11/07/2017 London News

First tonight: a BBC London investigation exposing a cosmetics

chain exploiting its staff, some of whom are earning

the equivalent of ?2 an hour - significantly less

They're also denied worker benefits such as sick or holiday pay.

Our undercover filming shows the company gets round this

by insisting staff sign a contract saying they're self-employed

even though they're treated as employees.

BC London's been investigating a company operating in some of the

UK's most prestigious shopping locations.

We found workers seemingly paid below the minimum

In what is called bogus self employment.

This manager tells our undercover researcher that to

work at her company she must be self-employed.

Soap Co, with no connection to other friends with similar names,

sells skin products from the Dead Sea in outlets at the Westfield

shopping centres, and at their high end Sakare stores

We heard they were treating staff badly.

Our undercover researcher, Clara, will go and work for

Self-employed people should have the freedom

to choose when they work, but here, it's a mandatory schedule.

They have to be at work for around 60 hours, six days a week.

Do you know if we can take days off on the weekends?

A self-employed person would ordinarily be free to

do the work or not do the work on a given day.

And that's not what we saw was happening here.

And they are highly controlled, with penalties

for not cleaning properly and using their mobiles.

Some of the workers Clara speaks to our exhausted and

This woman from Bulgaria, like many of the workers here, was

recruited from abroad with the offer of accommodation and a job.

When people are pushing you and the stress you every day,

six days, 12 hours, you are under stress all the time.

I was thinking that I will come to do something

with my life, and after that, and became...

By claiming staff are self-employed, this company avoids

having to pay a whole host of in work benefits.

Such a sick and holiday pay, and the minimum wage.

When Carla collects her first pay packet, it is well under the

national minimum wage for the hours worked.

For 90 hours, I've received, like, ?200.

Which makes it, like, ?3, less than ?3 an hour.

This is false self employment, and this is

much more an employment relationship than any I have seen, but

unfortunately, quite an exploitative employment relationship.

This is the owner of Soap Co in Finchley with his

sister from our undercover recording in charge of day-to-day operations.

There are two other owners from America and Israel.

In a statement, Soap Co said they took the

responsibilities under UK law very seriously.

They said, "we are therefore extremely concerned to

about the company's working arrangements.

As a consequence, we are reviewing those

allegations and the implications, if any, regarding the employment status

We also asked these two managers about their

understanding of the working relationship here, but they didn't

Soap Co work in London's top shopping locations, but

there are big questions for customers with skincare products of

the working relationship with their staff.

Our political correspondent, Karl Mercer's here.

Do we have a sense of whether this could be wider practice? Yes, I

think it is. Maybe not on this scale but I have been speaking to

employment lawyers and unions this afternoon and they very much

recognise the sort of things Guy skas talking about in that report.

Maybe not concentrated in one firm as we saw there. We talked about

self-employment and the unions were saying they think there is an

epidemic, how it was described to me, going on, particularly coming in

the care sector, not just with taxi firms, not just in retail, not just

in food delivery companies, but very much in the care sector, and one

union the GMB saying they had ten major legal cases going on at the

moment. This comes on a day, a Government-commissioned review

recommends fairer contracts for workers? The Mathieu Taylor report

looking at modern working practices and very much covered a lot of this

self-employment stuff, so-called gig economy, making big recommendations

saying we should look at things like sickness and holiday benefits for

workers, we should look at an enhanced minimum wage, better

enforcement from Government to make sure people were being looked after

OK and that would reap benefits for Government, maybe higher taxes

because the employers would have to pay National Insurance. How has it

gone down? The unions say this report doesn't go far enough. Some

of the big companies saying - yes, we are willing to work with you,

but, don't hit that flexibility, which many of the workers like and

don't hit possible growth. OK, many thanks, Karl.

The capital's tech sector has attracted more investment

than any other European city since the Brexit vote.

But there are concerns that this could change once we

As Katharine Carpenter reports, one council is taking steps

to maintain London's status in tech innovation.

It's got table football, the quirky office mascot

The education technology company, Fire Fly in west London

has all the hallmarks of a growing tech business.

But here in Hammersmith and Fulham they want to see a lot more of this.

The council wants the borough to become a centre for

But attracting talent here and retaining it has become

all the more challenging since the EU referendum.

Particularly with so much competition now from

So while the French President's offering fasttrack visas for tech

employees, west London's offering this - an innovation campus

at White City, the centre-piece of an industrial strategy.

If you came here, you would find a local authority that was genuinely

Don't want to get in your way, they want to support you,

give you access to finance, get you affordable,

East London's silicon roundabout has had success with similar pledges

but tech is lucrative and it is hardly surprising the west

Last year, ?2.2 billion was invested in London's digital tech business.

It creates around 300,000 jobs and the capital gives birth

thinks it might have the edge thanks to the huge brains and innovation

Our first purpose, from Imperial College's point

of view, is to to create facilities and the spaces for the most fabulous

ideas to be developed and turned into life and put out for a society

The founders of Fire Fly have their big idea

They say the biggest draw west is flexibility.

One of the reasons we've taken a long-term decision to be in west

London is that there is actually more office space and a wider range

of office space as we have grown from two people when we started

here in Hammersmith, to 50 to 100 people next year,

there's a wider range of options for us to do that in west London.

So now it's up to west London to deliver and take on the east,

And leave you with Jay Wynne for a check on the weather.

. Good evening. It was one of those days at Wimbledon today. The covers

on the outside courts. The rain was heavy at times. Thank goodness for

the roof. We saw some heavy rain at times through the afternoon and

through the evening but, of course, it's good news for the gardeners out

there. Still extensive rain overnight tonight. It is on the

move, slowly working its way ever-southwards and eastwards but

there will still be some rain left by dawn, by which stage temperatures

around about 13, 14, maybe lower than that towards the north and west

of our area. The rain, through the morning,

doesn't last too long, it'll clear quick lane -- quickly and then the

cloud will soon fool and brighten up for a lovely afternoon. A much

better day at Wimbledon. Dry, bright and good spells of sunshine. Not

particularly windy either. We should get a full day's play. Into

Thursday, pretty decent weather again and a decent day

Thursday, pretty decent weather again and a decent day to end the

week. Good evening, a Dave heavy rain

across some parts of England and Wales. It starts in the south-west

and across Wales where we have seen over an inch of rainfall which

continues to push eastwards. Day 8 of Wimbledon and rain stopped play

across