Alok Sharma, the business secretary, has pledged to investigate claims that Leicester garment factories ordered sick employees to carry on working as normal despite the Covid-19 pandemic, over concerns such action precipitated a surge of cases in the city. The allegations concerning factory employees being forced to work despite high levels of infection on site, a lack of social distancing, as well as claims of “furlough fraud”, arose from a report by the campaigners Labour Behind the Label, revealed by the Guardian. Sharma has vowed to look into the claims as fears are raised that a disregard for health and safety measures in Leicester’s factories could be leading to increased infections in the locality. The business secretary told Times Radio on Wednesday: “The fact that this has come to light I think means that we will be able to look into this and I’m quite sure that if there have been breaches they will be dealt with.” Dominique Muller, the author of the campaigners’ report, welcomed the pledge to investigate but added: “The government should have picked up on this long ago. They should be undertaking proper monitoring of garment factories. They’ve been aware of reports of illegality in the Leicester garment industry for a long time and done nothing. We hope very much that all the allegations will now be investigated. “Ultimately this is too little, too late. The fact that coronavirus has taken hold in Leicester again is a powerful reminder of the need to investigate these problems proactively, not wait for the crisis to hit and then act.” The government has faced renewed criticism over the pace with which it acted in Leicester. With the city of more than 300,000 people accounting for one in 10 Covid-19 cases nationwide in the last week, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced Monday evening in the Commons that in Leicester non-essential shops would be shut and schools closed to most pupils for at least a fortnight. The city’s garment factories have been the subject of concern for years; the mostly migrant workers are paid as little as £3 an hour in some cases. The authors of the Labour Behind the Label report noted factories’ “shameful disregard” for worker safety. They have accused brands located in Leicester – including the online retailer Boohoo, which they said accounted for at least 75% of the city’s clothing production – of failing to do enough to monitor conditions at the factories of its suppliers. One unnamed employee was quoted in the report as saying he had told his employer he was unwell but was instructed to come in to work anyway, even after testing positive for coronavirus. He was told not to tell any other workers about the result, the report said. Another worker in one factory with 80 staff told the authors of the report that about 15 people had Covid-19 at the same time. In a number of factories workers said there had been no physical distancing measures in place, and employers closed sites for only for a few days, if at all. The report also highlighted “furlough fraud”, with claims workers had been asked to hide payslips so that management could claim more public money, and being told to come to work if they wished to be paid furlough money. Sharma added during the interview on Wednesday: “We’ve published very clear guidance in terms of how ... employers should be keeping the workplace safe, to ensure that workers are safe at the same time. “Clearly, if anybody has any concerns they should get in touch with the local authority, and health and safety executive … we’ve made sure we’ve given more funding to the Health and Safety Executive precisely because we want to make sure that where there are breaches they are investigated. That is something that I think we take incredibly seriously so I hope that’s what will happen.” The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority said it was “committed to working with partners to ensure that workers in industries across the UK were safe during the coronavirus pandemic and not having their employment rights eroded or abused”. The authority said that in the last week it had visited three textile factories in Leicester alongside Health and Safety Executive officials but found “no evidence of any modern slavery offences”. A business department source said: “The Health and Safety Executive are leading on this and are currently looking into these reports.” A spokesperson for HSE said: “While we have responded to a number of concerns, we will review this report to establish whether further action needs to be taken. We are working alongside Leicester city council and others in the regulation of workplace health and safety and will work with the local public health authorities to support their understanding of any patterns in the disease in Leicester. “In Leicester we are actively investigating three textile businesses, have recently contacted 17 and undertaken three site visits. Enforcement action is being taken at one of these sites and further spot inspections will take place in the area in the coming days and weeks. “We will take enforcement action where necessary and have had continued interactions with key business across Leicester throughout the pandemic to ensure they are working in accordance with health and safety regulations and social distancing measures. We are also working with a number of agencies committed to tackling labour abuse.” Responding to the report’s findings, Boohoo said in a statement that it had “fundamentally changed” the way it operated following the coronavirus outbreak. It said: “Every decision we have made has had the safety and wellbeing of our people at heart.” It said it was confident that those in its supply chain were operating safely, and that it had provided free PPE and sanitiser. Emphasising its strict code of conduct, it said: “None of our suppliers have been affected at this time and we are pleased that our in-house compliance team have been able to resume their work. Our third-party auditors are also out visiting sites this week.” Last year, a report by the parliamentary environmental audit committee found wage exploitation was flourishing in Leicester and across the sector more broadly. It was an “open secret” that many of the 1,000 or so factories and workshops in the city were paying below the minimum wage, MPs behind the report heard. HSE was promised an extra £14m by the government, after trade unions warned that deep cuts to its budget meant it would be unable to enforce “Covid-secure” guidelines that are meant to avoid workplace outbreaks. But the TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said there was still a lack of “boots on the ground” to inspect factories and other workplaces effectively. “You need people with local knowledge, who know the places to check, who have good, local intelligence,” she said. With a better inspection regime in place, she suggested a city-wide lockdown might have been avoidable. “I think one of the genuine dilemmas about Leicester is that I think for many people it will feel like collective punishment for what is a series of mini-outbreaks.”