Slavery

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley on creating a precursor debate before we come to deal with the Modern Slavery Bill. The debate has been interesting and my noble friend’s opening contribution was very powerful. It covered the waterfront and the land masses as well. As I listened to her, I thought, “You could have left us something to cover”, but I say that in tribute to how comprehensive her coverage was. It just went to show the extent of the problem.

I declare a prior and continuing interest as, until recently, vice-chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative, an organisation that I have been involved with for many years. If I have learnt anything, it is about the sheer complexity of supply chains. They are not easy beasts to deal with. At the end of supply chains there are first-tier contractors, second-tier contractors and third-tier contractors. Companies will supply you with a set of books to suit whatever requirement you have, so businesses may have one, two or three sets of books. They know when you are coming and if there is any child labour, it will disappear. We should not underestimate the challenge that companies face in trying to root out some of these evil practices from their supply chains.

I congratulate the Government on their commitment to this issue and on making space in the legislative programme for the Modern Slavery Bill. I pay tribute to the work of Frank Field in the other place and to the commitment and involvement of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy.

I want to focus on the business of transparency and disclosure requirements in supply chains. I do not much like the acronym TiSC. It might trip off the tongue but it is not very graceful. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about the sheer scale of slavery, as reflected in the ILO report. The number of people involved in it is absolutely staggering. About 21 million men, women and children are in forced labour. We know that we have not abolished slavery by any means. It is worldwide and unfortunately alive and flourishing in the UK as well. I do not want to reiterate what others have said, but global profits are estimated at $44 billion and $32 billion is generated by human trafficking. These are colossal figures. In 2014 humanity ought to be ashamed that these practices continue.

The forthcoming Bill is a welcome step in the right direction. As a number of noble Lords have said, we want a disclosure requirement for companies in the Bill. I do not apologise for repeating what my noble friend Lady Kennedy said in identifying this. There should be a clear commitment from the chief executive and chairman of a company. I know from experience that if you do not have that commitment at the top it is not going to work. What you tell buyers and suppliers is no good. They need to see that there is real commitment right at the top of companies.

Disclosure should include, as a minimum, how risks have been identified throughout the supply chain, who has been involved in the identification of such risks, what action has been taken once risks have been identified and the steps taken to address modern slavery, if it is identified. The minimum requirements should be specified in primary legislation.

My noble friend Lady Kennedy talked about a threshold of £60 million. The figure is taken from Californian legislation. Whether it is the right figure is probably open to debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby made the interesting point that a lot of smaller companies could be involved. A lot of them would be involved in the supply chains of bigger companies so a debate on who is going to be covered by this threshold is merited.

The disclosure should be published in a company’s annual report, on its website and provided in writing on request. Foreign companies operating in the UK are not required to produce an annual report, but they should provide a stand-alone modern slavery disclosure to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Otherwise, we will find a whole group of people who are actively trading in the UK and who could be using forced or slave labour, but who are not included here. I do not think that would be right.

One question that I do not think has been raised is that of domestic worker visas. Changes to the Immigration Rules were introduced in April 2012 and under the system now in place new domestic workers in private households are able to stay in the UK only for a minimum of six months. They are no longer able to change their employer in the UK. The same thing applies to staff in diplomatic households. They are able to stay for up to five years but they can no longer settle permanently and, as before, they cannot change an employer in the UK. If you cannot change your employer in the UK, that is creating fertile grounds for you to be in a form of modern slavery. There have been enough cases in the press for us to know that this is not just people thinking about a worst case scenario. It actually happens and is an indictment on us. I would welcome the Minister’s response on that issue.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I just used the words “domestic servitude”, having all this in mind. That is not why I have risen. Does the noble Lord agree that there must be some sort of supply chain in the countries where some of these migrant domestic workers come from, where they are initially employed and then brought to this country by their employers? The term “supply chain” should cover that kind of relationship and arrangement as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I thank the noble Baroness. She is absolutely right. There certainly are organisations that specialise in supplying people. Whether we can somehow embrace that in terms of the supply chain, I am not so sure.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, made a number of really interesting points. She gave us the example of the Noble Foods egg company—an absolute classic—and used the phrase “demonising a few”, which is what can happen in the current environment, where there are a number of companies that are upfront; in many cases they are members of the Ethical Trading Initiative. Of course, if their activities are found to be less than perfect, they are often pilloried, whereas a whole host of other companies are not required to do much at all.

I see the surveys and hear people talk about British consumers caring very much about the sources of goods but I am a little sceptical. When members of my own family come home and say that they have bought an item of clothing at a very low price and I ask them if they know where it came from, there is often a deafening silence. With the flourishing of various stores that are offering the opportunity to buy things for £1 or less, how many people are checking the source of what they are buying? Including these organisations would be good.

The last point I want to make is about the remit of the GLA. I was really interested to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby refer to proactive activities in engaging with other companies. If noble Lords cast their minds back, they will remember that when the previous Government set up the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in the terrible context of the Morecambe Bay disaster, it had a fairly limited remit. I join others in saying that it is time we extended the remit of the GLA. There is a whole host of other industries—I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who referred to them so I do not need to repeat that. I have reached the end of my time and I look forward to the Minister’s response.