1) Since Priti Patel has been given front page space for her evidence-free theory about how "fear of racism" is to blame for Leicester's sweatshops, I thought I'd do a factful thread about some other, more obvious, candidates. Beginning with central govt... 
HMRC is responsible for enforcing the minimum wage. It doesn't do enough inspections of high-risk workplaces, penalties are paltry & prosecutions rare. prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/a-min…
HMRC is incentivised by govt to identify large numbers of min wage arrears (looks good in press releases). That encourages it to go after big employers for small technical breaches, rather than tiny employers like in Leicester for total disregard of the law.
The Leicester sweatshops under-report hours, so their books look as if they employ someone for 15 hours at correct wage, when they actually employ them for 40 hours at peanuts. This is genuinely hard for HMRC to identify (but doesn't mean they shouldn't try harder)
Health & safety in manufacturing is also the job of central govt (via HSE). HSE has cut proactive inspections by more than a third since 2011 (on direct order from govt) and allocated textile factories as "low risk" so not eligible for proactive inspection at all
A word about "modern slavery", a term which newspapers often use willy nilly. What constitutes "modern slavery" in law is quite a high bar, so when police say they didn't find evidence of modern slavery, it doesn't mean everything was hunky dory.
Then we come to local govt. They are responsible for building inspection, a job they seem to have done woefully in the Leicester garment district
Local govt have held workshops with enforcement agencies & joint-working pilots. But attitude has been softly-softly. I *think* this is for fear of bad publicity, scaring away retailers/employers, & causing unemployment. Some support for that here too. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
Apologies to Priti Patel if her theory also has evidence. But I haven't seen it - perhaps she could share it?
PS This is a thread about who is to blame for not tackling the sweatshops. The blame for why they exist is different, includes local factory owners, retailers and consumers.
If people want to read more about this, I'll do a column on it in a week's time. (This week I have to settle my baby girl at nursery 😢)
Also - Apologies to Priti Patel if her theory also has evidence. But I haven't seen it - perhaps she could share it?
