The government has priced today's new duty at minus £103 million, and could not name one benefit in money

From today, a company that keeps a register of people, matches them to customers online and takes a fee is treated in law as employing them. Not for holiday pay. Not for sick pay. Not for notice. For one purpose: checking they are allowed to work in Britain.

That is section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, commenced for 1 October by regulations made on 24 June 2026. It inserts two new sections into the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and widens the reach of a single phrase, "a person employing another person", to cover three arrangements it did not reach before: a worker's contract, an individual sub-contractor, and an online matching service.

The third is written for platforms. The Act describes a person who keeps a register of service providers, runs an online service matching them with clients or customers, and charges a fee or commission when a match happens. Substitution is caught too, where a contract lets one person pass the work to somebody else.

How many people does that reach? The Home Office impact assessment published on 7 May 2025 gives a central estimate of 3.75 million additional working arrangements, with a low of 2.5 million and a high of 5 million. How many businesses? The assessment says the number is not known.

A check is costed three ways: £1.79 through the Home Office online service, £2.44 carried out by hand, £2.82 through a certified identity provider. Over ten years the assessment puts £90 million on business and £14 million on households, on the central estimate.

Then it reaches the benefits, and stops. "It was not possible to monetise the benefits of this measure." No figure for illegal working prevented. No figure for people deterred. The net present social value, on the central estimate, is minus £103 million.

That is the government's own arithmetic, in its own document, published sixteen months before the duty starts.

Behind the duty sits a penalty. The starting point for a civil penalty is £45,000 for each worker on a first breach and £60,000 on a repeat, levels in force since 13 February 2024, when they rose from £15,000 and £20,000.

One more thing about today. The assessment costs a business £31.82 to read the guidance, and describes that as between 35 and 171 minutes of somebody's time.

The finished guidance was published this morning. It runs to 83 pages. A draft had been up since 11 September and was taken down today, ten pages shorter than the version that replaced it. The statutory code of practice, which is the law rather than the explanation of it, was updated on 30 June and has been settled since.

So the rules arrived on the same morning as the duty they explain.

We have written to the Home Office asking why the finished guidance landed on the day rather than before it, whether the 3.75 million estimate still stands, and what measure the department will use to judge whether this worked. We will print the answer in full whenever it arrives, including after publication.

WHY IT MATTERS HERE

If you engage anyone who is not on your payroll, a contractor, an agency temp, a subcontractor, or somebody you found through an app, the duty to check their right to work may be yours from today. The penalty for getting it wrong starts at £45,000 a head.