exclude employers from any liability for redundancy or other payments if an employee was dismissed for failure to produce an identity document. The legislation would also allow for a defence by employers who, through no fault of their own, were found to have employed a person without proof of identity. The period of grace for evaders already here (paragraph 50) would be useful to employers to ensure that all their employees without an identity document applied for one.
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A possible aid to the enforcement of this measure would be an obligation on employers to maintain a record of the identity documents produced to them by their employees. Without such a record it would be more difficult to establish that the person concerned was acutally employed. (Normally only random checks are envisaged, unless there are grounds for suspicion). It is not, on the other hand, an indispensable element, since the check would anyhow have to include an approach to the employees themselves, and it represents an additional, albeit not unduly onerous, requirement on employers, with penalties for non-compliance. No final decision has yet been made and Members may wish to proffer advice on this point.