Garment Industry (Working Conditions) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Development
Michael Connarty
Main Page: Michael Connarty (Labour - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)Department Debates - View all Michael Connarty's debates with the Department for International Development
Garment Industry (Working Conditions)
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The ILO plays a very important role and I am pleased that other organisations work closely with it, including DFID. I hope that that co-operation continues.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I spoke on this issue on 25 April, two days after the disaster, in the Council of Europe; what happened was in breach of article 4 of the European convention on human rights. On standards, my hon. Friend visited a factory where she was shown that everything was fabulous, but that was because she was visiting. The reality is that in October 2013, 112 women died at the Tazreen factory in Dhaka because they were locked in the factory when it caught fire. On 11 September 2012, 289 workers died at the Ali Enterprises factory in Karachi because they were locked in the factory when it caught fire. How much confidence can we have that we are not just being shown the best on the day? All the reports say that such factories do not represent the standards when interested parties, such as my hon. Friends, are not there observing.
Shabana Mahmood
That is an important point. When we visited that factory in Dhaka, I had the benefit of having my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow with me. She was able to engage with the workers in Bengali and Sylheti. She had a conversation with them that probed whether what we were seeing was for the benefit of visitors, rather than what happens on a day-to-day basis. I left confident that what we had seen was a true picture. DFID put in place arrangements to work with grass-roots organisations to ensure that those standards are not just what someone sees when they visit on any given day, but what happens every day for those workers.