So, we’ve had the Labour manifesto. And the Labour manifesto for Work, the Labour manifesto for Women, the Labour manifesto for Young People, and the Labour manifesto for Black and Ethnic Minority communities. I imagine before 7 May we’ll have the Labour manifesto for Dog Owners, and the Labour manifesto for People Who Listen to the Archers. But today it seems we will get the Labour manifesto for Home Office officials.

According to a report in the Guardian, the main feature of this will be a new “Home Office investigative unit” to target “the illegal exploitation of migrant workers”. This will consist of a “team of more [than] 100 police officers and specialists from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority”, who will be given “new powers to stop the abuse of workers and increase the prosecutions and fines of employers who breach employment laws”.

It’s far from clear how much this new unit will cost, but the Guardian reports “it will be paid for by levying a charge on non-visa visitors to the UK which is expected to raise £55 million”. And the unit will have “one overriding duty”:

To stop the abuse that makes the working families of Britain poorer. This new unit will have the powers and funding it needs to increase the prosecutions and convictions of Britain’s worst employers: those who exploit workers and drag down the wages of everyone else.

All of which glosses over the fact that we already have not one but four public bodies (or units) with much the same overriding duty: the aforementioned Gangmasters Licensing Authority, the national minimum wage (NMW) enforcement unit of HMRC, the BIS Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (EAS), and the working time directive unit at the Health & Safety Executive. And, to access one or more of these bodies, you have to contact a fifth: Acas.

All of these bodies/units are severely underfunded: HMRC currently gets just £12 million a year to enforce the NMW, the GLA just under £3 million, and the EAS is about five people. And, if you were a government minister with a blank sheet of paper and some £15 million to spend on ‘tackling Britain’s worst employers’, you wouldn’t design a system with four (or five) separate bodies or units. You might, as Vince Cable suggested last year, create a Workers’ Rights Agency (or, say, a Fair Employment Agency), with “the powers and funding it needs” to tackle Britain’s worst employers. (Sadly, that suggestion hasn’t got much further than the inside of Dr Cable’s head, but at least he and the Lib Dems are thinking on the right lines).

So, if you are a new minister on 8 May, charged with the same remit, and have as much as a further £55 million to spend, you really shouldn’t create yet another public body (or unit). And YOU CERTAINLY SHOULDN’T PUT IT IN THE FUCKING HOME OFFICE.

[Postscript: here’s the Labour press release on Miliband’s speech]