Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)

My Lords, let me take this opportunity, first, to welcome the Minister to his place, and, if I may be so bold, to thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and introducing it so comprehensively. I do not think that any Member of this House needs persuading of the gravity of what we are discussing. Forced labour is obviously a grotesque abuse, and Britain, working alongside our international partners, has a genuine and important role to play in confronting it. This has been a comprehensive debate, and there is much to agree with in what has been discussed in the past hour or so, but I shall confine my remarks to pressing the House to drill into the detail and to look beyond the moral clarity of the diagnosis towards the practical consequences of the remedies on offer. We need to be very careful about how we deal with this subject: a one-size-fits-all approach will probably not achieve the necessary objectives. As the report notes, much forced labour takes place in middle-income and higher-income countries. As a percentage of the population, it is at its worst in the Arab states. How can that be acceptable? Perhaps the most recent high-profile case was the World Cup-related construction in Qatar. The world seemed to turn a blind eye to that, which I personally find shameful. Surely construction is one of the five sectors where forced labour is most prevalent. The solutions to that are unlikely to be corporate in this country; they have to be diplomatic. That needs to be considered when dealing with this problem. However, we also need to acknowledge that much of the forced labour we are debating arises in nations where corruption and weak institutions prevail and where, as a consequence, poverty is endemic. In that context, further burdens placed on British businesses, whether through mandatory due diligence and reporting requirements of the kind proposed in the Immigration and Asylum Bill, or through restrictions on trade with particular suppliers or sectors, risks doing real harm to the very people we intend to protect in those areas where there are very fine distinctions between “forced” and “desperate”. We do not wish to disadvantage further those who are already in dreadful circumstances. We must, therefore, be very careful to design systems that allow for nuanced judgment; that is not to argue for inaction, but for careful and detailed consideration. We must also be aware that small and medium-sized British businesses have faced cost after cost and millions of pounds in cumulative regulatory burdens since this Government took office. I fear that further mandatory reporting requirements will do very little to solve the problem they are aimed at while doing much to add to it. It will add cost, complexity and legal exposure to businesses trying, in good faith, to operate responsibly within an imperfect system. In many situations, supply chains are so complex that it would be practically impossible to ensure absolute due diligence and compliance. This is not to argue for inaction—not at all—but we need to argue that these businesses, particularly SMEs, will need help to ensure that they are able to comply. I ask the Minister to bear this in mind when responding and to ensure that SMEs are taken particular care of and have the necessary support to minimise compliance costs and maximise the efficiency of their practices and solutions to this problem. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester reminded us, we do not want to end up in a situation where all we are doing is, in effect, transferring inequity from one group of disadvantaged people to another. Again, I say this not to counsel inaction but to counsel humility about the limits of regulation imposed at a distance. The long-term and only durable solution to this problem is trade. Free and expanding trade with more international partners raises standards of living, drives development and fosters the competition—I stress that—that roots out bad practice. It is prosperity, not prohibition, that can eliminate exploitative labour practices in every economy that has escaped them, our own included—a point made extremely well by my noble friend Lord Hannan. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, also made an extremely important argument about UK business, unfair competition and national resilience. I will not rehash it but, to that end, the committee’s suggestions about consistency in adding clauses on human and labour rights to international agreements should be given very careful consideration. I welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that recommendation. The drive to net zero has created a substantial and, I suggest, insufficiently scrutinised reliance on imported solar panels from regions associated with forced labour. As much as 45% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon—the essential raw material in the overwhelming majority of solar panels—has been produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur region, and the committee noted that the solar road map does not tackle supply chain risks. The United Kingdom imports the great majority of its photovoltaic hardware and China’s percentage share of global manufacturing runs into the high 90s at some stages of production. Similarly, some 70% of the world’s cobalt—a critical component in the batteries that power renewable storage and electric vehicles—is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country whose record on forced and child labour in artisanal mining is well documented by the Global Slavery Index. So even where we do not import these materials directly, we still sanction their use indirectly, but unmistakeably, every time we subsidise or mandate the deployment of renewable technologies built upon them. As others in this debate have noted, and particularly in debates on this sector, we must not overlook the fact that the public sector has a significant role to play in terms of its procurement policies, as pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and in the education of the public. That point was made extremely well by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. The public need to be educated about the extent of the problem so that they can make better and informed choices. By definition, a lot of that education will have to come from the public sector. This is not to say that I am arguing against the Government’s energy policy when we are talking about this aspect of the problem, but a serious conversation is still needed about how forced labour ends up in UK supply chains. I was very pleased to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said on that because sometimes the best of domestic intentions have disastrous unintended consequences thousands of miles away, out of sight, but, I hope, because of this thoughtful and expansive debate, not out of mind.