Tom Gordon

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd, and thank you again for joining us to allow this important debate to take place. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) on introducing this debate so emphatically and wonderfully—I could not have done it better myself. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and as we have already heard, last year the Committee published its report, “Forced Labour in the UK’s Supply Chains”. Our inquiry found that, despite Ministers’ repeated assurances that no company operating in the UK should have any forced labour whatsoever in its supply chain, that simply is not happening in practice. Goods made, or at least partly made, with forced labour are still reaching our shelves here in the UK. In fact, we report billions of pounds of goods a year from sectors where forced labour is rife, yet companies are still not required to map their supply chains or prove that their goods are clean. Nowhere was the gap between rhetoric and reality more clearly seen than in the Government’s China audit. That was a genuine opportunity to set out, transparently in public, exactly how Britain intends to tackle state-imposed forced labour against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and other minority groups across China. Instead, the Foreign Secretary offered us “shining a spotlight” and described the audit as an “ongoing exercise”. When our Committee pressed for concrete measures behind that language, the answers amounted to export controls and sanctions that already existed. This is not a strategy; it is a missed opportunity. Over 95% of the world’s solar panels rely on polysilicon, and over half the world’s polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, so it was unsurprising that the Government’s own evidence to our Committee accepted that there is credible evidence that companies in solar supply chains may be linked to forced labour against people in China. Thanks to the great work of my Liberal Democrat colleagues in Parliament in holding the Government to account, GB Energy’s sourcing rules were strengthened. However, well over a year later, we still will not see panels guaranteed to be free of forced labour, and the issue will only be tackled “as far as possible”. Our Committee found that the industry’s own solar stewardship initiative offers thin reassurance. Certification applies to individual sites, not whole companies, so a firm with mostly uncertified factories can still wear the badge of membership. If we do not get a proper grip on this, it will be the new Achilles heel of the green transition. This is not only about solar; our inquiry also heard evidence about North Korean workers on Chinese fishing vessels. Last year, I visited the Falkland Islands as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme. When we met Members of the Legislative Assembly there, we heard about how the Chinese fishing fleet in the south Atlantic was causing problems, and some of the horrific instances where the regime of the Chinese Communist party was selling and buying labour from North Korea. We have also heard today about tomatoes being processed in China that now sit on British supermarket shelves, which have been documented by the BBC as recently as last year, as well as critical minerals like cobalt from the DRC. We know that the International Labour Organisation estimates that 27.6 million people are trapped in forced labour globally, two thirds of which is linked to commercial supply chains. This is a systemic, cross-sector and growing issue. What have the Government done with the JCHR report recommendations? In October, Ministers published their response and launched a responsible business conduct review. To be fair, that is a start, but they have deferred almost everything to the review. Will the UK introduce mandatory human rights due diligence? “We are waiting on the review.” Will the UK introduce an import ban on goods linked to forced labour? “We are waiting on the review.” Will there be a stronger use of the powers in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which Border Force and the National Crime Agency are deploying far too rarely? Well, the Government told us that they “cannot direct how the POCA powers are used”. Although that may technically be correct, Governments can resource enforcement, set priorities and fund agencies to act. Choosing not to do so is a policy choice. Earlier in the debate, the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) talked about section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. It requires large companies to publish supply chain transparency statements, yet we know that a significant number of companies are not complying, and those that do can satisfy their legal obligations simply by reporting that they have taken no action whatever. That is not an obligation to ensure transparency in any meaningful sense of the word. Our Committee recommended strengthening section 54, and the Government’s response is under consideration as part of the review. Next week, I will be holding the inaugural general meeting of the APPG for coffee, tea and spices, if anyone is interested—I hope to see Members there. The APPG will look at how supply chains impact women and girls working in those sectors. We heard earlier in the debate from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) about the actions that other countries have taken on slavery in supply chains. He pointed particularly to the United States and its Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act, which established a rebuttable presumption that anything from Xinjiang was made with forced labour, unless a company can prove otherwise. We also heard about the European Union and its forced labour regulations; we simply have a review. Our Committee recommended that the Government introduce new legislation within one year of the publication of our report. That deadline is in July 2026, just next month. Will the Government meet that deadline? I ask the Minister to take three other things from that report. First, I ask that the Government introduce mandatory human rights due diligence for UK companies. Voluntary reporting is not creating a level playing field, and businesses told our Committee as much. Secondly, will the Minister follow the United States and the European Union and introduce a proper import ban on goods linked to forced labour, rather than relying on the occasional under-used application of Proceeds of Crime Act powers? Thirdly, will the Government use the China audit for what it should have been—a public account of exactly what the UK will do to keep state-imposed forced labour out of our supply chains, starting with solar power?