Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office plan to issue new procurement guidance to exclude surveillance camera suppliers linked with (1) modern slavery, and (2) human rights violations; and whether this will apply to public bodies in the education sector.

I refer the Noble Lord to the answer to his question HL6759. Comprehensive commercial policy and guidance to identify and tackle modern slavery and labour abuse risks throughout the commercial life cycle is a Cabinet Office lead.

The Government is clear that it expects all UK businesses to respect human rights throughout their operations, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The Cabinet Office published in Procurement Policy Note 05/19 comprehensive commercial policy and guidance to identify and tackle modern slavery and labour abuse risks throughout the commercial life cycle. This advocates a risk based approach and applies to central government, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Other public sector contracting authorities may wish to apply the approach set out in this PPN. This is being updated to strengthen the guidance on using the existing grounds in the Public Contracts Regulations for excluding suppliers, and will set out enhanced means of proof and due diligence activities. This will be published in due course.