Reform UK has announced plans to jail company directors and fine firms 10 per cent of their global turnover if their business is found to have employed illegal workers.
The policy, dubbed the “Deliveroo Law” by the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, was unveiled at a press conference in London on Thursday.
Much of what Yusuf proposes already exists in some form under current laws – raising the question of what is genuinely new, and whether a stricter version could work in a gig economy built on self-employed contractors.
What is the ‘Deliveroo Law’?
Under Reform’s proposals, chief executives and directors of large companies would be personally and criminally liable for illegal working within their business, regardless of whether they knew about it.
Those found responsible would face up to five years in prison, while their companies could be fined 10 per cent of their annual worldwide turnover.
Yusuf said that all delivery companies operating in the UK would have to nominate an “accountable person” based in Britain so that “overseas directors will not evade justice”.
The plan also targets people who rent out their delivery accounts to others without the right to work, threatening them with visa revocation, fines backed by asset seizure, and jail.
Reform would additionally require anyone delivering commercially to hold a full British driving licence, rather than a provisional one.
Under current UK law, a rider with a provisional licence can ride a moped up to 50cc on public roads after completing a training course provided they display learner plates, without the need to take a full practical driving test.
The party would also introduce a public tip line for high-street businesses – nicknamed the “Turkish barbers tip line” – rewarding people for reporting suspected illegal working, funded by a share of the fines collected.
The nickname likely references the fact that Turkish barber shops, which are common on British high streets, are among businesses often targeted by National Crime Agency raids alongside establishments such as nail bars, car washes and vape shops.
Reform is not in government, and the policy would require the party to win the next general election before becoming law.
How does this differ from the law as it stands?
Company directors can already be jailed for up to five years and fined an unlimited amount for employing someone they “knew or had reasonable cause to believe” had no right to work in the UK.
Businesses can also face civil penalties of up to £60,000 per illegal worker if they fail to carry out the correct checks.
Under current rules, a company that carries out those checks properly holds a “statutory excuse” – it will not be fined or prosecuted even if a worker is later found to have used forged documents to pass them.
Reform’s plan would remove that protection. Because liability would apply regardless of a director’s knowledge, a company could still face prosecution even if its checks were done correctly and the false documents went undetected.
One complication in Reform’s plan is that delivery riders are self-employed contractors, not employees, and are entitled under their contracts to send a substitute to complete a job on their behalf.
Platforms carry out right-to-work checks on the person who registers the account, but not on the substitutes that the account holder is entitled to send out in their place – meaning someone without the right to work can use another person’s verified, checked account without ever being vetted themselves.
A Home Office source dismissed the announcement as “empty posturing”, telling the BBC: “The Government is already doing much of this.”
A Home Office spokesperson added that illegal working arrests had risen by 83 per cent and raids by 77 per cent since Labour took power.
Does the evidence support Reform’s claims?
The Home Office has already been working with delivery platforms to close the substitution loophole.
Under voluntary agreements brokered with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat in June and July 2025, the firms committed to increased facial recognition checks to verify that account holders themselves were completing deliveries, and were given the locations of asylum hotels to help monitor hotspots for illegal working.
In November 2025, a Home Office operation called Operation Equalise led to 171 arrests over seven days, with 60 riders facing deportation, according to data revealed by The i Paper in January.
Yusuf cited Home Office figures showing 42 per cent of delivery riders stopped in one enforcement operation were found to be working illegally.
That figure originates from a six-day operation in April 2023, obtained by Reuters through a freedom of information request, and has been reused by Reform in previous claims about illegal working in the gig economy.
Deliveroo disputed Reform’s use of its name for the policy, saying the data cited was out of date and did not reflect the current situation.
A Deliveroo spokesperson said: “We run Right to Work checks on all riders, conduct multiple daily identity checks and use cutting-edge fraud-detection technology, and we’d encourage other industries affected by illegal working to do the same.”
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