Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether his Department (a) monitors and (b) assesses the extent to which countries participating in the Developing Countries Trading Scheme comply with international (i) human rights, (ii) labour rights, (iii) gender rights and (iv) environmental obligations.

The Government is committed to working with international partners and businesses to ensure global supply chains are free from human and labour rights abuses. The UK monitors all countries on the Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS) on an ongoing basis for serious and systemic violations of human rights (including gender rights), labour rights and environmental obligations based on international conventions.

The tools to monitor compliance may include reports from international convention bodies, reports produced by international organisations and reporting from the Government’s diplomatic network. The criteria the Government may consider include the nature, scale, impact, frequency and pattern of violations.