Human Rights: Supply Chains

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is always a blessing to have you chairing a meeting, Mr Dowd. It is particularly a blessing today, as we would not have this debate were you not here, so thank you.

I have been active on this subject for some time. I have been sanctioned by China because of the issues that we raised over modern-day slavery. I remind Members that it was the Centre for Social Justice, which I set up, that first published the paper “It Happens Here”. We were then able to get the Government to initiate the Modern Slavery Act—the first legislation of its kind in the world. We were all very proud of that Act, but sadly it really has no enforcement. Government and suppliers have no obligation to check. They are supposed to make a declaration, but we know that many of those declarations are in fact deliberately false—they know they will not be checked, and therefore they do not have to worry about it—so while the Act is great, it is rather toothless.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) on securing this debate and making such a good opening speech. I will not repeat all he said, although I agree with so much of it. In the limited time I have, I want to focus on certain issues.

First, the reality is that slave labour is not only a massive punishment and a human rights abuse on a scale, like genocide, wider than anything else; it is also commercial. Countries such as China use slave labour as a way to undercut markets, compete unfairly and drive businesses out of business—particularly here in the UK, as we have experienced. One of the big issues is the net zero determination and what we wish to do to clean up the environment because the biggest providers of solar arrays, wind farms and the technology are, in fact, based in China.

The big problem is that the Government have two conflicting requirements. Quite rightly, they want to get on with cleaning up the environment; but they also know that if they cannot buy from China without a clear set of supply chains that are without slave labour, that will cost more money. That impacts the pace and the way in which they can provide a cleaner atmosphere.

We have to say that one thing is more important than the other, and that is the human rights of those people being abused in places such as China. At the end of the day, we cannot go to bed at night with any grace if we say that we put up more solar arrays and wind farms but those were supplied by factories where people may have died, been abused, or had their lives and families destroyed.

We know that China, in the case of Xinjiang, is committing a well-established genocide on such a scale that children are now in forced education camps. Millions of adult males are in forced labour, many producing the polysilicon that goes into arrays made in and around Xinjiang. The women, unbelievably, are being forcibly sterilised. The birth rate in Xinjiang has gone off the edge of a cliff. China is going to eradicate an ethnic group; it is very much the policy of the Chinese Communist party to have Han Chinese in charge of China, and nobody else. It also makes money from the fact that people in slave labour, as I said earlier, are producing goods much more cheaply than anyone else can.

Look at what we are not doing: we are not checking supply chains. On this issue, I have been in opposition to whatever Government have been in power—neither the last Government nor this one have made a big effort to check those company declarations. I have had responses from this and the previous Government saying that they were doing their best and trying hard. It is not good enough to do one’s best or try hard; the question is: what is the best?

Look at what is happening in other places. I point to the USA’s Act, which basically outlawed all use of slave labour anywhere in supply chains and put the means in place to check that. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States creates a rebuttable presumption that goods produced wholly or partly in Xinjiang, and other places using slave labour, are made with forced labour unless importers can prove otherwise.

That is how it is done—we tell importers, “You must now prove to us that you have avoided any slave labour in your products. Failure to do that has you banned and fined.” It is immediate. They do not simply sit there saying, “Well, other bits of Government are helping us”, because to be honest, the Government do not have the ability to check themselves. They do not have what it takes, but there are companies out there that do this regularly.

I have met the representatives of one such company. Forensic companies such as Oritain, based in New Zealand, specialise in using forensic science to check where goods were made. From that, it knows the footprint and the likelihood of slave labour. It will immediately investigate a company’s declaration and can challenge it. If it challenges it, the US Government will ban and fine the company. That has led to a whole rerouting of supply chains across China for the US market. Sadly, it has also meant efforts have been redoubled to put slave labour products into markets such as the UK, because it is known that the UK is a soft option.

When we look around the countryside of the east of England and elsewhere, we see a load of arrays. I would bet that the vast majority were made with slave labour because no checks were carried out. The reality is that we have to do more. The Modern Slavery Act 2015, which I greatly supported, has now become toothless. Section 54 needs to be upgraded. There needs to be a punishment. Government need the ability to prosecute immediately, and supply-chain checks must take place.

I end with this. The reality is that the legislation is a mess. With colleagues on both sides of the House, I successfully tabled an amendment to the Great British Energy Act 2025, to ban the use of products made with slave labour. It was a classic rebellion, and we got it done. Yet when I checked, I saw that next to nothing had resulted from it. There is that offence in the legislation, but the Government have done nothing to call out any of the companies still selling those products. We put a similar obligation into the Health and Care Act 2022, but next to nothing has been done on that—no declarations and no speeches to Parliament about what the Government have done.

We cannot go on addressing this issue in a piecemeal way: it has to be done across the board. That is why I support the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green in his call for the Modern Slavery Act to have teeth and for section 54 to be implemented. Any business that, having been checked properly, is found to have misdeclared itself and its supply chain should be punished—it should be banished from importing to the UK and face financial and even criminal penalties. That way, we will stop this practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kate Dearden)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I join hon. Members in thanking you for chairing today’s debate at short notice.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing a debate on this deeply important subject. He made some excellent points, particularly about how fundamental supply chain resilience is to our economic security, and the importance of the public sector procurement regime to ensuring that public bodies do not inadvertently support international labour and humanitarian abuses. He and the other Members here today continue to be excellent and thoughtful advocates on these matters, and I thank all colleagues for their important contributions.

Human rights are just that: they are fundamental, and they exist to protect us all. Infractions cannot be ignored or dismissed simply because they occurred far enough back in a supply chain for us to feel insulated and not responsible for supporting exploitative practices. Never has this issue been more important now that more than 70% of global trade runs through complex global supply chains. Although globalisation has driven productivity, innovation and technological advances that have lifted billions out of poverty and created the life that we depend on, it has also made supply chains more complex and opaque and has reduced the transparency and accountability that consumers, retailers and the Government need to protect workers and the natural world from exploitation.

Members have rightly drawn attention to the egregious human rights abuses that come with forced labour. In 2026, more than 27 million people remain in the shackles of modern slavery across all six inhabited continents, often enduring imprisonment, abuse and coercion, and being exploited for profit. As we approach the 200th anniversary of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in much of the British empire, it is right that I reaffirm this Government’s commitment to tackling this vile practice, which continues to generate nearly £176 billion in illegal profits each year, in all its forms, including non-payment or underpayment of wages, excessive working hours and unsafe working conditions. There is also clear evidence of severe environmental harm in our global supply chains, as we lose the equivalent of 11 football pitches of tropical rainforest every minute, and threaten nearly 1 million animal and plant species with extinction.

As we have heard, the UK has a proud record of pioneering global advances to support human and workers’ rights. We put this issue on the international stage with the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) spoke about. That legislation was world leading and crucial in solidifying our place as a global leader on this issue. For the first time, businesses were made to report how they tackled the modern slavery that might be present in their supply chains. However, as Members have rightly said, although the Modern Slavery Act was world leading at the time, it is now more than a decade old and in need of review if we are to tackle the many violations that still occur globally.

Although many UK businesses respect human rights and the environment throughout their supply chains, unethical international violations undercut the vast majority of UK businesses that support fair international supply chains. That will only increase as geopolitical, industrial and technological shocks continue to transform how and where goods are produced and extracted. That is why we must take a more strategic approach by working with our global allies and trading partners to secure forced labour provisions in our free trade agreements, and by using the developing countries trading scheme to suspend preferential trading arrangements on the ground of serious violation of labour rights.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green noted, I travelled last week to the 114th International Labour Conference in Geneva, where I met trade union delegations and labour and employment Ministers from across the world, alongside some of the most significant manufacturers, extractors and business hubs. This issue is close to my heart, and I worked closely on it before I was elected to this place. Last week, we talked a lot about the work we are proudly doing in Government on the Employment Rights Act and the domestic agenda, and I thank Members for raising that today. We are clear that a collaborative, holistic and cross-border approach is the only way to drive the change that exploited workers and environments need, alongside our recognition of other international transitions from voluntary to mandatory measures, such as human rights and environmental due diligence laws.

In the trade strategy, the Government underlined how responsible business conduct is a positive part of our mission to grow the economy, and we launched a review of our approach to responsible business, focusing on the global supply chains of businesses operating in the UK. It is an evidence-based review of our policy framework and alternative measures to enhance it, including mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence measures and forced labour bans. It naturally also considers the approaches of our international trading partners and the best way to promote a co-ordinated approach that minimises costs, consistent with the Government’s commitment to reduce the administrative costs of complying with regulation by 25% over the course of this Parliament.

So far, we have engaged with more than 200 organisations through the review, including businesses, investors, civil society, trade unions and academic institutions. We have learnt from international partners and met communities affected by supply chain harms. I heard many hon. Members stress the need for urgency today, and I reassure them that we will update Parliament on the review in due course. I thank Members for raising that pressing issue, and we will of course work closely with all those at the debate today.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Could we get a commitment today that the Government will look carefully at what countries that are well in advance of us, such as the United States and some European countries, are doing, to make sure that we urgently get on to resolving this issue, rather than delaying with another review and more debates? We know what needs to be done, and surely we can get on with it pretty quickly.

[Kate Dearden]

I thank the right hon. Member for that and his contributions today. I reassure him that we are working closely with the US on the review, updating the Americans on all the work we are doing and understanding their practices too. I will turn soon to the other important points he raised throughout the debate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) highlighted our work with the Treasury as part of this review, and I thank him for that. We are doing the review economy-wide, and as well as working with the Treasury, we have engaged with investors. We will of course keep him updated, as I know he is interested in—indeed, passionate about—this subject.

We took another key step in the trade strategy by launching the Office for Responsible Business Conduct to provide UK businesses, trade unions and charities with a simpler route to compliance, supporting the integration of responsible business practices and helping victims of corporate malpractice by providing a non-judicial grievance mechanism. Alongside the broader RBC review, we are considering how to strengthen the section 54 transparency regime, which lots of Members mentioned today—I thank them for it—including mandatory reporting requirements that extend to the public sector and penalties for non-compliance. We published updated statutory guidance on transparency in supply chains in March 2025, calling on businesses to go further and faster.

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon), for his contribution today, his work in the Joint Committee on Human Rights and his engagement in and focus on this vital issue. I mentioned our work and relationship with the US. I hope that he is reassured by those comments and by our continued and regular engagement with the US Administration as part of our negotiations.

As a proudly internationalist and pro-worker Government, we have a responsibility to remain a world leader in tackling modern slavery, clearances and human rights abuses wherever they rear their ugly head. The Government stand firm on human rights, including in Xinjiang, where China continues to persecute and arbitrarily detain Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. Lots of Members raised that, and I thank them for it. I hope they know that we raise these concerns with China at the highest levels. That was done recently by the Prime Minister himself and the former Foreign Secretary. We continue to co-ordinate efforts with our international partners to hold China to account—for example, by joining a UN statement in October 2024 and co-signing a joint statement with the US and others in November 2025.

I respect the work done by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and thank him for his consistency in raising this issue today and outside the House. He also spoke about GB Energy, as did the shadow Minister. As a publicly owned energy company, GB Energy is of course expected to demonstrate leading practice in complying with the UK modern slavery legislation and aligning with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. We have established an ethical supply chain advisory group to review and inform GBE’s approach to ethical supply chains in its investments and operations; its chair is Baroness O’Grady. Representatives of my Department will serve on that group, and it meets for the first time next week, which I am sure the right hon. Member will welcome.

We must continue working with our international counterparts, and key stakeholders across the international trade union movement and business community to take action against those who illegally destroy families, communities and our natural world for profit. As Members have outlined, this action cannot be singular or a patchwork of separate policy decisions. Only co-ordinated, root-and-branch decisions will enable our constituents to know that they can trust that the T-shirt they are wearing, the bag they are carrying and the food they are eating did not arrive in our country at the expense of exploited people and areas thousands of miles away. Delivering that confidence for British people is good for business and good for growth, and re-cements our position as a world leader on these matters.

I again thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. We look forward to working closely with them on the review and more widely to ensure that we continue to focus on this issue, which is a priority for our Government. I will end, Mr Dowd, by wishing you a very happy birthday for Saturday and thanking you again for chairing the debate.