Mr Douglas Alexander

The UK addresses forced labour in global supply chains under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which requires commercial businesses that operate in the UK and have a turnover of £36 million or more to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. The purpose is to provide transparency, whereby businesses monitor their supply chains with rigour, are open about their risks and mitigations, listen to their workers, and act when they do find issues. In addition, the Department for Business and Trade takes a number of steps to address forced labour within UK supply chains. We negotiate and implement forced labour and modern slavery provisions within our free trade agreement programme, the developing countries trading scheme allows for the suspension of preferential trading arrangements on grounds of serious violation of labour rights, and UK Export Finance reviews environmental, social and human rights risk factors for transactions in the scope of its policy. We regularly engage with business and international partners in respect of both domestic and international tools to combat forced labour. On Xinjiang specifically, we will continue to stand firm on human rights where China continues to persecute and arbitrarily detain Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. The UK Government also expect, encourage and support UK businesses to undertake due diligence so that human rights and environmental issues are considered in their operations and supply chain relationships, in line with the OECD guidelines on responsible business conduct.