"Naming and shaming" companies with foreign workers

“The Home Secretary’s flagship announcement [at the Conservative Party Conference] was to name and shame companies that employ foreign workers.”

Jeremy Corbyn, 12 October 2016

“The policy he has just described was never the policy announced. There was no naming and shaming, no published list of foreign workers, no published data.”

Theresa May, 12 October 2016

Ms May is technically correct to say that the policy floated at the Conservative Party conference was, on the face of it, only about recording how many foreign workers companies have. But Mr Corbyn has a point—the Home Secretary did seem to envisage naming those businesses in comments the following day.

Amber Rudd didn’t actually mention this policy in her conference speech on 4 October. It was reportedly included in a briefing email sent to journalists afterwards. We don’t have a copy of the original, but assuming copies circulating are valid, it said the government was considering whether employers should have to

“...be clear about the proportion of their workforce which is international, as is the case in the US”.

The requirement to be “clear” was widely reported as being a “list” of foreign workers, but there’s no suggestion that individual names would be passed to the government. The note envisages a percentage.

The note doesn’t specify whether companies would have to “be clear” about this percentage just to the government, or to the general public as well. Ms Rudd seemed to signal that it was about making the figure public in an interview on 5 October. She didn’t challenge the interviewer when he described the proposal in terms of “naming and shaming” businesses.

Other ministers, like Mrs May today, have since ruled out naming and shaming, saying that the policy is just about information-gathering.