Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that there is no forced labour in the supply chains of (a) palm oil and (b) other palm-derived ingredients imported into the UK.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
The United Kingdom is one of the leading countries confronting the scourge of modern-day slavery, including forced labour. The UK is committed to working in partnership with producing countries to achieve sustainability in our supply chains, including for products such as palm oil, and supporting better outcomes for nature, climate, and people.
The Modern Slavery Act requires businesses with a turnover of £36m or more to publish modern slavery statements annually to report on the steps taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.
The Government also supports voluntary due diligence approaches by UK businesses as steered by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what was the cost to the public purse of (a) Official and (b) non-Official Development Assistance spending on technical assistance programming delivered by UK-based organisations in 2021.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
In 2021, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spent £32,039,053 in Official Development Assistance (ODA) on technical assistance delivered by UK-based organisations. This spend was through our International Climate Finance programming, from a UK wide ODA spend of £11.4bn that year. BEIS’s technical assistance aims to support developing countries to raise their climate ambition to help limit global temperature rises to less than 1.5 degrees, in order to reduce the devasting impact of climate change on the world’s poorest communities.
For non-Official Development Assistance spend, this information is not held centrally and it would not be proportionate to obtain this information.