Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister is as gratified as I am by the extent to which noble Lords have greeted the Bill. I very much welcome it, too. I hope that this bodes well, as we all want to work hard to do our best to improve it. It represents a major step forward through the consolidation of existing legislation and it is clear that it has so much support, not only within the House but in the other place and outside. It is very heartening to hear of such a strong consensus across so many organisations and individuals.

Both here and in the other place, the name of William Wilberforce is inevitably invoked in this context. There is an implied link between his work and the Government’s desire to establish the UK as world leaders in combating modern forms of slavery in all its ugly manifestations. But it is as well to reiterate that the abolition of the slave trade was not brought about by Wilberforce alone but by a broad-based, campaigning coalition of people across Britain and internationally. I imagine that the likes of Olaudah Equiano, Hannah More, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, as well as Mary Prince and the working people of Manchester who petitioned Parliament to abolish the trade in humans, would be rather disappointed that some 200 years later there are even more people subjected to the horrors of enslavement and so on than there were during those brutal centuries of the transatlantic trade. Likewise, I hope that we can recognise today the efforts and sacrifices made by all those who struggle daily against the horrible conditions which we are talking about and those individuals, organisations, companies and so on that stand beside them.

I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I repeat some of the points made earlier by other noble Lords. At this stage in the programme, it is hard to bring something original to the table but I will focus on two main areas where we could make some real improvements to the Bill and which other noble Lords have mentioned repeatedly.

First, on the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, like several others I query whether the insertion of “Independent” into the title has made any difference to the way that the role will function. The recent report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights states that,

“there remain several provisions in or omissions from the Bill which mean that the Commissioner cannot be described as ‘independent’ in any meaningful sense”.

Paragraph 1.51 of its report lists six key indicators of the lack of independence in the role as it stands which, by and large, refer in one way or another to the relationship of the commissioner to the Secretary of State. They cover such things as: the lack of specificity with regard to the duration and conditions of the terms of employment; the commissioner’s lack of power to recruit his own staff; the fact that the commissioner may report only on what the Secretary of States wishes him to report on; the Secretary of State having to approve the commissioner’s strategic plans; the fact that the commissioner may be directed by the Secretary of State to redact or omit any part of his report deemed against the national interest before it is laid before Parliament; and the Secretary of State having the power to state which public bodies have a,

“duty to co-operate with the Commissioner”.

In conclusion, the JCHR locates the problem of the commissioner’s status in being “an adjunct” of the Home Office rather than part of the human rights machinery, which is a fair point.

Other critiques of the commissioner’s role include the lack of adequate monitoring. To echo the comments of several other noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and my noble friend Lord Patel, these concerns are about the remit of the commissioner being primarily focused on law enforcement but with little to say about how the interests of victims will be served by him other than through that route. Of course law enforcement is crucial but it needs to go hand in hand with the protection and support of victims, holding government and other bodies accountable for their performance and ensuring that policies are effective.

The commissioner should, then, be truly independent of the Government and free to decide the focus of their annual plan of activities and hire their own staff. They should: have the power to monitor the implementation of all policies relevant to modern forms of slavery; have statutory powers to collect and request data from a wide range of government and non-government agencies; be empowered to hold inquiries; and report directly to Parliament. These amendments to the role would then complement the models developed in Finland and the Netherlands, which are considered to be leaders in the field.

The second area I want to examine is Part 6, on reporting transparency in supply chains. Here, I declare my interest as chair of the APPG on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion. I am also a patron of Anti-Slavery International and on the board of Cotton Made in Africa. The Government have listened to Members in the other place, as well as business and NGOs, and introduced Part 6 on transparency and mandatory disclosure of efforts of private and public companies to address the risks of modern slavery in supply chains. This is a really important step forward and, again, it is gratifying that the Government have listened and tried to do something about this issue. However, as other noble Lords have said, it really does not quite go far enough. For example, it still does not incorporate requirements provided for in EU directive 2011/36/EU,

“on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims”.

The directive includes a requirement for each member state to establish jurisdiction for trafficking offences committed by one of its nationals and provides for the criminal liability of those who benefit from human trafficking in Article 5. This provision is already binding for the UK and its inclusion in the Bill would reinforce the transparency and supply chain provisions, and ensure that a mechanism is available to sanction those companies that choose modern forms of slavery as their business model.

As businesses’ supply chains extend into parts of the world with high levels of corruption and poor rule of law, so the probability increases that these supply chains will be rife with forced labour of one kind or another. This has been demonstrated by a number of organisations, including Anti-Slavery International, in relation to the forced labour of young women and girls in southern Indian textile manufacture. I am sure that many noble Lords will also be aware of how the Government of Uzbekistan derive an unfair advantage by the use of forced labour, forcing their citizens to abandon their jobs every year during harvest season and go to the fields to pick cotton. Thanks to international pressure there are fewer children involved in that forced labour, but there has been an unprecedented mobilisation of public sector workers in Uzbekistan. The UK needs to send a clear message to such countries that it is not acceptable to force their citizens to work in this way.

It has been said that consumers have a responsibility to pressure business to improve the situation in their supply chains. This is so, to some extent, but it is highly likely that the cotton in the clothes of many of us in the Chamber today will have been picked by forced labour. Who can tell? We do not know and have no real way of knowing. Such is the nature of supply chains that we can hardly ever be sure.

We can make Part 6 more effective, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, and my noble friend Lady Cox have both made several suggestions on this issue with which I broadly agree. There needs to be more detail in the Bill, mainly to support business to adapt to this new legislation. A threshold of global turnover above which companies have to comply with Part 6 should be specified so that there is little room for pleas of ignorance or ambiguity. That is how the California Act works. There also need to be strong guidelines and the company’s reporting statement should be in a prominent place on the company’s website, not tucked away at the back, and in the company’s annual report.

Will the Minister clarify what, if any, consequences will arise from a company failing to produce a report, or consistently producing a report basically stating that the company has not sought to discover whether human rights abuses, in the form of forced labour, take place in its supply chain? Will he also clarify whether a person or individual can be prosecuted under any other section of the Bill for failure to address slavery or forced labour in their supply chain?

In conclusion, given the widespread support for the general principles of the Bill from all parts of your Lordships’ House, I hope that we will see the strongest possible legislation enacted. Virtually everybody who has spoken today has urged the Government to go further, not to pull back. I hope that, when amendments are tabled, the Government are open to listening and to strengthening this. Then, perhaps, we could start to think about claiming to be world leaders in the field.