Migrants suffering 'modern slavery'

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Posing as a migrant worker, Lithuanian journalist Audrius Lelkaitis was paid below the minimum wage and forced to share a room with 11 other men and women, the BBC Ten O'Clock News reported on Wednesday.

He paid £340 to two agencies for the promise of a job in Hull, but when he arrived there was no work immediately available for him.

After working for 120 hours he was paid just £47 in cash - for the 20 hours he worked in his first week, minus the £50 a week he paid for his cramped lodgings.

As he had no written contract this was the first he knew about having to work two weeks in advance, the BBC said.

Deputy Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell, programme director of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, told the BBC: "This quite clearly is labour exploitation.

"Certain elements are there - there's a deception and there's a movement of people with an expectation of being paid a reasonable and appropriate wage.

"From what we've seen in the film and the clip that doesn't seem to be the case.

"This is a kind of forced or bonded labour. This is modern-day slavery."

Mike Dickenson, director of licensed gangmaster Focus Staff Ltd, which employed Mr Lelkaitis in Hull, told the BBC: "I don't underpay my workers. Everything I do is legal and above board."