Slavery

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue which she has described very vividly. I also thank the Library for its useful briefing.

Human rights are not optional, so compliance with them should not be optional or voluntary either. In some—perhaps many—parts of the world, this may not seem to be the case. The more I think about this, the more obvious it is that economic factors and a lack of education—and obviously the two often go hand in hand—play a huge part in exploitation, forced labour and slavery.

Frederick Douglass, the African-American social reformer, who himself escaped slavery and became the leader of the abolitionist movement, achieved literacy despite the law prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read. He said:

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave”.

DfID may have a claim to be the lead department in this area, save that we cannot avoid the unpalatable facts of what happens in our own country. As the noble Baroness mentioned, there is a national and international list—and it is a much longer list than I will give. It includes cannabis farms, block paving, domestic servitude, agriculture and fishing, the sex trade and the manufacture of clothing, electronics and surgical instruments. I was startled to see that in a briefing from the BMA. Surely medical products must often be so specialised that there is considerable scope for assurance as to the conditions in which they are made as part of quality control. According to the BMA, elsewhere in the NHS and in care homes there is too much dependence on local—and I would also say immigrant—labour. We should not exploit it. Others will add more to the list.

When the Minister introduces the Bill we shall have the provisions to which the noble Baroness referred regarding transparency in supply chains, with the interesting possibility of a mandatory injunction on the application of the Secretary of State. I am sure that my noble friend will not claim that a duty on companies of a certain size to make a statement is more than a step, albeit a welcome one. He will be asked what the Government have in mind about size and turnover. Is the Minister able—perhaps then if not now—to tell the House what ideas flowed from the ministerial round table held in June and from the follow-up workshops?

It is essential to work with those to whom the new requirements will apply. I know that the British Retail Consortium is involved and I have seen evidence from it. TiSC requirements should not let us off the hook, rather as turning off the tap when brushing your teeth does not make it OK to have a two-foot deep bath during a water shortage. There is quite a read across from behaviour in respect of environmental issues. I wonder whether the “nudge unit”, or whatever that part of the Cabinet Office is called, is involved. If it is not, with regard to public awareness, behaviour and response, I think it should be.

We consumers have our consciences but we do not just need ammunition to challenge manufacturers and others; we need spoon-feeding. Fair trade brands are so helpful, as are easy-to-understand labels on domestic appliances. We may respond to ethical investment and be keen on ethical auditing, but we need information that is easy to follow. The media have a big role in disseminating information and in exposing bad practice and celebrating good practice.

Not everyone, however, can vote with their wallet or credit card and the undercutting of companies in whose business model reputation is important is an obvious problem. It seems not only that reputation is important over the counter, or over the virtual counter of the internet; every employer should want to be one for whom staff want to work for ethical reasons. That is also part of a business case.

In the context of sex trafficking, there used to be a lot of reference to reducing demand but that seems to be less the case recently, which I think is right. However, both demand and supply are relevant to a range of labour exploitation. The ILO’s forced labour definition covers all exploitative purposes of trafficking except organ removal. The ILO says that the annual profits per victim are highest in the developed economies, which I think gives us pause for thought, because for the perpetrators this is about money and getting at the money is very important. The Minister has been much involved recently with the Serious Crime Bill, as have many other noble Lords, which seeks to address this issue.

Transparency International says that the Bribery Act is also relevant. Many companies have supply chains, or are part of supply chains, in countries where there is a high risk of bribery. Therefore, we need “adequate procedures”—a technical term—to prevent bribery, including due diligence on suppliers and requiring suppliers themselves to have adequate procedures. I cannot help thinking how much advice and training will be required in this field. I also cannot help wondering—I am certainly not asking the Minister to respond to this tonight—whether this House is happy with its own procurement arrangements.

In material I was reading in preparation for today’s debate, the ILO used the apt phrase,

“profits generated on the backs of … victims”.

As well as seeking to tackle slavery and exploitation, we have a responsibility towards victims. That is a matter we need to address every day but, in terms of debate, perhaps it is a matter for another day.

I quoted Frederick Douglass’ words:

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave”.

He also said:

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley on creating a precursor debate before we come to deal with the Modern Slavery Bill. The debate has been interesting and my noble friend’s opening contribution was very powerful. It covered the waterfront and the land masses as well. As I listened to her, I thought, “You could have left us something to cover”, but I say that in tribute to how comprehensive her coverage was. It just went to show the extent of the problem.

I declare a prior and continuing interest as, until recently, vice-chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative, an organisation that I have been involved with for many years. If I have learnt anything, it is about the sheer complexity of supply chains. They are not easy beasts to deal with. At the end of supply chains there are first-tier contractors, second-tier contractors and third-tier contractors. Companies will supply you with a set of books to suit whatever requirement you have, so businesses may have one, two or three sets of books. They know when you are coming and if there is any child labour, it will disappear. We should not underestimate the challenge that companies face in trying to root out some of these evil practices from their supply chains.

I congratulate the Government on their commitment to this issue and on making space in the legislative programme for the Modern Slavery Bill. I pay tribute to the work of Frank Field in the other place and to the commitment and involvement of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy.

I want to focus on the business of transparency and disclosure requirements in supply chains. I do not much like the acronym TiSC. It might trip off the tongue but it is not very graceful. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about the sheer scale of slavery, as reflected in the ILO report. The number of people involved in it is absolutely staggering. About 21 million men, women and children are in forced labour. We know that we have not abolished slavery by any means. It is worldwide and unfortunately alive and flourishing in the UK as well. I do not want to reiterate what others have said, but global profits are estimated at $44 billion and $32 billion is generated by human trafficking. These are colossal figures. In 2014 humanity ought to be ashamed that these practices continue.

The forthcoming Bill is a welcome step in the right direction. As a number of noble Lords have said, we want a disclosure requirement for companies in the Bill. I do not apologise for repeating what my noble friend Lady Kennedy said in identifying this. There should be a clear commitment from the chief executive and chairman of a company. I know from experience that if you do not have that commitment at the top it is not going to work. What you tell buyers and suppliers is no good. They need to see that there is real commitment right at the top of companies.

Disclosure should include, as a minimum, how risks have been identified throughout the supply chain, who has been involved in the identification of such risks, what action has been taken once risks have been identified and the steps taken to address modern slavery, if it is identified. The minimum requirements should be specified in primary legislation.

My noble friend Lady Kennedy talked about a threshold of £60 million. The figure is taken from Californian legislation. Whether it is the right figure is probably open to debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby made the interesting point that a lot of smaller companies could be involved. A lot of them would be involved in the supply chains of bigger companies so a debate on who is going to be covered by this threshold is merited.

The disclosure should be published in a company’s annual report, on its website and provided in writing on request. Foreign companies operating in the UK are not required to produce an annual report, but they should provide a stand-alone modern slavery disclosure to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Otherwise, we will find a whole group of people who are actively trading in the UK and who could be using forced or slave labour, but who are not included here. I do not think that would be right.

One question that I do not think has been raised is that of domestic worker visas. Changes to the Immigration Rules were introduced in April 2012 and under the system now in place new domestic workers in private households are able to stay in the UK only for a minimum of six months. They are no longer able to change their employer in the UK. The same thing applies to staff in diplomatic households. They are able to stay for up to five years but they can no longer settle permanently and, as before, they cannot change an employer in the UK. If you cannot change your employer in the UK, that is creating fertile grounds for you to be in a form of modern slavery. There have been enough cases in the press for us to know that this is not just people thinking about a worst case scenario. It actually happens and is an indictment on us. I would welcome the Minister’s response on that issue.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I just used the words “domestic servitude”, having all this in mind. That is not why I have risen. Does the noble Lord agree that there must be some sort of supply chain in the countries where some of these migrant domestic workers come from, where they are initially employed and then brought to this country by their employers? The term “supply chain” should cover that kind of relationship and arrangement as well.