Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)

My Lords, talk about being thrown in at the deep end. My noble friend the Minister was introduced just yesterday and I welcome him to your Lordships’ House and to his post. My noble friend is not a new friend. We first met so long ago that he was probably a teenager at the time. Much water has flown under many bridges since then. Maintaining the aquatic theme, I am sure that he will take to your Lordships’ House as a duck to water and excel here. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the members of his committee on their report, which builds on the report to which my noble friend Lady O’Grady referred. I was a member of that committee two years ago, conducting a post-legislative review of the 2015 Act. One of our recommendations was that the Government should introduce sanctions for companies that fail to comply with supply chain requirements. Unfortunately, the Government’s response in December 2024 was that the status quo should be retained with a voluntary aspect to it. Evidence shows that this is simply not enough. Without it being made compulsory, there will not be any meaningful change. Section 54 of the 2015 Act requires companies to publicly disclose their efforts to tackle forced labour and human trafficking within their business and supply chains. However, Section 54 only requires companies to report action on forced labour in supply chains, not to take action. That is bizarre. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, taking no action complies with the Act. If the Government are serious about ethical supply chains, as I believe they are, they must make sure that those companies with a poor record on supply chains involving forced labour and human trafficking show what action they are taking. Otherwise, this is in effect siding with those companies. It then distorts competition by denying companies that act responsibly a level playing field. That cannot be right. In their response to our report, the Government said that they were reviewing how they can strengthen penalties for non-compliance and create a proportionate enforcement regime. That was a year and nine months ago. In June 2025, Minister Bryant said that the Government had launched a review into the UK’s approach to responsible business conduct. That was a year and three months ago. Two months ago, in answer to a Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, my noble friend Lord Stockwood said: “The Government is considering the review’s findings and will set out its plans in due course”. That sequence of events brings to mind the rather acid comment of my noble friend Lord Blunkett when he said of Tony Blair’s first Government, of which he was a senior member, that it had “hit the ground reviewing”. That was one of the criticisms that Keir Starmer’s Government also received—an often overcautious approach characterised by incrementalism. The early signs are that Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be much less risk averse. One way of demonstrating that would be to introduce legislation to make human rights due diligence of supply chains mandatory. It is long overdue and absolutely necessary.