Investment Industry Exposure to Modern Slavery

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. If I can refer to my entry in the register of interests, the Human Trafficking Foundation appears as I am a trustee. I welcome the Minister; this is the first time that I have participated in a debate that she is responding to in her new role. I can assure her, as someone who fulfilled that role for over two years, that it is a fantastic place to be; the change you can make to people’s lives as a Minister in the Home Office with responsibility for this area is absolutely breath taking. It is a difficult job, it is a tough job, but it is also one of the most rewarding jobs in Government. I welcome her to the role and know she will do a fantastic job. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) on securing this debate and delivering what I know will not be the last contribution he makes to a Westminster Hall debate. It was an excellent contribution, and it set out so succinctly and well the point that he is campaigning hard on. I am also grateful for his willingness to accept contributions from other Members in this very short, half-hour debate.

My hon. Friend raised, very well, the risks and the opportunities there are for investment businesses in ensuring they are making the ethical investments their customers and consumers want. People want to know that their money is being invested in a way that is not funding crime—be that drug crime, gang-related crime or, in particular, the economic crime against people that is human trafficking and modern slavery. Let us be clear: this is an economic crime. It is so often confused with crimes of immigration, but it is not an immigration crime. It is an economic crime: one human being is prepared to make financial gain from another human being. We must all work to stamp that out.

The numbers are shocking. The latest estimate is that around 40 million people globally are victims of modern slavery, of which 25 million are victims of forced labour and 15 million are involved in forced marriage or other forms of exploitation. Some 25 million people globally are victims of forced labour. We must remember that number and work hard to do what we can.

My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford is right. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) made the point as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes has big shoes to fill in taking over from the wonderful Anthony Steen, who is an absolute hero; without him, we simply would not be where we are today with the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

When I took the Modern Slavery Bill through Parliament, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was very involved on Report, and tabled amendments constantly, including on supply chains. Section 54 was not in the Bill when we started. The Bill had gone through prelegislative scrutiny by a Committee chaired by Frank Field, now of the other place. I am going to call him by name. I know that we would normally refer to him as the noble Lord Field, but everyone will have seen the news that he made public last week, and our thoughts go to him. He is another of the founding fathers of the Act. Without Frank, and without the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss, Anthony Steen, the noble Lord Randall and many others, we simply would not have achieved it. That prelegislative scrutiny Committee wanted to see transparency measures for supply chains, but Government do not always listen to everything that prelegislative scrutiny Committees or others suggest. A lot of work was needed to persuade Government of what those of us in the Home Office could see was a very good idea, but about which others in Government had not been so convinced.

Section 54 was undoubtedly revolutionary, but that does not mean that it is not evolutionary. It does need to evolve. Now, six years along, there are undoubtedly things that can be improved, and I welcome what the Home Office has said about changes that must be made. It does need to be strengthened. It must be expanded to more businesses. The points that my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford made about what we could do on investments are really interesting, and I urge the Minister to take those points to her colleagues in Government at the earliest opportunity so that they can remove their reasons for opposing them as quickly as possible. This is something that customers want. Consumers want to know that their money is properly invested.

I will make two very quick points before I sit down. The first is that I have tabled a private Member’s Bill that replicates section 54 on climate change. My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford said that this was something that people wanted to see. I would like to see that transparency in supply chains on climate change as well, and I hope that hon. Members will support the Bill. Second, I join my hon. Friend in pleading that we ask the United Nations to make human trafficking and modern slavery a focus of the next General Assembly in September 2022. If we could work together to do that and to get global recognition of this issue, we would go a long way to tackling this heinous crime.