Financial Services and Markets Bill

Lord True Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Due diligence is not that hard to carry out. Sources are not limited to what is available in the public domain. Financial institutions can request supplementary data from their existing and potential clients to inform their due diligence. For example, they can ask the extent to which a supply chain is fully traceable, how many deforestation incidents that client detects per year, and whether they can demonstrate if they obtained the consent of indigenous peoples to operate on protected lands, among many other such questions. There are so many tools available to companies these days.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

This has been a 13-minute speech on Report—

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I am just about to conclude.

Global Witness, for example, recently launched a “Brazil Big Beef Watch” Twitter bot to show how simple and effective supply-chain traceability can be. Therefore, due diligence requirements are not an onerous ask and are long overdue. It is deplorable that indigenous people are on the front line in defending against deforestation. Some 40 people per week are killed in the process. This must stop. I think I speak for our Benches when I say that should the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, seek the opinion of the House on her amendment—we hope that she will—we will give it our wholehearted support.

Amendments 93 and 113 on fiduciary duty have been covered extensively by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Drake, and by other noble Lords across the House, so I need say very little other than that we are in full support of them.