Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to audit NHS supply chains to ensure that no medical (a) garments and (b) equipment are sourced from (i) Xinjiang and (ii) other regions with widespread reports of forced labour and human rights abuses.

The United Kingdom is committed to tackling the issue of Uyghur forced labour in supply chains, and is taking robust action. We have introduced new guidance on the risks of doing business in Xinjiang specifically in section 6.2 of the guidance, enhanced export controls, and announced the introduction of financial penalties under the Modern Slavery Act. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overseas-business-risk-china/overseas-business-risk-china#business-and-human-rights

The Procurement Act, which received Royal Assent in 2023, will enable public sector contracting authorities to reject bids and terminate contracts with suppliers which are known to use forced labour themselves or anywhere in their supply chain.

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires commercial organisations that supply goods and services and have a total turnover over £36 million to publish a transparency statement annually, to set out what steps they have taken to ensure that modern slavery is not occurring in their supply chains.

The Department has pledged to put an end to modern slavery in the National Health Service by meeting my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care’s duty to assess and mitigate modern slavery risk in NHS supply chains. New regulations will require public bodies procuring goods or services for delivering health services in England to assess the risk of modern slavery and implement reasonable steps to procurement and contracting activities, with a view to eradicating the use of goods and services tainted by modern slavery.