman, with whom he had been put in touch after answering the advert. "I argued with the middleman because of the deductions," he says. "I said, if I haven't got a visa, how can I be paying tax? In the second week, I was sacked. Another worker told me anyone who asks too many questions is sacked. They were bringing new workers in all the time and only kept the quiet ones on."

Early in June, just days after Mariusz had left, Langford Farm was raided by immigration officials and 48 people, from the Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, deported.

Angel Human Resources said it was "surprised and deeply concerned" to hear of our findings and that it would be "immediately undertaking an investigation". They insisted Mariusz was sacked after it was discovered he had no permit.

Dr Jan Mokrzycki, president of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, says his organisation is approached daily by young Poles who have lost everything to the gangs. "Most won't go to the police because they fear they will be deported," he says.

Police and immigration regularly carry out raids to catch illegal workers. In 2001, 49,000 people were removed-from the UK, 38,000 of whom were caught trying to enter the country. Perhaps they are not the real enemy, though. They go home penniless, while the middlemen grow fat.

Certainly there is a dearth of British workers to do the back-breaking seasonal work our farms and packhouses require. Last year up to a third of a £3million crop of Cornish daffodils went unharvested because of a shortage of pickers. The National Farmers' Union estimates an extra 50,000 workers a year are needed on British farms for seasonal work.

Illegal labour is cheap. The pressure to keep prices low and maximise profits is intense, so the lure of someone who will work for a pittance with few breaks and rights is hard to resist. At Cross & Wells, I worked alongside people from the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Russia, Poland, Nepal, Tibet and China.

We worked 10-hour shifts with just one hour's break in total, earning £4.35 an hour - the minimum wage. Some of the workers were illegal.

A young Pole, Michael, 20, who had left his wife and one-year-old son in Krakow, said, in broken English: "We have documents we call ID. When they ask about visas, we present them and the boss accepts. But they are false documents. I think they know, but they don't ask questions."

Managing director Steve Cross rejects any allegation of illegality. He maintains: "Cross & Wells have had recent contact with the immigration authorities and, as far we are concerned, those authorities are satisfied with [our] procedures."

The Government is working towards drawing up a register and a code of practice for gangmasters to guarantee their workers a standard of salary and care. Farmers and packhouse bosses could then make more informed choices about which agencies to use for labour.

Around 25,000 foreign students a year are allowed to work on our farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Scheme. But this is clearly not enough. There is no single government office that deals with immigrant workers. Responsibility is spread between the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office.

A select committee set up to look at the problem of illegal gangmasters has complained that when questioned, ministers from a selection of departments deny knowledge of the problem or responsibility for the solution. Until this changes, there will always be ruthless gangmasters, unscrupulous packhouse bosses and people like Mr Singh ready to exploit desperate, gullible workers.

All three supermarkets mentioned in this piece say they are investigating our claims. Tesco denies its herbs are picked by illegal workers. Monaghan Middlebrook Mushrooms refused to comment.