Investment Industry Exposure to Modern Slavery

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) on securing the debate. He and I have been discussing the issue for some time and he has led admirably on assessing the requirements that are needed to address it, bringing his background and experience in the private sector to this place. What a speech that was.

I also thank the Human Trafficking Foundation, with which I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) also has a relationship, whose work has been extraordinary in highlighting and identifying the issue around modern slavery and human trafficking. My predecessor Anthony Steen played a large role in that and continues to perform those duties in a meaningful and effective manner.

I am conscious that there is a limited amount of time, and I do not want to interrupt those Members who will follow me or the Minister’s response, but I want to make a few points about what we understand from the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It was a landmark piece of legislation. All too often in this place we say that a Bill is a landmark piece of legislation—this really was. It was unique in the world, and it has been followed by legislation in Australia, France and the Netherlands, as has already been said. In that Act we committed to bring perpetrators to justice, we ensured that businesses were brought in line with transparency reports, we enhanced protections for victims, we ensured that there were supply chain statements and we appointed the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Those were all integral and important points, but we also have to assess their effectiveness in delivering, and make sure that businesses are following suit and not just going through the rigamarole of ticking boxes to say that they have complied with the requirement to publish statements. The Act has to have teeth. This is where the opportunity comes. The UK shows global leadership and has global power in being able to set up initiatives like this.

I will go briefly off topic and talk about the illegal wildlife trade. In 2013-14 the UK launched a transportation taskforce in which we brought together private, public and charitable organisations to disrupt the illegal wildlife trade network. We then began to bring in financial networks to look at data analysis and see where we could disrupt those chains across the world. This is what we should be doing in this area. There is huge potential for doing it, and there are similar models that we can replicate in this country.

My last point is what was raised in the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report at the end of this year. It said there were two points we needed to look at. The first one relates to data analysis. It is a huge benefit to be able to bring in financial institutions; to be able to pinpoint and identify beyond the supply chains and businesses’ internal structures; to look at where money is being transferred; to look at where money is being invested and to take account of that; and to make sure that we can be reassured about where our investments are being put. Secondly, slavery is generating somewhere in the region of $150 billion a year. The report goes on to encourage the exploration of opportunities to partner with financial institutions.

We set up the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner to make sure that we listen to these recommendations. These recommendations have come out in the report; we would do very well to listen to them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford has said, it is the situation that one walks past and cannot ignore. We cannot, in this day and age, look at the crisis and the egregious crime that is human trafficking. We cannot accept it in the 21st century. We have the opportunity to bring those financial institutions together—with the City of London and the power we have as the fifth biggest economy in the world—and it is time for us to take the action, take the lead and provide that leadership. I hope the Minister will listen to these words, and the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford, and take the appropriate action.