For Focus on Labour Exploitation, and those across the UK pushing for migrant workers’ rights, November 2025 has been a month defined by government failure. We can no longer afford to be disappointed – it is essential that we understand this increasingly hostile environment, and adapt how we operate in order to rise to the challenge.

Early in the month, Peers rejected a crucial amendment that would have secured baseline rights for some of the UK’s most vulnerable workers.

Domestic workers and exploitation experts have criticised this move as not only a dangerous neglect of vulnerable workers, but a Labour u-turn on protections they called for in opposition.

Read more on what FLEX, as well as Marissa Begonia of Voice of Domestic Workers, and Victoria Marks of the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU) had to say here.

Government let-downs didn’t stop there. Following the policy announcement from the Home Secretary on reforms to the asylum system in the UK, FLEX CEO Lucila Granada described the move as “performatively cruel”.

“Faced with the choice of exploitation or destitution, these changes will only further push people seeking safety into the arms of exploiters.”

Institutional backsliding has not even been contained to just UK policy-makers.

This month, the European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the Omnibus I package, voting to further weaken the corporate sustainability package by watering down company obligations and reducing the number of businesses required to report on their sustainability.

Focus on Labour Exploitation: Our Work

New Briefing Alert: Rooted in justice: Reimagining migration into UK agriculture

Despite these consistent challenges to the vital work of tackling labour exploitation, FLEX continues to push forward a vision of a better system, by producing research and advocating to policy-makers.

This month, we released “Rooted in justice: Reimagining migration into UK agriculture”.
UK agriculture is deeply dependent on migrant workers to provide cheap, continual labour. The duty of care for these workers should be of key interest to a whole range of people from UK producers to overseas recruiters, government to consumers.

And yet in the UK, migrant agricultural workers face tough and restrictive visa conditions, due to the design and implementation of the Seasonal Worker Scheme and the UK’s immigration and labour market enforcement systems at large.

The impact of this has been well evidenced. These include risks of debt bondage, unsafe living and working conditions, underpayment, difficulties in accessing healthcare or redress, as well as difficulties leaving poor or even outright abusive situations.

Using FLEX’s Blueprint for Safer and Fairer Migration, our latest briefing Rooted in justice: Reimagining migration into UK agriculture proposes overhauling the way that the Seasonal Worker Scheme visa is structured, and what essential components must be included in its replacement.

Advocating for UK Migrant Fishers in 2026 and beyond

In 2024, we launched a Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Pilot in fishing in the UK, to meaningfully improve the protection of rights and working conditions of migrant workers in fishing.

Moving into 2026, we mark the conclusion of this pilot, looking at the challenges it has faced, the learnings from this work, and what comes next for migrant fishers’ advocacy in the UK.