Thinking about the future, it seems to me that there are agencies besides the police who have a part to play. One of these is the Inland Revenue, who besides being responsible for collecting Tax and National Insurance are also responsible for policing the minimum wage.

Part of the problem here is that since the old Contributions Agency (which used to be part of the Department of Social Security) merged with the Inland Revenue in 1999, there are, I'm told, far fewer criminal convictions for NI and minimum wage offences than there used to be.

One of the reasons for this is the IR culture of confidentiality which allows much less co-operation with other government departments than used to occur when the DSS used to handle these sort of questions. Also, criminal prosecutions in the Inland Revenue are mainly initiated by their Special Compliance Office which won't take action unless it is sure of a conviction and there is a decent chance of a large return of unpaid tax and NI.

They won't go after this sort of operation because there isn't enough money in it and the effort and manpower involved can't be justified. I think one place to start would be to write to MPs demanding that more resources be put into chasing the sort of people who run these sort of rackets and that they be subject to criminal, rather than civil, prosecution.

The 'Guardian' today states that raids have been carried out in the Merseyside area and some evidence has been siezed. However, even if there are convictions they are only likely to be for minor employment law infringements which are only likely to attract modest penalties. If this is the case, then as with the Zeebrugge disaster in 1987, the law on corporate manslaughter needs to be revisited, at the very least.

I'm getting the impression that the police are doing their best but the problem seems to be that the law doesn't seem to provide for adequate punishment.