Enslaved Africans: National Memorial

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right that there are many events in our history, including probably in Parliament, that we should be deeply ashamed of. It is important to find a way in which we can move forward and remember those events and pay tribute to the people who were victims of them. We now have the Modern Slavery Act, which ensures that some of the practices that are happening now do not happen again. We met yesterday and I agreed to work with him to try to identify funding to enable the memorial to happen.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister is surely right to remind us that the 12 million people who were transported during the transatlantic slave trade were not the end of the story; the United Nations estimates that today some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide as a result of modern forms of slavery. She points rightly to the Modern Slavery Act, a showpiece Act piloted through both Houses of Parliament with all-party and cross-party support. She will be aware that on 8 July my noble friend Lady Young of Hornsey has a Private Member’s Bill—it will be the first to be considered on that day—dealing with supply-chain transparency. Can the Minister promise us that the Government will look at that Bill sympathetically? That would be a way to eradicate this continuing modern curse, 200 years after William Wilberforce.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

There have been discussions about the issue that the noble Lord pinpoints; as well as the obvious forms of slavery, its supply-chain aspect is not to be dismissed. I do not think I will be involved in that Bill, but certainly the supply-chain aspect of slavery is a very important one.