Modern Day Slavery: Pakistan

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and especially today—thank you for saving the day by turning up to chair this important debate. I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing another vital debate before the House in the characteristically noble fashion we have grown to expect from him. I also commend the other Members who have contributed to it, including the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), who always speaks with passion and principle. She rightly highlighted examples of the exploitation of children, women and vulnerable people in Pakistan today. She said we cannot stay silent on slavery, and she is absolutely right: Britain needs to have a voice on this issue. She is also right that there should be a link between UK aid to Pakistan and dealing with the atrocious issue we are debating, so that we can get rid of modern-day slavery in that country.

I commend the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), who spoke about the Ahmadi Muslims. I myself have spoken about the way they are treated, and she is absolutely right that that is another area that needs to be highlighted and that we need to support that community. She said that Britain’s voice matters—absolutely it does—and we should use that voice strongly and clearly against the persecution and ill treatment we have been discussing this afternoon. I thank her for her comments.

Modern slavery is one of the greatest moral outrages of our time. More than 50 million people are estimated to be under the yoke of slavery across the world—more than at any point in human history. It is a sobering truth that while we in Britain debate our country’s historic involvement in slavery, millions of men, women and children are being born, sold and trapped into slavery today.

Pakistan is a Commonwealth partner and a friend of the United Kingdom, and only 70 years ago we shared the same head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. It is because of that close connection that Britain can raise, and ultimately assist in eradicating, the concerns we are debating. According to the Global Slavery Index, 2.3 million people are living in modern slavery in Pakistan, making it one of the top 20 worst affected nations in the world, and 10 or 11 people in every 1,000 are enslaved, which is an outrage. To contextualise that, throughout the entire 200 years that Britain was involved in the transatlantic slave trade, 3.4 million people were taken from Africa to the new world. In Pakistan today, 67% of that number are living in modern slavery.

As we have heard this afternoon, the brick kilns of Pakistan are perhaps the clearest example. There are over 20,000 kilns across the country, employing up to 3 million workers, many of whom are trapped in bonded labour, with entire families working 14 to 16 hours a day in suffocating heat and toxic fumes to pay off debts that can never actually be repaid. These are generational debts of forced labour, which are passed from parents to children, binding generation after generation to indentured servitude in many of these kilns. Workers are paid barely enough to survive, let alone escape. Children—some of them as young as five—mould bricks alongside their parents. Women, often from minority faith backgrounds, face harassment, violence and sexual abuse from their employers.

The majority of brick kiln workers are from among Pakistan’s poorest and least educated, and too often from religious minorities, including Christians and Hindus, who are disproportionately affected. Many families are lured into bondage by loans, which they take out as a last resort to pay for food, medical bills and dowries. Illiteracy means they rarely understand the exploitative interest rates or the false records maintained by their employers. Their debts are also recorded informally and arbitrarily, which means they are effectively impossible to contest. Unfortunately, these workers are invisible to the state.

As was referred to, Pakistan passed the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act in 1992, but over three decades later enforcement appears sporadic and ineffective. In the last Parliament, a report from the APPG for the Pakistani minorities, chaired by the hon. Member for Strangford, rightly said that

“successive governments have lacked the political will or capacity to enforce the law.”

The same report recommended that His Majesty’s Government use their aid budget to strengthen monitoring and compliance with International Labour Organisation standards, and even earmark £500,000 to hire inspectors to carry out unannounced inspections of brick kilns.

The aid budget might be a controversial topic at present, but I say to the Minister that if we are going to spend money on development aid, we should surely take up the mantle of our forefathers by taking the fight to slavery. When the Minister replies, will she tell us whether the Government will support the creation of a dedicated UK-funded inspection mechanism for Pakistan’s brick kilns? Will the FCDO consider making aid conditional on measurable progress in tackling bonded labour? Will the Department for Business and Trade issue clearer guidance to UK firms about the risk of slavery in supply chains linked to Pakistan’s construction sector?

Although we are focusing particularly on Pakistan, I am sad to say that it is far from unique. Across Asia, Africa and, shockingly, even Europe, cases of forced labour, human trafficking and child exploitation still persist. The ILO estimates that forced labour generates $236 billion in illegal profits every year, which in state terms is roughly the size of the Portuguese, Czech or Greek economies. It is huge.

As I alluded to, this is also very much a problem for the United Kingdom. British consumers unknowingly buy goods produced through forced labour in a range of areas, such as fashion, electronics, seafood and construction materials. Will the Minister therefore outline what steps are being taken to update, reform and strengthen the Modern Slavery Act? Do the Government agree that development aid must be conditional on the efforts taken by recipients to tackle modern day slavery?

This House must not shy away from the fact that our nation has been the ultimate force for good in the world. We should speak proudly of Britain’s historic role in abolishing the slave trade, not apologise for it. It was this country that led the world—at great cost—in suppressing the slave trade in the 19th century. The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron rescued tens of thousands of enslaved Africans from ships flying other nations’ flags, and policed the eradication of the slave trade across the seas.

Today, the same voices that denounce our ancestors for slavery’s past—a trade that unfortunately predates civilisation as we know it—too often turn a blind eye to slavery’s present, as we have discussed. They are quick to pull down statues, yet slow to stand up for the children working in brick kilns, mines and sweatshops. It is easy to virtue signal about history; it is harder to confront the uncomfortable truth that slavery continues today in countries we trade with, partner with and fund, let alone in a Commonwealth nation such as Pakistan.

We should not therefore indulge in moral self-flagellation, but lead once again in the cause of abolition. The UK should prioritise anti-slavery measures in all development programmes in Pakistan; support NGOs providing legal aid, education and rehabilitation to bonded labourers; push for the digital registration of all brick kiln workers to bring them within the formal economy; and champion the global partnerships to eradicate slavery by 2030.

I suggest to the Minister that the FCDO publish an annual report on progress made against modern slavery globally. I emphasise that the UK should once again lead internationally, as we did two centuries ago, to ensure that every human can live in freedom.

Shamefully, modern slavery is not a relic of the past; it remains very much a stain on our present. The children in Pakistan’s brick kilns deserve the same rights, the same dignity and the same hope that we take for granted here in these islands. The Britain I know and love stands for freedom and for individual liberty, and is wholesale against oppression, whether that comes in the form of the state or the corporation.

If we are to influence affairs abroad, there is no finer crusade than the moral crusade to unchain children and their mothers and fathers from a life spent in forced labour and exploitation. Britain must lead this cause—just as we did before.