Thirteen gangmasters are under investigation after an unannounced raid of labour providers in the flower, plant and bulb industry in Lincolnshire.

Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) officers, with the assistance of the Vehicle & Operator Services Agency (VOSA), entered the premises of a number of nurseries in Spalding and Boston, inspected vehicles used to transport workers and carried out worker interviews on several daffodil fields in the area.

The gangmasters were supplying hundreds of mainly English, Polish and Slovakian workers to pick daffodils and work in the nurseries.

Officers found:

- workers were transported on a plank of wood held up by breeze blocks in the back of a transit van

- some workers had been charged GBP60 a week for accommodation and had not been given any work for three weeks

- workers were required to surrender their passports to the gangmaster

- agricultural minimum wage was not paid

- excessive accommodation charges, some charges were over GBP30 per week more than the legal requirement for minimum wage workers.

- workers did not receive holiday pay

- workers were charged for Personal Protective Equipment to carry out their jobs

VOSA issued two prohibition notices on minibuses used to transport workers.

The aim of the raid was to enforce legal requirements and identify unlicensed gangmasters activity at a peak time of production.

During the extensive three-day operation, over 130 workers were interviewed and GLA officers unearthed evidence of numerous violations and abuses of workers' rights. The GLA have since been carrying out further investigations and thirteen inspections of gangmaster businesses and their records will be taking place shortly to follow up the initial findings.

Paul Whitehouse, chairman of the GLA said: "When a worker does not get a chance to work and owes mounting accommodation debts to the gangmaster they are in grave danger of exploitation. Debt bondage is a disgrace and I will not stand for it."