Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee Report

Lord Bates Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. The Church has been an essential voice in the campaign to end modern slavery, and many of us will remember the significant role played by the former Bishop of Derby, Alastair Redfern, during the legislation’s passage through this House. I begin by joining with others in paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, all the members of her committee and the clerks and advisers for an excellent and timely report.

As the Minister who had the privilege of steering this legislation through your Lordships’ House, I felt a shared pride with many others when it eventually arrived on the statute book. I say shared, because it was a cross-party measure brought in by a coalition Government—you cannot get more shared than that. That was, and remains, its strength. It could not have happened, however, and as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, has generously said, without the determination and reforming zeal of my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead as Home Secretary, nor without Frank Field—Lord Field—who first challenged us to “call a spade a spade” and refer to human trafficking as modern slavery. He chaired both the pre and post-legislative scrutiny, ably supported by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lord Randall. We should also acknowledge the role played by many civil society organisations, such as the Centre for Social Justice and Justice and Care, and the dedicated civil servants who translated the poetry of our hopes into the careful prose of legislation.

The task of tackling modern slavery cannot be achieved by one department, one party or one country. The crime of modern slavery is not something that occurs only in the United Kingdom. The 2022 report by the ILO and the International Organization for Migration estimated that there are 50 million people in situations of modern slavery around the world. It is a global problem, and solutions need to be global too. We can no more work alone to tackle human trafficking than we can to tackle climate change or pandemics. Just as the problems are cross-departmental and cross-border, so solutions must be found through cross-departmental and cross-border working. The highly organised criminal gangs who are conducting this evil trade in human misery and suffering are no respecters of borders. We therefore need to co-operate internationally if we are to combat them.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the initiative for the legislation on modern slavery came through the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, known as the Palermo Protocol, which came into force in 2003. This then led to the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings in 2008, which now covers 46 countries. We may have left the European Union but, mercifully, we are still part of its predecessor, the Council of Europe. The fourth UK evaluation report by the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Trafficking in Human Beings is currently under way. Can the Minister say what part this report has played in that evaluation process? How can we learn from the process and the evaluations undertaken in the other 45 countries? Whose responsibility will that be?

Paragraph 203 of the report deals with the need to clarify responsibility for enforcement and how this is divided between departments. On page 25 of the Government’s response, they point to the specific co-ordinating role of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. If you do not have clarity of responsibility, you cannot have clarity of accountability. Let me test that, in a couple of respects. In 2023, the Government appointed the highly experienced diplomat Justin Bedford as the UK’s migration and modern slavery envoy, but he left his post in 2025. This would seem to be an important co-ordinating role, but I cannot see who has replaced him. Can the Minister provide an update for us on that appointment?

Secondly, having served as a Minister in the Home Office and as a Minister for International Development, I know of the vital role that UK overseas aid played in tackling some of the pressures on human trafficking at source. In 2020, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact estimated that the UK aid budget allocated explicitly to tackling modern slavery was £200 million over an unspecified period. This is a relatively small sum compared with the estimated economic costs of modern slavery to the UK taxpayer, which in 2018 the Home Office estimated as between £3.3 billion and £4.3 billion annually.

However, on the development tracker on GOV.UK, I note that the “Supporting Global Action to End Modern Slavery” programme had a budget of £12.85 million and ended in 2021. The successor programme, which started in 2024 and runs until 2030, has a budget of just £1,128,500—10% of the previous programme. The aid budget has been cut overall by 40% but the modern slavery programme has been cut by 90%. Is that correct? What is the current aid budget directed to tackling modern slavery? How is this projected to change over the next few years? In government, as everywhere else, results are driven not by rhetoric but by the efficient allocation of resources and resolve. I do not doubt the Government’s resolve, but I seek reassurance on adequate resources.