Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 22 February 2021 to Question 153241 on Amazon Web Services: Contracts, whether it is his policy that the denial of (a) labour rights and (b) human rights is a form of Modern Day Slavery.

The Government is committed to working with its suppliers to tackle modern slavery in supply chains, as part of wider government action to tackle business compliance with the Modern Slavery Act.

The Modern Slavery Assessment Tool (MSAT) helps public sector organisations work in partnership with suppliers to improve the policies, processes and systems they have in place to identify and tackle the risk of modern slavery in supply chains. The MSAT records a broad range of information including risk assessments, due diligence and any training the supplier has undertaken to mitigate modern slavery risks. The government continues to work with its Strategic Suppliers in areas the MSAT has identified can be improved.

AWS’s publicly available ‘Amazon Supply Chain Standards’ policy sets out commitment to both labour and human rights.