Migrant workers who have been exploited on British farms face huge barriers to achieving justice through the employment tribunal – including rules effectively stopping them from giving oral evidence, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.

The six-month seasonal worker visa, which was launched in 2019 and now brings more than 30,000 workers to the UK each year, has been beset with allegations of labour exploitation, including systematic bullying, abuse and underpayment. Yet only two seasonal workers are known to have brought claims to a tribunal.

The first of these cases ended largely in failure in September. Sapana Pangeni, from Nepal, made several allegations, including underpayment, against a farm in Berkshire. The tribunal dismissed most of her claims. The second case is ongoing.

Legal experts told TBIJ about several obstacles that overseas workers face at tribunal. They include the length of the visa, language barriers and the lack of access to free legal advice.

Lord John Hendy KC, one of the UK’s top employment barristers and chair of the Institute of Employment Rights, said TBIJ’s findings were “deeply troubling”.

He said that barriers to legal help and the limitations of UK labour agencies are two of the many factors enabling “exploitation and wage theft by employers in the agriculture and food industries”. Bosses, he said, were “well aware of the obstacles to the enforcement of both contractual and statutory rights”.

While the seasonal worker visa lets people stay in the UK for up to six months, backlogs in the tribunal system mean cases can take as long as two years to be heard. This means a worker bringing a claim would probably have to give their evidence from abroad.

But employment tribunal rules introduced in 2022 mean a person can’t give oral evidence from another country unless it has an agreement with the UK government. And 95% of last year’s seasonal workers came from countries that did not.

Requests to allow oral evidence from abroad can be made via the tribunal and the Foreign Office. But just 5 out of 123 requests have been accepted since 2022, according to data obtained via a freedom of information request.

Workers can still submit written evidence. But according to Jamila Duncan-Bosu, an employment lawyer and co-founder of the Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit charity, tribunals give little weight to written statements that aren’t accompanied by oral evidence, partly because they can’t be tested via cross-examination.

“Accessing justice through the employment tribunal isn’t a genuine option for most seasonal workers,” she said. “Workers in the UK have rights, and there is nothing about [the visa scheme] that enables workers to enforce those rights.

“You’re not going to be successful if you don’t give evidence in your own employment tribunal claim.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told TBIJ: “The government inherited a criminal justice system in crisis and an employment tribunal backlog at soaring levels.

“We are working to reduce the outstanding caseload across all the tribunals and are investing in the recruitment of approximately 1,000 judges and tribunal members.”

The previous government also said it had recruited about 1,000 judges and tribunal members per year since 2017.

‘Unequal footing’

Pangeni, who has claimed asylum in the UK, was able to appear in person at her tribunal. At hearings in May and June, she accused her employer, EU Plants Ltd, of various breaches of employment law, including underpaying her by more than £1,000.

The company admitted Pangeni had not received almost £200 in holiday pay, which it paid her after she started legal proceedings. But most of her claims – including that the company didn’t record all her hours and had indirectly discriminated against non-European workers – were dismissed by the tribunal. In its judgement, the panel agreed only that she hadn’t been given a contract.

Pangeni’s lawyers said her status as a seasonal worker put her at a disadvantage.

“There’s this slightly unhelpful myth that the parties in front of a tribunal are supposed to be on an equal footing,” said Franck Magennis, Panegeni’s barrister. “But it’s just not true.”

He said companies can afford better legal advice than workers and also have access to more information and evidence about how they operate day to day.

Any UK worker faces a huge challenge in suing their boss: there is no legal aid for most employment issues, and more employment tribunal hearings are won by employers than workers. For those without legal representation, the chances of victory are even slimmer. But in the case of seasonal workers, the barriers are almost insurmountable.

They are often bringing their cases in a language they don’t understand, within a legal system they are not familiar with, and while living on the farm they’re bringing their claim against, lawyers told TBIJ.

Pangeni’s former employer, EU Plants Ltd, did not respond to TBIJ’s request for comment.

Widespread exploitation

Seasonal workers are vital to the UK’s farming sector, which relies on migrants to pick crops in fields and pack them in warehouses. But workers on the visa scheme face widespread exploitation.

Abuses reported by workers have included illegal recruitment fees of as much as £7,500, verbal abuse and, in one case recorded by TBIJ, physical assault. One woman told inspectors she had been confined to her caravan without access to medical assistance or food for 11 days after catching Covid-19. Another told a parliamentary committee that his caravan got so cold at night he feared for his life.

The government told TBIJ it has visited nearly 300 farms and interviewed more than 2,000 workers since March last year.

The handful of recruiters allowed to sponsor seasonal worker visas and place people on farms are known as scheme operators. To date, only one has lost its licence over issues related to pay and conditions, as reported by The Grocer.

With limited government action, workers are left with few options. The Low Pay Commission, which advises the government on the minimum wage, has said seasonal workers are “unlikely to see redress for any underpayment within the time they are in the UK”. It added that “incentives are stacked against low-paid workers complaining”.

In some instances, they have undertaken unofficial “wildcat” strikes – putting their jobs at risk as such strikes are not protected by the law. In even rarer circumstances, they have turned to the employment tribunal.

Climate of fear

Last year TBIJ investigated conditions at EU Plants Ltd, where Pangeni worked. Six of Pangeni’s former colleagues spoke of similar issues to hers – but none of them joined her claim.

Within the setup of the seasonal worker scheme, complaints about working conditions should be made to the scheme operators that sponsor workers’ visas and place them on farms. “Effectively, we now police the agricultural industry,” a senior manager of one of these recruiters said at a parliamentary meeting in 2023.

In January last year, Pangeni and some of her colleagues had written to their recruiter, AG Recruitment, to say they had been underpaid.

“It is getting harder to pay for groceries and living expenses,” Pangeni wrote at the time. Another worker wrote: “We are working from 9am to 4pm and still they are putting in less hours in our payslip.”

One of Pangeni’s colleagues told TBIJ he had considered joining Pangeni’s claim but was worried the recruiter would cut his hours in retaliation. He had debts to pay and didn’t want to take the risk. Another worker said they had been worried that speaking negatively about a UK company could harm future visa applications.

Their concerns were not unique. Caroline Robinson, executive director of the Worker Support Centre, says seasonal workers have lost their jobs after raising complaints. The result, she said, was a widespread climate of fear. “We’ve had cases where workers have been prepared to be witnesses for others and then have been asked by other workers not to do that because they’ll put everyone at risk.”

Even if they had wanted to give evidence, Pangeni’s colleagues wouldn’t have been able to. A request from her solicitor to allow witnesses to give evidence from Nepal was denied.

Pangeni was able to argue her claim because she had sought asylum and stayed in the UK after her visa expired. The only other seasonal worker to have brought a claim had also stayed in the UK by entering the system that protects victims of modern slavery. But they are exceptions. Government rules state that scheme operators can lose their licences if more than 3% of the workers they sponsor stay in the UK at the end of their placements.

The one worker to provide a witness statement supporting Pangeni said she didn’t bring a claim herself because she knew nothing about the UK’s legal system or trade unions. Unions are largely absent from the farming sector; their websites are only in English, which many seasonal workers cannot read; and few will offer legal support to someone whose issues pre-date their membership.

Need for reform

The Work Rights Centre, a charity that supports migrants in precarious work, helped Pangeni with legal representation, and her barrister worked for free.

Had Pangeni needed to foot the bill herself, it could have cost her more than £10,000 – far beyond what the average seasonal worker earns over their six-month visa.

“The only available employment legal advice they can get is from charities that are very small and under-resourced,” said Dora-Olivia Vicol, the chief executive of the Work Rights Centre.

Julia Quecaño Casimiro, the only other person on a seasonal worker visa to have brought an employment tribunal claim, said that she and her colleagues approached several NGOs and even the police, only to be turned away. The government has subsequently recognised her as a possible victim of modern slavery.

“It looks like labour exploitation is very normal in this country,” she said.

Even with the support she got, Pangeni faced significant practical difficulties at her hearing. She was cross-examined for more than a day in Hindi, which is not her first language. Pangeni’s solicitor, who also spoke Hindi, had to interrupt to point out that the court translator had mistranslated part of her testimony.

Lord Hendy KC says that reform is needed. He suggested creating a new, well-funded agency to police workers’ rights, removing limits on compensation, and changing rules to let workers testify from anywhere in the world. He also argued for a return to union deals that set basic standards for whole industries.

Quecaño Casimiro is already facing delays with her case. Having started proceedings more than a year ago, she still does not have a date for a full hearing – which is expected in late 2025 at the earliest.

Pangeni has filed to appeal her case. Despite the setback, she does not regret going through with the case.

“I did whatever I could do to fight for justice,” she said. “That’s all.”