Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his committee on this important report and on securing this debate. I add my warm welcome to my noble friend the Minister. I chaired the House of Lords committee that examined the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It recommended the introduction of much more robust due diligence standards, aligned to those emerging from the EU. I was so pleased to see that echoed in this report. Will my noble friend the Minister signal support today for the approach advocated by the Corporate Justice Coalition, which is backed by both business and unions, as set out in the excellent Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Young? I also have an interest in the debate, as we have heard, as Great British Energy’s board member with lead responsibility for a just transition for workers and to combat modern slavery. Basic human rights are severely threatened by climate change too. So the answer cannot be putting the brakes on decarbonisation. GBE is committed to becoming an anti-slavery leader, helping to cut industry reliance on minerals and products from companies or regions that use forced labour. In the short term, we are finalising a code of conduct on which investments and grants will be conditional. But ultimately I agree that the best way forward is to invest in the development of alternative technologies and to build supply chains and decent jobs here in the UK. As a country, we must also learn from history. Globally, the last great advance against forced labour came after the Second World War, when many former colonies won independence and set about dismantling colonial systems of indentured labour. In the British Empire alone, an estimated 1 million Indian workers and hundreds of thousands of Chinese labourers had been brutally controlled through drugs, debt bondage and the criminalisation of desertion. My point is that today the root causes of forced labour are the same: unaccountable state or corporate power; poverty, racism and discrimination; and weak labour rights. Workers organised into free and independent trade unions play a vital role in holding companies and their supply-chain policies to account. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that new UK rules on due diligence will recognise and strengthen that trade union role.