“The government had an opportunity to take decisive action to protect some of the most vulnerable workers in the country. Instead, they have chosen a path that prioritises administrative convenience over human dignity.”
Jamila Duncan-Bosu, an employment lawyer and co-founder of the Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit

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Over the past fortnight, the horrors contained in the Epstein files have seemed endless. First and foremost for the victims themselves – people whose voices, as my colleague Eleanor Rose wrote last week, have been repeatedly left out of the subsequent conversation.

And yet, as a journalist who has spent two decades reporting on corruption among the global elite, I desperately hope that this is a watershed moment. I think it will be.

We ended the week with some astonishing news: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a member of the royal family, was arrested. It may turn out to be one of the biggest fallouts from the Epstein files. We don’t yet know how this will all play out, but one thing feels clear – there’s no going back to a pre-Epstein world.

Now we’ve all seen these files, it is impossible for anyone to uphold the pretence that corruption is simply a matter of “bad apples”. The files reveal in grim detail exactly how the self-interested members of the elite manipulate and advance themselves at the cost of the countries many of them are meant to serve.

The names that appear in the files connect the worlds of royalty, politics, banking, business and tech. Zoom out, and a global network emerges.

That’s why this is more than just another news event. Even if we feel that on some level we knew it all along, we still shouldn’t underestimate how this will upend the tone of our politics, business and society. The mask is off.

Most public scandals spark a brief period of blood-letting before the noise fades and everyone moves on. But this one could be different. Centres of power, both political and corporate, are now vulnerable.

I wrote a piece this week to share the hope I feel about how this moment might actually improve accountability in politics and society – and to tell you how, by supporting journalists like us at the Bureau, you are part of this change. You can become a member from just £5 per month, the price of a coffee, by clicking the button below:

One of the perks members get is priority access to our events, including TBIJ Live. The next one is on Wednesday February 25  at 6pm, when we will go behind-the-scenes of our recent stories on how an influencer made a fortune making anti-migrant AI slop. You can sign up here:

With the UK government tripping through one crisis after another, you’d be forgiven for missing its failure to protect the rights of workers.

Seasonal farm workers – whose widespread exploitation on precarious visas we exposed – deserve some basic protections. That was the finding of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee in July 2024, when it said they should be guaranteed at least two months’ pay to help them avoid debt traps and that wages needed to be increased to curb exploitation.

Our reporting showed how many workers face bullying, wage theft and even physical assault, as large-scale farm owners exploit the fact that they are so desperate to work that they can’t blow the whistle on this abuse and exploitation. In the government committee’s report, one employee was quoted as saying that “bosses and supervisors treat the workers like slaves” at the farm he works at.

Last month, the government finally responded to the report, but dismissed its findings, drawing ire from its very own party.

Brian Leishman, Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, said he had spoken to seasonal workers about their working conditions and the government should have accepted the committee’s “reasonable and evidence-based recommendations”.

“[The recommendations] are not radical steps, they are basic rights that all workers should expect when working in the UK,” he said.

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

After winning £30,000 at tribunal, a former worker at London cafe chain Crussh still hasn’t been paid – and instead got this WhatsApp from a company director: “Glad you didn’t get a penny from your claim as you deserve fck all.”

The employment tribunal ordered the owners of Crussh to compensate two former members of staff. However, the company twice declared insolvency and never paid either worker.

Thousands of people who have won employment tribunal judgments have not been paid what they are owed. In many cases this is because companies were wound up before they could be forced to pay up.

Read more here. 

While the government is failing to protect worker rights, MPs are now investigating another issue we uncovered: air pollution from US-style industrial poultry farming.

These farms can be huge chicken warehouses supplying big corporations. Back in 2024 we revealed how their ammonia emissions posed a serious risk to people living in parts of Wales, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and counties surrounding the River Wye.

Now, as part of the environment audit select committee’s inquiry into air pollution, MPs will look into ammonia from agriculture specifically – including differences across the country.

Announcing the inquiry last month, Toby Perkins MP, the committee’s chair, called air pollution “a scourge of our precious natural environment and a profound threat to our health”. He said that it disproportionately affected some of society’s most disadvantaged groups and that any just transition to a net zero society needed to tackle the problem urgently.

I’ve been able to share a lot recently about how our work in the family courts has been changing the lives of families up and down the country. Hannah Summers, our reporter, was the first full-time family courts reporter in the country.

But we want her to be the first of many. That’s why she’s mentoring three other journalists to help them navigate a tricky environment and shed more light on a neglected area.

That project is already paying dividends. One of Hannah’s mentees, Jessica Bradley, recently brought a legal challenge to get access to psychological reports that would let her better understand and explain what is going on in four cases she’s covering.

Jessica was supported pro bono by the indomitable barrister Charlotte Proudman. And they won!