Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)

I know that the Minister and his noble friend Lord Collins are concerned. The issues are not a problem here, but, as I suggested earlier, they may be elsewhere within government. Maybe we have to concentrate people’s minds, as the Minister and I have done previously on other legislation. He referred to the Procurement Act, when we were successful, together with other noble Lords, in concentrating the mind of the Government at that time. That is all I am seeking to do this evening. The Minister referred to our duties. The Modern Slavery Act and its Section 54 are 10 years old. The author of that legislation was the noble Baroness, Lady May, then Home Secretary and who became Prime Minister. It was, at the time—everybody said it— landmark legislation. She recognises that the voluntary nature of Section 54, which is a tick-box exercise, does not do the job, but no one has brought forward changes to that. That is why the Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently conducting an inquiry into modern-day slavery and supply chain transparency. The Minister will know that, on previous occasions, Ministers have said from that Dispatch Box that it cannot be done in this or that Bill at this time and that there will be other legislation and that will be the time to do it. It never is the right time. There never is the right legislation. The issue ultimately is whether we entrench dependency on a country run by a regime like that of the CCP or whether we have resilience in the United Kingdom and create supply chains between democracies that have similar values; otherwise, British taxpayers’ money, to the tune of billions of pounds, is going to pour into the coffers of a regime that is inimitably opposed to the values that we espouse. For all those reasons, I would like to test the opinion of the House.