Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which projects on business and human rights his Department has funded in each of the last five years; and what the total spend of each such project was in each of those years.

The UK’s National Action Plan to implement the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights sets out a rolling programme of actions requiring both legislative and non-legislative approaches. The Department has funded one project in the last five years. The Department matched funding from the Dutch Government toward the development of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, a private sector-led initiative that ranks some of the world’s largest companies by their human rights policies, processes, and practices. The total spend on this project from UK Government was £60,000 in 2014/15 and £20,000 in 2015/16.