We're going to take tough action against rogue businesses which use illegal labour to evade tax and minimum wage laws… …including by doubling the fines levied against employers who employ illegal workers.
For years, ministers of the last Labour government evaded specific questions about the actions of the intelligence agencies, each time responding with a blanket denial: "The UK does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture for any purpose".
A two-party coalition will find it all the more difficult.On liberty and mattressesBut Labour itself cannot evade the dilemma.
In an attempt to evade child labour laws, Rose forged their birth certificates so many times that Havoc thought she was 13 (she was probably nearer 16) when she eloped with a dancer, leaving behind her mother, the lies, the lisping act and the rhinestone finale dress that didn't fit any more.
Fears that such arrangements might be abused to evade national labour laws resulted in adoption in 1996 of the EU Posted Workers Directive (PWD), followed by intense debate regarding prevention of 'social dumping' (see, e.g., Cremers et al., 2007).
Perhaps some shy Labour voters are even now evading the pollsters' radar.
Business groups also reacted with irritation, with the Institute of Directors saying "business leaders are not pantomime villains, evading taxes and employing cheap labour from abroad out of some destructive desire to do Britain down".
Moreover, almost all states increasingly let companies evade these strictures, especially by using contract labour.
By subscribing to the great New Labour fudge of "equal opportunities", they are able to evade the problem of structural, self-perpetuating inequality.
The creation of an "expense-account" culture, the proliferation of perks to evade a confiscatory tax regime, all the "fiddles" that a traditionally law‑abiding workforce improvised to evade taxation, and the underlying puritanism of Labour's fiscal planners will be crucial in Kynaston's next volume, and perhaps deserved more consideration in A Shake of the Dice.
