Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking Regulations: NHS
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)
I beg to move,
That the draft National Health Service (Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 9 September, be approved.
I am here on behalf of the Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). It is an honour to represent the Government as we bring forward this important secondary legislation, and it is right that it should be given the full scrutiny of the House today.
Slavery is one of the greatest evils in human history. This Government cannot and will not accept that we could be supporting forced labour or human trafficking through our supply chains, however inadvertently. Before I continue, I acknowledge the cross-party support on this issue, both in this House and in the other place. I pay tribute to all hon. and right hon. Members and peers of the realm, such as Lord Alton, who have worked tirelessly to put modern slavery at the forefront of our national conversation.
I begin by setting out why we need the regulations. Many people are taken aback when they are told that there are more enslaved people now, in absolute terms, than at any point in human history. It is estimated that around 50 million people worldwide are living in some form of modern slavery. Globalisation has provided near-limitless opportunities for trade in goods and services, but also, unfortunately, in human beings. Though we on these isles would like to think that we are insulated from the highways of human trafficking, we are not.
In late 2023, the previous Government published a review into NHS supply chains that covered 60% of medical consumables. It accounted for £7 billion of spend across 1,300 suppliers, representing 600,000 products, and a fifth of those suppliers were deemed to be high risk. Imagine my horror when I read that some of the tools of my trade—surgical instruments, facemasks—could be contaminated by modern slavery. As someone who still practises as a surgeon, I know that I share that revulsion with my colleagues across the national health service. I ask my colleagues in this place to keep all our NHS staff in mind over the course of our proceedings.
The review also recognised the wider benefits to the NHS of a better understanding of how our supply chains work, noting how we could improve the quality of products supplied and the resilience of supply. It gave us clear recommendations for us to act on and today I am proud to come to the House with landmark modern slavery legislation to put those policies into practice. This is a first on these isles and I sincerely hope that our colleagues across the devolved Governments can follow suit soon.
I now turn to what the regulations will do. The NHS is one of the largest public sector procurers in the world, with an annual spend of £35 billion, doing business with over 80,000 suppliers. We have a duty to ensure that no products we procure could be tainted by forced labour, and an opportunity to use our immense purchasing power for global good.
The regulations we bring forward today will require all public bodies to assess modern slavery risks in their supply chains when procuring goods and services for the health service in England. They give effect to a duty established by the Health and Care Act 2022, which requires the Secretary of State to eradicate modern slavery wherever it is found in NHS procurement processes. We are asking public bodies to take reasonable steps to address and eliminate modern slavery risks, especially when designing procurement procedures, awarding and managing contracts and setting up frameworks or dynamic markets.
Reasonable steps may include enforcing robust conditions of participation in our supply chains, with assessment criteria built into every stage of that process. They may include monitoring suppliers’ compliance and reassessing risk throughout the lifetime of a contract. They can also include writing terms that require immediate mitigation where instances of modern slavery are discovered. The regulations will also require public bodies to have regard to any relevant guidance issued by the Department of Health and Social Care or NHS England for consistency and accountability across the system. The updated version of the guidance has now been published by NHS England and is publicly available.
Colleagues might be worried about legislative overlap. They might ask themselves why we need new regulations when modern slavery is already illegal, but these regulations have been carefully drafted to fit with existing statute, and I can assure the House that contradictory duties have been avoided. We are building on existing measures, such as the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Procurement Act 2023, not replacing them. We are bringing all NHS England’s procurement into scope and creating a stronger legislative footing for enforcement. The point is to introduce a single, enforceable risk management approach to modern slavery across the NHS, and we will continue to review our arrangements to ensure that they remain effective for years to come.
I do not pretend that this will be easy. If there was a button somewhere in Whitehall or inside the national health service that could eliminate modern slavery at a stroke, I do not doubt that all of us would push it, but our supply chains are vast, making it difficult to fully assess the scale. Although the 2023 review was just a snapshot in time, it is likely that more than a fifth of our supply chains are still at high risk of modern slavery. Items include cotton-based products, surgical instruments and PPE gloves—all products that are vital for the day-to-day functioning of hospitals and clinics up and down the country. That is why we will back NHS organisations with clear guidance and support to root out the scourge of modern slavery wherever we find it.
There is an argument that we could procure these items on the cheap if we could just turn a blind eye, but that way of thinking is abhorrent and fundamentally un-British. We cannot simply weigh such things on the scale of a tradesman behind a counter, and we must remember our historical responsibility in eliminating slavery wherever we find it. But even if we could do that, ethical supply chains have been proven to be cost effective in the long term. There is a strong case that they help to avoid litigation and, more important, supplier collapse. Even if that were not the case, I know the will of the British people, and I have not a shred of doubt that decent people across our country will not think modern slavery a price tag worth paying. This place, the mother of Parliaments, is here to answer a call today and to send a message to all enslaved people across the world: what is happening to you is unjust, but we have not forgotten, and we will do our utmost to ensure that our money does not go to those that exploit you and keep you in chains.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the draft National Health Service (Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking) Regulations 2025. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), for bringing forward the regulations and welcome him to his place at the Dispatch Box.
This important issue goes to the very heart of the values that underpin our national health service. It is a vast organisation—one of the largest in the world—with supply chains that reach across many sectors and many countries. With that scale comes a responsibility to ensure that the products and services we rely on to care for patients are sourced ethically, and that the health service does not, even inadvertently, contribute to exploitation or modern slavery.
As an NHS consultant, I know that the idea that any item used in the care of patients, from surgical gloves to hospital linen, could have been produced through exploitation or forced labour is abhorrent to all of us. These regulations seek to strengthen the NHS’s ability to identify, prevent and address such risks—an ambition that I am sure commands support right across the House. Indeed, this work began under the last Conservative Government. The Health and Care Act 2022 passed new regulations to address the risk of modern slavery in NHS supply chains, and in December 2023 we delivered a review into those risks, supported by NHS England, which examined where the greatest risks lay and how they could be mitigated. Although we welcome the direction of travel, there are, however, some important questions about how the regulations will work in practice and how we will ensure that the regulations deliver what is intended in a fair way.
First, what demands do we expect that the regulations will place on the NHS? They apply to all public bodies procuring goods and services for the NHS in England, including NHS England, hospital trusts and integrated care boards. Will each organisation have to make its own separate risk assessment? Has an estimation been made of the time that that is expected to take? How many people are expected to be required for organisations to fulfil the requirement, and what will be the associated cost? Will any mechanisms be put in place to prevent duplication, for example, where suppliers are already reporting under the Modern Slavery Act 2015?
Secondly, I turn to implementation and support. Regulations are not enough on their own; they must be embedded in practice. What steps will NHS England take to support procurement teams in applying these rules consistently and effectively and in maintaining the same standards across all the public sector bodies that are covered by these regulations? The regulations require NHS England to issue guidance, which is welcome, but how comprehensive will that guidance be? With NHS England being abolished, who will produce it? Will there be accompanying training and practical support for procurement teams to ensure consistency across the system? What will happen to a supplier if they are found to be non-compliant? Will the consequences be decided by NHS England centrally, or by individual trusts or ICBs? Will there be independent oversight to assess progress? With all the churn in NHS England and ICBs and the cuts to their budgets, how will they have the time and space to do that?
Next, I turn to the impact on business. The NHS relies on a wide range of suppliers, many of which are small and medium-sized businesses that bring innovation, flexibility and local expertise. Can the Minister confirm that the new requirements will not place undue burdens on suppliers or deter small businesses from bidding for NHS contracts? We must uphold the highest ethical standards, but we must also avoid creating unnecessary bureaucracy that excludes capable businesses from contributing to patient care.
Finally, I turn to the issue of co-ordination across Government. Many NHS goods are sourced internationally from complex and often opaque global supply chains. It is crucial, therefore, that our framework aligns with the broader cross-Government effort to tackle modern slavery, including at the Home Office and the Foreign Office. I would be grateful if the Minister outlined how those links are maintained in practice.
The question of co-ordination is not new. During the passage of the Great British Energy Act 2025, an amendment was introduced in the Lords to stop GB Energy from sourcing panels linked to forced labour. The Government’s initial position was that existing laws already addressed that risk, but later down the road, the Government heeded those calls by introducing their own amendment to block GB Energy from using slavery-linked solar. That episode shows how important it is to have clear and joined-up action across Government when addressing the risks of modern slavery.
The NHS should be a beacon of integrity as well as excellence. Patients and the public rightly expect that the care provided in our hospitals is not, however indirectly, tainted by the exploitation of others. The regulations are a step forward in ensuring that our health service lives up to that ideal. We welcome the intent and the ambition behind the regulations, but we will continue to push to ensure that they work in practice and without unintended consequences.
Dr Ahmed
I am grateful for the comments of the Opposition health spokesperson. Proportionality is the theme of the day when it comes to anything that we implement in the NHS at a global scale. The appropriate training will be provided. As the hon. Lady well knows from her time in government, conversations across Departments, particularly on these issues, are always ongoing. We are always willing and able to flex as we learn and as we feel our way through these regulations. The hon. Lady will recognise their importance and primacy when engaging in supplier contract negotiations, and therefore businesses both small and large can feel confident that, if they follow ethical procurement practices, their business is most welcome in the national health service.
I want to end by reminding colleagues that these regulations are not just about what we can do on these isles but what we can do to eliminate modern slavery across the globe. NHS England is one of the biggest buying organisations in the UK. We have a golden opportunity at the moment to leverage its purchasing power to influence supply chains not only in the UK and Europe but right across the world. Today, Parliament can send a clear signal to the world that we will not tolerate human rights abuses and that, if a company wants to do business with the NHS, they must get their house in order. Under this Government, there will be no compromise with the evil of slavery. I ask colleagues from all sides to help us to keep that promise, to back our NHS and its staff and to help us to keep this country’s conscience clean. I commend the regulations to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft National Health Service (Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 9 September, be approved.