Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the ability of the Health and Safety Executive to tackle exploitation in the garment industry following a 46 per cent reduction in the budget of that organisation since 2009-10.

For the financial year 2020/21, the Health and Safety Executive has been provided with an additional £19m, an increase of over 10% of their budget, to ensure that workplaces are COVID secure. HSE targets its resources to higher risk sectors or to where they have intelligence or complaints to investigate further and this latter approach targets the textile sector.