Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 93, in my name, which adopts an approach similar to that of my noble friend’s Amendment 86P. I agree with what he said. We both agree that we should put the national referral mechanism on a statutory basis, as the Joint Committee recommended. I need to go over some of the same ground as he did, but there are also some other issues that I want to put into play in trying to convince the Government that a statutory basis is the right basis for the NRM.

Before I make my case, I should briefly explain why I am taking an approach different from that of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, in his Amendment 86M, which we discussed on Monday. I agree with him that Clause 48 is totally unsatisfactory, but I am not sure that it is right to put on the face of the Bill as much detail as there was in his amendment. That is why, in my amendment, I have gone for a set of regulation-making powers on given subjects.

My amendment is intended to give effect to the recommendation in the report by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill that the Bill should be amended,

“to give statutory authority for the NRM to ensure greater consistency in its operation, decision-making and provision of victim support services”.

Those are the critical reasons why this mechanism should be not an internal administrative system but one that has clearly been endorsed by Parliament. Our recommendation is clearly stated and set out in paragraph 82 of the Joint Committee’s report. My amendment would not hamstring the Home Office too much—I shall come back to that later.

Instead of laying out a lot of detail in the Bill, my amendment would enable the Home Secretary to make regulations in six key areas, and includes a provision for the inclusion of,

“such other matters as the Secretary of State considers appropriate to the new body”.

This approach to regulation-making gives the Home Office plenty of discretion for adapting the scheme as circumstances require. It does not fix for all time the role or the precise remit of the NRM. If we put a clause of this nature into the Bill, there will be plenty of flexibility in the regulation-making approach,

The six key areas in my amendment are the very ones identified by the Home Secretary as the subject of the Review of the National Referral Mechanism for Victims of Human Trafficking, as summarised in paragraph 2.1.3 of the report. I have not gone for widening the NRM’s role in any way; my amendment covers the topics that the Home Secretary said the review of the NRM had to cover. When Ministers set up that review, they knew that the Joint Committee would be recommending an NRM with a statutory basis. We came to that conclusion before we drafted the report and we informed the Home Office, so it did know that that was the road that we would traverse. There was plenty of opportunity for the Home Secretary to consider that issue in the context of the review. It is striking that, if we read the review fully, we find that it very much makes the case for putting the NRM on a statutory basis.

One point that I would draw attention to is in subsection (3) of my amendment, which gives effect to another Joint Committee recommendation, in paragraph 91 of its report, that,

“competent authority status be removed from UK Visas and Immigration”.

We saw a conflict of interest between determining immigration and asylum status and determining whether someone was a victim of trafficking. I will not detain the House with the evidence for that recommendation, but it is set out very clearly in paragraphs 84 to 90 of the Joint Committee report. The evidence and this amendment are absolutely consistent with the recommendations of the NRM review report at paragraphs 7.4.1 and 7.4.5. The amendment is drafted to be consistent with the findings of that review.

The Joint Committee heard a huge variety of evidence and arguments in favour of making the NRM a statutory-based mechanism, which were very much the same sets of arguments and evidence that was put before the review. We were told by Anti-Slavery International that the current arrangements,

“led to arbitrariness of application and access for victims”.

Others said that giving victims statutory rights would make claiming and enforcing those rights more straightforward and transparent. We were told that a statutory NRM was necessary for the UK to fulfil its international obligations as well as securing the most effective victim identification process.

Let me briefly illustrate the many concerns about a non-statutory NRM with the case of Ms O, who was a victim of trafficking, covered and cited in detail on page 61 of the Joint Committee report. Ms O was effectively kept in custody for nearly a year, despite the fact that people knew that she was a victim of trafficking. That is an appalling outcome for a person who was identified as a victim of trafficking, and that is what took place under a non-statutory-based NRM. All those issues are very clearly set out in the NRM review, which effectively makes the case, as I said earlier, for a statutory-based NRM.

I have spent much of the time in this Committee arguing for the Home Office Ministers and officials to get off the back of the anti-slavery commissioner and widen his remit. The NRM is a subject where the Home Secretary and her officials need to get more involved and design a statutory-based system that provides much more consistency and better identification and support for victims, has more credibility and speed of independent decision-making and is more fit to work alongside an Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. I want the Home Office to get more involved, and I hope that in responding to the NRM review it will have a change of heart and commit to putting the NRM on a statutory basis.

I do not expect every “i” to be dotted and “t” to be crossed on this new system before Royal Assent but, before the Bill leaves this House, I hope that we can agree with the Minister the terms of a new clause that gives the Home Secretary regulation-making powers subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

Finally, I have deliberately described in my new clause a “National Referral Mechanism replacement”. I do not regard the name, “national referral mechanism”, as particularly clear or helpful, and I would hope that we could find a better title, embracing words such as “slavery”, “victims” and “safeguarding”. How about the “Slavery Victims Safeguarding Authority”? Something along those lines would give a true indication of what this mechanism is actually all about. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 96 is in this group. I start by saying that I entirely support the idea of the previous speakers that we should have a statutory national referral mechanism, although perhaps with more felicitous wording, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has just suggested.

My proposal is much more modest. The reason for it is this. At the moment we have a very poor double system. There is the UKHTC in Birmingham, which provides, as we have heard, an 80% yes rate to victims, as opposed to the UKVI, which says that only 20% get through. Clearly, that is unacceptable. We also have two reviews from Jeremy Oppenheim which, in my view, are absolutely excellent. As I understand it, the Government have agreed in principle to the fundamental and radical changes that the second, final review has asked for. However, it seems to me that there needs to be some time for consultation, for arranging to get these panels around the country and for arranging how, in fact, a new, better described NRM should work.

My proposal is that the Secretary of State should have the power to make regulations to establish this statutory committee, leaving it to the Home Office to work it out. However, in order to keep them up to the mark, the Secretary of State must report to Parliament within 12 months of the Bill becoming law, in order to say that they will actually do it. At the end of the day, we undoubtedly need a statutory system. But I believe that we need some leeway to work out how it should be. That is why my amendments, in my view, are very modest.

If I may respectfully say so, it would be very unwise of the Government not to listen to this. We have the two reviews of the NRM and we have what the Joint Committee has said, which has been set out so well by the noble Lord, Lord Warner—of course, I was a member of the committee. I totally support the proposals of our Select Committee and of the two reviews. All I am saying is that the Government should have a bit of time to think it over, but not so much time that the matter goes into what is sometimes called the long grass, because this really has to come. The current situation cannot go on for much longer because it is so patently wrong. That has been set out very clearly in the two reviews of the national referral mechanism.

I hope that, at the least, the Government will accept my amendment. I would have no objection to the Government accepting either of the other amendments that have come forward. However, I have no doubt that, one way or another, within the next 12 to 18 months, we will need to have a statutory mechanism for dealing with victim identification and support.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment for all the reasons that she has given. Never say never; in fact, let us say, “Let’s get on with it”—but let us get on with it in an appropriate way, which must include consultation. Jeremy Oppenheim’s review made very clear the lack of understanding of processes and the variability in standards across the mechanism. I found myself thinking, “Well, no wonder, because it is such a loose process that it is quite difficult to get to grips with”. When I first heard of it, a few years ago, it took me some time to understand just what this was about, given that it is so lacking in obvious governance arrangements and so in need of something against which one could appeal if one was dissatisfied with an outcome.

The two paragraphs—there may be more—of the NRM review that refer to the possibility of a statutory basis do not actually put it out of the question. Paragraph 8.2.14 says that,

“we believe strongly that to put the National Referral Mechanism on a statutory footing now would not guarantee”,

remedying the flawed system. At paragraph 8.3.1, it says:

“Although there is much support for … a statutory footing or providing a right of appeal, these may not be necessary if we have a well governed National Referral Mechanism”.

The prospect is certainly not dismissed by the reviewer.

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[Lord Bates]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that suggestion. That is exactly what we will do. I undertake to take it away and reflect on it. If we come back, it will be more along the lines that he is talking about, where we will set out some broad general principles rather than being too prescriptive. The luxury that we have is because when it was set up by the previous Government, it was not set up on a statutory footing—it was not all in the legislation—and therefore we have been able to undertake this quite fast-paced process of review and recommendation, which will enable us to move far more quickly to fixing the system along the lines that we all want to see.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I would just like to pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said. It seems to me that the Government could put forward a very general proposition in relation to the national referral mechanism or statutory safeguarding organisation without tying themselves to how it would work. That seems to be the way forward because you would then have the power to put in whatever was appropriate after you had had the pilot schemes, which I am delighted to hear the Government are proposing to do. The important thing is for the Government not to tie themselves too much but to be able to come back and produce whatever is needed in any subsequent legislation, into which one could slip in an appropriate amendment. There will be no shortage of that, I suspect, with a future Government. If I may respectfully say so, something needs to be there to enable the Home Secretary of the day to go forward without having to look for some primary legislation.

[Lord Bates]

I accept that. I do not want to yield, as it were, to the position of saying that because we are being pressed by distinguished Members, we should give way on this. I have tried to put forward quite a robust argument as to why we have arrived where we have. We have before us a significant review of the national referral mechanism, which seems to address many of the concerns that people have recognised. That review, which everybody was in favour of and many people were involved in, came out against putting it on a statutory footing. We must take that into account but I give the assurance that, in the spirit that we have tried to keep all the way through this Bill, we will look at that very carefully and continue that discussion between now and Report.

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[Baroness Hanham (Con)]

My Lords, I greatly regret that I have not previously been able to take part in this Committee, having had conflicting commitments, but I very much hope to be able to rectify that on Report. I wanted to be here today for this amendment. What we have heard illustrates quite clearly what a desperate situation this is. In the debate on the previous amendment the Minister referred to “hidden victims”. If ever victims were hidden, it is in this domestic and overseas area. As other noble Lords have said, people do not know that they are there. They do not get out; they have no way of drawing people’s attention to the fact that they are abused. There is clearly so much wrong here that we cannot just ignore it.

As a member of the Joint Committee I should say that the committee was in absolute agreement on practically every part of our report, but this part affected us very deeply indeed. We very much hope that if the Government cannot accept this amendment they will give way to some extent so that we can go back to the situation as it was. As it is now, organisations such as Kalayaan that are involved in helping these victims are working with one hand tied behind their backs. They cannot do anything although they very much want to. I have not put my name to the amendment but I very much support the theory behind it regarding the problems that exist.

I will read a very short part from one of the briefings that we have received. It is from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, and although part of it has been referred to, it is worth repeating. It says:

“The government does not deny that overseas domestic workers need protection”.

Indeed, they do not. It continues:

“But it suggests that this can come from the police—

as has already been mentioned—

“ACAS, the pay and work rights helpline and employment tribunals”.

We are talking about people from poor families in India who, as we know, do not always speak English, so how on earth will they access ACAS? It is way out of the bounds of reality. As for employment tribunals, you can hardly get an employment tribunal if you work in this country, never mind if you come in on a tied visa. The briefing goes on to say:

“It places heavy demands upon a person in a situation of exploitation, enslavement and extreme poverty to reach any of these sources of help, let alone where they do not speak English and are isolated and alone; let alone when they are undocumented, fear removal and are reluctant to jeopardise”,

their income.

I shall refer just to the undocumented aspect. Clearly these people cannot get in without documentation and the appropriate visa. However, we have had plenty of evidence showing that the last time that some of these people see their documentation is when they come into the country. Their passports are whisked away from them as they leave the airport and they never know when they will see them again.

On Second Reading I asked if I could see the card, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, referred, that is given to people who come in as domestic workers. Bear in mind that they may not speak much English and do not always come from articulate families, and that they may not be able to read or write. The card is headed:

“Know your rights when working in the UK”—

a starter for 10. It says:

“Your employer should give you a written contract of your terms and conditions”—

fine. It continues:

“If your employer provides you with accommodation, they are allowed to deduct up to £5.08 per day from your wages. No other deductions can be made by them unless you agree to it in writing first, and even then you should still be paid at least the UK minimum wage”.

It also says:

“You have the right to be safe at work”,

which of course they have. In the next section, “Help and advice”, it says:

“For advice on pay and work rights”,

they should ring a number. Then it states:

“If you are being forced to work or your employer isn’t willing to respect your rights”,

ring another number; and:

“If you are in immediate danger call the emergency services”.

Half these people have had not only their passports but their phones taken away. They have no access to phones. They have no ability to ring any of those numbers.

I do not know the answer to this aspect of the problem. I recognise that this is the Border Force’s way of trying to get some information to people as they come in. I have not made any inquiries about how it is handed out, but if it is just plonked in somebody’s passport—a passport that is then taken away—as they come in, that is of no use whatever. If they do manage to hang on to it, if they need it at some stage, one hopes that somebody will be able to tell them what it means—but that person is not going to be the employer, because that is the person they would be trying to complain against.

I am afraid that I have gone on rather too long about how badly I feel about all this. My question to the Minister is: when these people come in—they come in on specific visas, so they are perfectly identifiable—does the Border Force interview any of them before handing them this leaflet, to try to find out whether they understand what is going on? Otherwise we are doing nothing with the leaflet, other than playing a game by saying, “This is how we are welcoming you, and this is what you should do”, when they do not understand.

I am sure that the Minister will listen carefully to this. The changes made in 2012 have clearly had a very adverse impact. I understand why some of them were made—in immigration legislation, for example—but on the other hand, we are not talking about huge numbers; these are just miserable people.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I fully support the amendment—as the Minister knows, because I told him some time ago. I take the view that the recent change in the visa for domestic servants is shocking, because it puts a relatively small number of people into an utterly impossible situation. They can choose either to continue to be a slave, or to be deported. That is just not acceptable.

However, if the Government are not disposed to do anything effective about the visa, they might be interested in some discussions that I have had with the creative and inventive researcher of Frank Field MP. He has come up with an analogy that the Minister might just find interesting. Women who come over here with a marriage visa and become the victims of domestic violence are entitled to what is called a DDV—destitution and domestic violence—concession. This concession allows them three months’ access to public funds while their cases are being sorted out by the Home Office, with a view to deciding whether they will be given the right to remain here, or whether, after those three months, they will have to go back.

I ask the Minister, at the very least, to say whether there is not a very close analogy between such a domestic servant and a woman coming over here with a marriage visa who then has to leave home because of domestic violence. Goodness me, some of the violence that women in domestic servitude suffer is probably worse than the domestic violence suffered by a woman who has come over with a marriage visa. I suggest that three months is too short a period for a victim of slavery, so I ask the Minister to consider the marriage visa and see whether the same conditions could apply, by analogy, to the visa for domestic servants. I ask for six months instead of three months for these women to sort themselves out, and for their cases to be sorted out by the Home Office. If at the end of six months they had to go back, that would be a rather different situation, because they would have had some time at least, with public benefit, to try to see what their future lives might be. The marriage visa analogy may not be as good as some other means, but I urge the Minister at least to look at it as a possible alternative.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, a powerful case has been made for the amendment, and I simply want to add my support. This is such an important issue, which goes to the heart of what the Bill is about. The Minister, in his letter to Peers after Second Reading, said that he shared noble Lords’ determination to stamp out all forms of modern slavery, including abuse of domestic workers. That is a welcome aspiration, which has been repeated in various forms in various places.

The centrality of this issue to the Bill is underlined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. On the basis of studies that it has funded, it writes that,

“there is most risk of forced labour where an individual’s work visa is tied to a particular employer. The most commonly cited example is the situation of overseas domestic workers who, since 2012, are again no longer allowed to change employers within the same category and hence become trapped in abusive situations”.

Evidence of the effects of being so trapped is, as we have heard, provided by organisations such as Kalayaan, which works with overseas domestic workers. I pay tribute to its work. Kalayaan argues that all the available evidence suggests that the change in the visa,

“has facilitated their exploitation and abuse, including trafficking”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has said, Kalayaan details numerous ways in which the abuse experienced by overseas domestic workers who register with them has worsened since the change in the rules.

In their response to the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, the Government suggested that the previous rules “potentially encouraged abuse” because they enabled employers to bring domestic workers to this country for longer periods. Do the Government have evidence of such abuse? Or is this a hypothetical potential, which needs to be set against the actual evidence of abuse that has happened since 2012? In that time, as we have heard, abuse and exploitation has got much worse. It should also be set against the fact that the pre-2012 regime was cited by both the ILO and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants as best practice. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has observed, this was one reason why the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, regarded,

“the removal of the right of an Overseas Domestic Worker to change employer as a backward step in the protection of migrant domestic workers.

We recommended that the Bill should be amended to reinstate the pre-2012 position.

Given the clear evidence of how the removal of that protection has facilitated abuse, given the Government’s own commitment to stamp out abuse of overseas domestic workers, and given that I feel both Ministers are reasonable people, I hope that they will feel able to take this amendment away, think again, and bring forward their own amendment before Report.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I am grateful to the Minister. If she is open to suggestions, I wonder what she is prepared to say about the analogy with the marriage visa. Would she at least take it away and look at it with a possibility of allowing up to six months of public benefit while they sort themselves and the Home Office sorts them?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise to the noble and learned Baroness. I think she is referring to the domestic violence concession, which is a three-month visa to allow people to come to the UK with an expectation that they will settle here and during those three months they must make an application to settle. That is specifically for those coming here to join family with the expectation of staying. Victims who are helping the police with an investigation already have access to discretionary leave of at least one year and one day, so they have an extended time over here to make their case, if they are already in contact with the police. I think from the suggestions that the noble and learned Baroness was making, they would probably already have had to make clear that they were victims of abuse. That would have become public and they would have found a way of making that known to the authorities.

We are obviously going to come back to this clause to try to set out ways of dealing with this issue. If noble Lords around the Committee who feel as anguished about this as obviously people do have clear suggestions as to how the Government could do more to help the situation so that we do not have anybody in the country who is a victim of abuse and slavery while in domestic employment, then we are more than ready to listen to them. We have already set and strengthened the systems of trying to make contact with the worker at the point of entry. After that, it may be very difficult to make contact with them, but when they are coming in at the point of entry they will have to present a passport and that is a moment when the authorities can make contact with them. We are also seeking to make sure that all employers who come to work in this country are fully aware of the compliance which they should make for the people whom they employ.

For the reasons that I have set out, we think that this clause would not necessarily strengthen the safeguards for the very people whom we are trying to protect. We all have the same aims in mind—to attempt to strengthen the protections for these people. I hope that, with the assurance that we will be addressing this again and discussing it further before Report, the noble Baroness will feel minded to withdraw her amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

97: After Clause 50, insert the following new Clause—
“Gangmasters Licensing Authority
The Secretary of State may make regulations to amend the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 to enlarge the functions, powers and duties of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority set out in section 1 of the 2004 Act.”

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, this is another modest amendment to allow the Government to look at the Gangmasters Licensing Authority at an appropriate time to see whether the functions, powers and duties of the licensing authority should be extended to cover other areas, which are extremely obvious, where it is well known that there is quite a lot of slavery and trafficking.

Two particular areas that I have in mind are the construction industry and the hospitality industry. One area of the hospitality industry is the laundry. Almost every hotel uses outsourcing of its laundry. There are serious concerns as to what goes on in some of the laundries. There is no doubt at all that there are serious concerns about what goes on in the construction business, particularly with people working on sites.

A very obvious example of that was the Connors case in Bedfordshire, where a Gypsy family, the Connors, picked up out-of-work, homeless people from soup kitchens and homeless centres and took them, on the promise of £80 a day, to work on construction sites. These people were kept in appalling accommodation in caravans, first working on construction sites in England, and then a whole lot of them were taken across to Sweden where they were working in the northern part of the country. It was not until a young Swedish boy, who had also been caught like this, walked 500 miles to Stockholm and went to the police, who rushed to the area where these people were locked up—not being paid a single penny, in appalling conditions—that they were identified as slaves and victims, and they did not even know it. However, one of them gave evidence to the informal inquiry led by Frank Field MP, of which Sir John Randall MP and I were members at the request of the Home Secretary. This particular victim gave very clear evidence of what goes on in the construction industry.

I understand entirely the scarcity of resources, so I am not asking the Government to extend the powers of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Indeed, Paul Broadbent would be horrified unless he had proper resources to manage what would have to be a larger enterprise if these two areas were taken into account. What I do not want is there to be inability on the part of the Government, when they have the money to extend the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, to find the proper legislative process to be able to do that. To put the matter in current usage, rather than faffing around looking for the right sort of place, if you have the power to do it, you do not have to do it until you can, but the power would be there so that you could do it in subsidiary legislation later. I hope that the Government will listen seriously to what I suggest. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley]

My Lords, I have Amendment 97A in this group, but I also support Amendment 97 in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and Amendment 101A in the name of my noble friend Lord Rosser. Many people welcome the great job done by the GLA. In the sectors for which it is responsible, it has been extremely effective at raising standards and driving out poor performance. Ten years ago, given the context in which the GLA was established, limiting the sectors it covered made sense. But 10 years later the limit on the GLA remit now makes little sense.

Amendment 97A was recommended by the joint scrutiny committee, of which I was a member, to allow the remit of the GLA to be extended. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, many high-risk sectors fall outside the remit of the GLA, such as construction and hospitality—and I would add care and cleaning to that list. These sectors are high risk because they commonly use subcontractors, agencies and migrant labour. The work is seasonal and low paid, and workers often work on site and in isolated conditions. Therefore, these sectors need to be afforded greater attention and the workers need the extra protection given to them by the licensing regime of the GLA.

As I have said, the GLA is widely recognised as being effective and is often cited as an example of best practice. Many people have called for its remit to be extended to such high-risk sectors, which is why the Joint Committee looked at it in some detail and agreed. It would be a mistake not to consider it now or, as the noble and learned Baroness said, in the future, which is why I support Amendments 97 and 101A that allow for that. These amendments also would allow the GLA to be given greater powers. I agree. The GLA would have the power, for example, to enforce payment of unpaid wages and the ability to fine businesses which have deliberately evaded licensing.

The sentencing and penalties faced by unlicensed and exploitative gangmasters also need addressing. Some very ruthless people are getting away with comparatively small fines. In 2013, an unlicensed gangmaster was convicted of exploiting more than 60 Filipino workers on dairy farms in the UK. Despite having made more than £700,000 through exploiting his workers and housing them in appalling conditions, he was given a 12-month suspended sentence and was asked to pay £45,000 in compensation over three years. We must review the sentencing guidelines for GLA offences. We cannot have a situation where cruel gangmasters see fines, in the words of the GLA,

“as a hazard of the job”.

I hope that we can amend this Bill to address these significant issues, as when there is inadequate preventive action, abuse occurs.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, that is an excellent idea. We will do that and come back at Report.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He ought to be proud of his baby, which is very successful. It is doing extremely well and is very well regarded. It has been running for something like 10 years, so when the Minister talks about not acting too quickly, I wonder what period of time we need if 10 years is not seen to be very long.

I am actually asking for something very modest. I understand perfectly well that the wording that I have put forward may not be at all what the Government want. All I am really asking them to do is to lay down a marker for future Governments to have the power to do this. To have a power does not require the Government to take action. There is all too much legislation with all too many enabling clauses which we all know never come to fruition, so it is no skin off the nose of the Government to put something down that enables another Government, by regulation, to put forward extensions to the powers and the remit and the various things that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has suggested at some future appropriate stage. It might be in five years’ time or even 10 but it will be there and something can be done without the Government having to find a vehicle in primary legislation to achieve it.

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I realise that the last of my amendments is not, in fact, necessary; it is covered by Amendment 97D. Amendment 97C which seeks to change “the Secretary of State” to “a Secretary of State” might seem a little odd—I know that “the Secretary of State” would be the right way to refer to any Secretary of State; you pick which is the appropriate Secretary of State depending on what you are looking at. It brings into the debate, however, not just the responsibility of the Home Office but the responsibilities and interests of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, BIS and DfID. I could probably go on, but those are the most obvious departments. As I said, in a meeting that obviously is not part of the public record of the Bill, the Minister was able to be very reassuring and give some interesting observations of his own on what goes on in supply chains. I will not steal his thunder by letting on what that experience and piece of work was, but he was very helpful and I hope that he can repeat some of that in public.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, the Government are to be congratulated on putting Clause 51 down. It is a very important clause and a huge relief to see it here after the Select Committee of which I was a member made considerable noise about it in its report. So it is very good. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, says, having said something is good, we always want a bit more. I follow on from what she is saying.

The amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in particular, are those that I would support. There are two points that I am particularly concerned about. Who monitors the statements and to whom will the statements be given? What is being suggested—which might be a good idea—is providing a copy of the slavery and human trafficking statement to anyone who makes a written request for one. However, that requires someone to do it. It may be that in some relatively unknown company—which may not have a very good track record but may not have been exposed—no one would ask. I appreciate that there would be regulations, but my suggestion, as the Minister will remember, was that the commissioner should receive copies of the statement, and that the commissioner should monitor. He seems the most obvious person to do it.

The second point that worries me is the duties imposed. Clause 51(9) says:

“The duties imposed on commercial organisations by this section are enforceable by the Secretary of State bringing civil proceedings in the High Court”.

So far, so good, but what is the purpose of an injunction? Just bring civil proceedings. It should be much broader. Generally, injunctions are to tell people not to do something. There are mandatory injunctions, but they are rather limited in their use. I just do not understand why the only duty imposed on a commercial organisation by the Secretary of State would be an injunction. That ought to be looked at with rather more care, because why on earth can you not impose penalties or seek damages?

There are all these various regulators, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, which regulate banks and organisations and impose enormous fines. Why on earth can the Secretary of State not do that if there is an obvious example of a company that is not only not producing statements, but is not checking whether, right down the line of its supply chain, there is a company supplying it with the goods that it is selling which is acting as a slave owner? A penalty seems the most obvious thing.

I really do think that subsection (9) is utterly inadequate and something in particular that should be looked at. The commissioner should have some powers at least to look at these statements, but the Secretary of State should have much stronger powers to deal with defaulters. I ask the Government to look at this again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, the Government will be rightly congratulated when the Bill has gone through all its stages, but, as I think we are all aware, that is only the first stage. What really will count will be how effectively they get the legislation implemented. Therefore, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I am very glad to support his amendment. It is crucial that we review the Bill within five years of its passing into law. In many respects the Bill is pioneering new ground. Obviously, it will turn out that some things are perhaps not quite as effective as we hope that they will be, but I regard this review as crucial to the effectiveness of this legislation. The thought of having a review in five years will also help to focus and sharpen people’s minds as they know that things will be assessed.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I also support the amendment. I am not sure in what year the review should be held. I think to say “within five years” is sensible, but it might well be wiser to do it within three years. This is such an important Bill. As I have said previously, the Government are to be congratulated on bringing it forward and for doing so much to make it work. Although we on the Cross Benches, like noble Lords on other Benches, have been critical from time to time, we are well aware of the effort that the Government have made. However, it is important to make sure that the Bill works. The strategies of government that are not in the legislative process will have to be reviewed, but in reviewing those it will also be important to see whether the legislation is strong enough and working well enough for it to manage the strategies that go with it. I urge the Minister to support the idea that there should, at some stage, be post-legislative scrutiny of this important Bill.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for proposing the amendment. The Government are committed to post-legislative scrutiny of legislation under the existing arrangements agreed with Select Committees. The Government believe that post-legislative scrutiny is generally preferable to ad hoc and potentially inconsistent specific statutory requirements in individual Bills. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s report into legislative standards praised the Government’s record on post-legislative scrutiny, saying:

“We urge the Government to continue to produce these useful memoranda. In return, we will undertake, and we take this opportunity to encourage other Select Committees to undertake, more visible post-legislative scrutiny work when opportunities arise”.

Since 2012, the House of Lords has established committees on an ad hoc basis specifically to conduct post-legislative scrutiny. I am sure that the House will consider carefully whether the future Modern Slavery Act would be a good candidate for such scrutiny.

However, I would like to place on record once more the Government’s commitment to providing a post-legislative scrutiny memorandum on the Bill within three to five years of Royal Assent. The Government will consult the Home Affairs Committee on the timing of publication of the memorandum, but that is a commitment. In the longer term, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner will continue to assess the response to modern slavery and how it is provided, and if new forms of abuse emerge. In addition to the commitment of a memorandum in three to five years, we will also have the update of the Modern Slavery Strategy, produced by the interdepartmental ministerial group on modern slavery. We will also have the anti-slavery commissioner’s annual report, which I am sure will be awaited with great interest by Members of your Lordships’ House.

There are therefore a number of opportunities for this type of scrutiny to happen. Having taken part in the Leader’s Group, which considered ways to improve the workings of your Lordships’ House and elsewhere, I have to say that one of the joys of this Bill is that it has been a textbook example of how legislation should work: first, producing a Bill, which is scrutinised in pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government then come back with a revised Bill and go through a meaningful stage in another place where amendments are made. The same happens in this place, so it seems to me absolutely logical that we should not leave the job unfinished but follow it through right to the end. That is why we are very much behind this commitment. We will produce the Explanatory Memorandum to ensure that that post-legislative scrutiny does arise.

Given that this may well be the last time that I am on my feet in Committee, I thank your Lordships for the way in which we have engaged in this very tough and passionate four days. It has given a huge amount of work for officials to think about and work on between now and Report. Somebody once said: “To govern is to choose”. There are going to be so many issues that we are going to have to work on that we will have to engage in some prioritisation about what is absolutely critical to get in the Bill before Royal Assent and what work can be continued under the watchful eyes of your Lordships and the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner thereafter. That work and the meetings will continue and we look forward to making further progress on Report. I thank the noble Lord and ask him to consider withdrawing his amendment.