Bambos Charalambous

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come to in just a moment. I strongly support the strengthening of section 54 and its application. With the UK importing £20 billion-worth of high-risk goods every year, our current framework is not effective enough in preventing goods made with forced labour from entering the UK market, despite the Government’s stated position that no company operating in the UK should have forced labour in its supply chains. The Modern Slavery Act was considered world-leading legislation, as the UK was the first country in the world to introduce such legislation. However, the current transparency and supply chain reporting, as set out in section 54 of the Act, is wholly inadequate, applying only to organisations with a turnover of more than £36 million, and excluding public bodies, meaning many businesses and organisations fall through the cracks. The exclusion of public bodies from the duty to report on transparency in their supply chains can leave our country’s most important agencies vulnerable to being complicit in horrific human rights abuses, which affect not only the welfare of workers globally, but the stability and growth of our economy. In addition, the transparency reporting duty can be met by an organisation simply declaring that it has taken no steps to address forced labour in its supply chains; that is simply not good enough. Corporate giants with big money are given a free pass to escape their moral responsibilities by not even looking for any abuses present in their supply chains. At present, businesses are able to voluntarily identify, mitigate or prevent any forced labour risks found in their supply chains. Many responsible businesses in the UK want to do the right thing, but are being undercut by corporate giants and less responsible companies. Clear and enforceable rules are needed in order to provide the right guidance for businesses and level the playing field for all. We can address that by introducing mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation to hold all businesses, across all sectors, including financial institutions and the public sector, legally accountable for preventing human rights abuses and environmental harm in their supply chains. Mandatory due diligence would compel corporations to undertake proactive processes to minimise and manage the risk of violations within their operations by, for example, conducting risk assessments, requiring their suppliers to fulfil certain conditions or carrying out unannounced audits. Internationally, we are far behind our allies and partners. All other G7 nations have introduced or plan to introduce mandatory due diligence laws or import bans on goods made by forced labour. The EU is doing both. With the UK seeking a closer relationship and alignment with the EU, we must catch up. Businesses themselves have also spoken up. In the last few years, more than 150 businesses and investors, representing more than £4.5 trillion in UK assets, have publicly demanded mandatory standards. The Trades Union Congress, the Ethical Trading Initiative, the British Retail Consortium and the Corporate Justice Coalition, which collectively represent more than 350 high street brands with £800 billion in turnover, have called on the Government to introduce mandatory due diligence laws. Public support shows that people value companies that responsibly source and produce products we use every day, with four in five adults supporting new laws. By failing to update the current patchwork of legislation and guidelines, and delaying the introduction of human rights and environmental due diligence laws, we are failing workers, communities and environments integrated into our supply chains, failing UK businesses that want to do the right thing and ultimately risking the complicity of the UK economy, as well as our national security. The Government have already made it clear that supply chain resilience is critical to the UK’s economic security. In June last year, the trade strategy committed to a new supply chain centre within the Department for Business and Trade, which will play a role in supporting businesses to address the risks of forced labour in supply chains. The strategy also launched the responsible business conduct review—the UK’s implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. A year later, Parliament is still waiting for the review to be published and scrutinised, although I very much welcome yesterday’s publication of the action plan for the supply chain centre. The trade strategy rightly recognised that strengthening responsible business conduct “is not only a moral imperative”, but “a positive part of the Government’s mission to grow the economy.” Supply chains and the need to ensure that they are free of abuses and harm are embedded in our growth mission. With modern slavery costing the UK economy £60 billion every year, we urgently need to ensure that we do not lose out on more growth, and we can do that by simply introducing new legislation. The resilience of our economy goes hand in hand with our energy security. The conflict in the middle east and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, which have significantly contributed to the cost of living crisis for our constituents, have shown more clearly than ever that the UK must become energy independent and continue focusing on renewable sources of energy. However, the security of home-grown energy is exposed when we look further into its supply chain. An estimated 98% of solar panels in the UK are produced in China, predominantly in the Xinjiang region, with forced labour from the Uyghur community. Therefore, the UK is at risk of being a dumping ground for slave labour-produced solar panels. We must ensure that, with new legislation on Great British Energy, home-grown energy is produced through ethical means, so that in producing energy to heat our homes, we do not contribute to the inhumane treatment of workers and communities around the world. In addressing those challenges, we cannot overlook the unbreakable link between safeguarding human rights and protecting the environment in supply chains; when there is a failure to protect one, the other suffers. UK imports of beef, soya, cocoa, rubber and palm oil—also known as forest risk commodities—have wiped out forests the size of our major cities. The UK’s deforestation footprint linked to those imports has increased to 39,000 hectares in the last few years and is likely to be higher. The biggest culprit is corned beef from Brazilian companies such as JBS, which have been linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the earth. When communities lose vital access to clean water because of corporate contamination, when indigenous communities lose access to ancestral lands or when environmental defenders are threatened or killed for speaking out against mega-projects that destroy our environment, it becomes a human rights issue. New legislation must address all human rights and environmental harms in a way that provides clarity to businesses in ensuring that they are conducting themselves responsibly. The legislation needed to address those issues would protect the workers, communities and vital environments involved in producing our everyday goods. Consumers in the UK could be sure that they were shopping responsibly and not contributing to abuses around the world, and businesses could have the clarity they need in order to do the right thing. I have a few asks of the Government. Parliament continues to await the publication of two reviews set out in the trade strategy last year. Can the Minister confirm when the responsible business conduct review and the national baseline assessment will be published, the key outcomes that should be expected from those reviews, and a timeline for moving from review to action on the recommendations of each report? Given the interconnectedness of human rights, labour rights and environmental harm, can she confirm that the Government will engage in meaningful action to address this issue by adopting a thorough and holistic, rather than narrow, approach to responsible business conduct? Do the Government agree that we need cross-cutting and holistic legislation to provide clarity and certainty to UK businesses, rather than a patchwork approach that burdens businesses that act responsibly while enabling irresponsible businesses to undercut them? Failure to act on human rights abuses and environmental harm will damage the resilience of our supply chains and our economy. Introducing the human rights and environmental safeguards to UK supply chains set out in my speech is not just the right thing to do economically; it is our ethical and moral duty to ensure that the protections that we enjoy in the UK are shared across the world.