Fair Work Agency: How to make the new workplace watchdog bite
Published: 7 May 2026
7 May 2026: A new blog by Ruth Dukes and David Whyte argues that the Government’s new Fair Work Agency will struggle to effectively enforce workers’ rights without greater funding, stronger enforcement powers and closer collaboration with trade unions.
7 May 2026: A new blog by Ruth Dukes and David Whyte argues that the Government’s new Fair Work Agency will struggle to effectively enforce workers’ rights without greater funding, stronger enforcement powers and closer collaboration with trade unions.
Blog by Professor Ruth Dukes, University of Glasgow and Professor David Whyte, Queen Mary University of London
In April of this year, the Government launched its new Fair Work Agency (FWA), a workplace watchdog which in its own words will “transform labour market enforcement”. The Agency replaces three existing regulators (the National Minimum Wage Unit within HM Revenue & Customs, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate) and the Director of Labour Market Enforcement, created in 2016 to coordinate these three. The FWA will be expected to do everything those agencies did, and more. The Government has already confirmed, for example, that it is to be given responsibility for enforcingthe right to statutory sick pay and paid holidays.
Employment and industrial relations are reserved matters and the FWA, like its predecessor agencies, is a UK body which will largely have the same remit and responsibilities across the four nations. There are some differences: for example, mirroring the previous situation with the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the FWA has more limited powers in Scotland than in England in Wales in respect of modern slavery offences. It will also have to adjust its strategy and practices to the different geography and labour market characteristics of Scotland and the existence north of the border of different institutions, including the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board – the equivalent English board having been done away with in 2013 as part of the Conservative Liberal Coalition Government’s so-called “bonfire of the quangos”.
While hopes may be running high that the FWA will make big improvements to the enforcement of workers’ rights and to compliance rates among British businesses, there is good reason to suspect that this watchdog is not going to have much bark or bite.
The Labour Party’s New Deal for Working People was adamant that rights and protections for workers “are only worth the paper they are written on if they are enforced”. For quite some time now, Britain has faced a crisis in workplace law enforcement of such dimensions that employers know that they have little chance of detection or punishment for not paying workers their due, or for placing them at risk of illness and injury.Especially since the austerity period of 2010-2020, workplace regulation has suffered from serious underfunding. Funding for workplace regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been halved. As a result, front line inspection and enforcement action have plummeted. HSE inspections have reduced by between 70% and 80% meaning that the average workplace can now expect an inspection much less than once every 50 years. Adding the inspectors that will be employed by the FWA to health and safety inspectors, the ratio of workplace inspectors to workers is now likely to be the lowest among member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD. This is a small fraction of the ratio recommended by the International Labour Organisation (1:10,000).
In the New Deal for Working People and other policy publications, the Labour Government recognised the existence of this crisis in enforcement. And yet, when the five strategic aims of the FWA were announced, top of the list was not “tackling breach of employment law”, or “improving compliance rates”, but rather “reducing regulatory burdens”. In the context of this collapse in enforcement, it is virtually impossible to imagine how such ostensible ‘burdens’ could be reduced any further!
If it is to make good on Manifesto commitments, not only to create new workers’ rights and protections but to ensure that these are enforced, this Labour Government must provide the resources needed for the job, beginning with an ILO-recommended minimum level of workplace inspectors and a full restoration of pre-austerity resources.
Beyond this, there are a number of things that could be done immediately to strengthen the credibility of the new FWA and boost its effectiveness.
Experience in other countries shows that state enforcement works best when enforcement agencies work together with trade unions. While even the best-resourced agencies do not have the capacity to make regular inspections of every workplace in the country, trade unions can perform inspectorate-like functions through the presence in workplaces of shop stewards and other lay representatives. They can inform workers about their legal rights and assist them with the logging and processing of complaints, and they can provide information to state agencies, helping them to decide how best to use the resources that they have.
No provision is made in the Employment Rights Act for any new rights or powers for trade unions or workers in respect of employment law enforcement. However, the Secretary of State has extensive powers to develop the Agency, to provide it with more resources and to widen its scope, and these could be used to ensure a central role for trade unions and workers.
Unions should be fully involved in the setting of enforcement targets and trade union representatives should be given access to workplaces in order to strengthen regulatory scrutiny, encourage compliance and document breaches of law. One novel - and highly effective - system that is in place in Australian workplaces is the right for elected trade union representatives to issue ‘Provisional Improvement Notices’. Similar notices could be used in this country to trigger investigation of particular workplaces and issues by the FWA.
Anonymity for workers following any contact must also be guaranteed. According to past practice, regulators generally will not pursue complaints unless they are given permission to use the name of the complainant.This often leads to repercussions by employers. As part of this guarantee, the FWA must have full administrative separation from any agency responsible for immigration and border control in order to bring migrant workers fully into its protection.
It is only with the full and active involvement of workers and their trade unions that this agency - which aims to guarantee a fair deal for workers - will have a significant impact. Otherwise, we fear, this will simply be the latest in a long line of failed regulatory watchdogs.
Ruth Dukes and David Whyte are the authors of a new report for the Institute of Employment Rights which sets out an agenda for the Fair Work Agency.
Authors
Ruth Dukes is Professor of Labour Law at the University of Glasgow
David Whyte is Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University London
First published: 7 May 2026