Article by Emiliano Mellino republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

George Madgwick has multiple tribunal rulings against him for unpaid wages

When Nigel Farage declared that young people should be paid less, George Madgwick leapt to his defence.

Madgwick, a restaurateur and Reform’s most senior councillor in Portsmouth, told the radio station LBC young people were being paid too much and were priced out of jobs. He admitted that reducing the minimum wage for those under 21 would be unpopular, but said politicians “need to start being honest with the general population”.

But what he didn’t disclose was that employment tribunals have found that some of his own companies failed to pay employees wages and holiday pay.

In total, two of his businesses have been ordered to pay £4,386 to former employees for breaching employment law. Madgwick told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) he is contesting the tribunals’ rulings, which he says were made without the companies having opportunity to defend the claims. So far his businesses have not paid the sums awarded to his former staff.

Only the most shameless employer would tell young people they’re paid too much while failing to pay their own staff’s wages

Bryan Simpson, Unite

A recent TBIJ investigation found that thousands of people who have won cases against their employers have not been paid what they are owed, even after the government intervened.

According to one of the judgments, an employee of Madgwick’s Signature by the Wicks restaurant, was unable to claim maternity pay because it had failed to provide her with a contract or pay statements.

The tribunal ordered the business to pay £1,800 to make up for the unpaid maternity pay, as well as £400 in unpaid wages and £1,120 in unpaid holiday pay.

Another of Madgwick’s businesses, Parnells Food Outlets Ltd, had two separate judgments against it, one for unauthorised deduction of wages and another for unpaid holiday pay.

Bryan Simpson, the national lead for the Unite union’s hospitality sector, said Madgwick’s companies represent everything that is wrong with unscrupulous hospitality employers.

“Only the most shameless employer would tell young people they’re paid too much while failing to pay their own staff’s wages, holiday pay, and even denying a new mum her legal right to a contract, costing them hundreds in maternity pay,” he said.

“You can’t preach about hard work when you won’t even pay your workers — this is exploitation dressed up as opinion from Reform’s leader on Portsmouth council.”

Even though the most recent judgment was handed down more than two years ago, Madgwick told TBIJ he only became aware of the tribunal cases recently.

Recommended Articles

• Revealed: thousands of rogue bosses have failed to pay tribunal awards
• ‘Glad you didn’t get a penny’: cafe boss gloats over unpaid tribunal money
• Choose your own adventure: can you claim the tribunal money you’re owed?

He said the tribunal had served notice of the claims to his companies’ addresses after he had vacated the premises, leaving him unable to defend himself as he didn’t get any letters or notices about the cases.

Madgwick says the hearings took place without him or his businesses having any awareness or legal representation. He said he has now applied for the judgments to be reconsidered, but he didn’t want to provide any evidence or copies of those applications while the legal proceedings were ongoing.

Both businesses are still listed as active on Companies House but have not filed accounts for several years. The law requires directors to keep the addresses of their businesses up to date. This is in part so that documents sent to them are received by a company official.

Madgwick said that both companies had been dormant since 2022 and were in the process of being formally wound up “with all necessary filings and notifications”. He suggested that the employment tribunal cases were delaying the winding up process.

TBIJ has not seen the applications Madgwick has submitted to overturn the judgments. However, several lawyers told TBIJ that if the tribunal were to find that the documents were validly served at the registered company address, it was unlikely that the tribunal would be sympathetic to his attempts to have the matters reviewed.

Madgwick is listed as a shareholder of 15 other businesses – all are dissolved and most never filed accounts. He told TBIJ that “almost all of them were non-trading dormant companies that were set up as holding names, mostly over 10 years ago”.

Earlier this month Madgwick used his experience of the hospitality sector to argue in favour of Farage’s suggestion to lower the minimum wage for young people. He told LBC: “It’s not outrageous. I own restaurants, that is my job. I own businesses in hospitality. I’m telling you now – I’ve employed a lot of young people. A lot of really good young people too. But there are certain qualities, especially in hospitality, that you can’t learn without age. Interactions with customers, for example.”

He has subsequently claimed on facebook that Reform is “the party of workers”.

Cal Corkery, a councillor who sits on Portsmouth council’s employment committee, said Reform may claim to be on the side of working people, but their proposal to “cut the minimum wage for young workers shows whose side they’re really on.”

“Led nationally by an ex-banker and locally here in Portsmouth by a businessman whose companies have repeatedly broken employment law, Reform are exposing themselves as just another party of the privileged elite,” he said.

Madgwick was a member of the Portsmouth Independents Party (PIP) until he defected to Reform earlier this year. All but two of Reform’s eight councillors in Portsmouth were previously members of PIP.

Header image: George Madgwick and the site of his former restaurant, Signature by the Wicks. Design by Oliver Kemp

Reporters: Emiliano Mellino
Bureau Local editor: Gareth Davies
Deputy Editor: Chrissie Giles
Editor: Franz Wild
Production editor: Frankie Goodway
Fact checker: Ero Partsakoulaki

TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.

Article by Emiliano Mellino republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.