Something significant happened this week and almost nobody noticed.

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On Tuesday, a new government agency quietly came into existence with the power to walk into any British workplace, demand to see your records, and fine you twice what you owe if they don’t like what they find.

Welcome to the Fair Work Agency: Labour’s new employment super-regulator, and the most significant change to employment law enforcement in a generation.

For thirty years, the enforcement model in this country has been essentially complaint-driven. A worker is underpaid, the worker complains, and the authorities investigate. The system depended almost entirely on workers being brave enough, or desperate enough, to come forward. Widespread non-compliance went quietly unpunished. Employers who knew their workers wouldn’t complain could take the risk.

That model is now dead.

The Fair Work Agency, which launched on 7 April, brings together three........

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