Human Rights: Supply Chains

[Relevant documents: Sixth Report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of Session 2024-25, Forced Labour in UK Supply Chains, HC 633, and the Government response, HC 1404.]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of safeguarding human rights in supply chains.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd, particularly as you had such short notice. Globalisation and technological advances over the last few years have given us the ability to better connect across the world and improved our ability to trade globally. With increased connectivity comes increased awareness of issues and events around the world, and one issue that that increased awareness has brought into sharp focus is human rights in our country’s supply chains. From the Boohoo scandal, involving the exploitation of workers paid £3.50 an hour in a factory in Leicester, to the Bangladesh sweatshops making our clothes, to state-imposed forced labour for the Uyghur community in China, we have never been more aware of the need to ensure that our supply chains do not involve human rights violations and the exploitation of workers at home and abroad.

Supply chains run our daily lives, but the uncertainty over where many of our daily products originate and whether they have been produced through forced labour and in inhumane conditions has wide-ranging ethical and national security implications. Here is an example to illustrate the point. This morning, a nurse in the UK woke up to prepare for her NHS shift. She wears a cotton uniform, the fibres of which were produced with Uyghur forced labour. For breakfast, she eats a banana grown by workers facing union-busting in Costa Rica. She checks her smartphone, built with cobalt mined by children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She makes her journey to work in a car fuelled by petrol from companies linked to threats against environmental defenders and indigenous communities in Nigeria. At hospital, she puts on gloves made in a union-busting factory in Sri Lanka, under lights powered by solar panels made with Uyghur forced labour in China, and uses surgical tools linked to child labour in Pakistan. On her break, she gets a cup of tea with a biscuit containing palm oil from Indonesia, where communities and forests have been swept away to be replaced with palm oil plantations.

First, Mr Dowd, I commend you for taking the Chair and saving the debate. It is said that you never go home, so perhaps that is why you were able to get here.

I thank the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this incredibly important debate. He has outlined a number of countries where the problems are acute, but does he agree that China is the worst of all? Its abuses—of human rights in particular—are on an industrial scale. Some 70 million Christians are abused in terms of their human rights, including their right to believe, as are millions of Uyghur Muslims and between 7 million and 20 million Falun Gong. China must be taken to task. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in summing up the debate, the Minister needs to outline a number of methods to take China on? It has done some 13.75 million forced-labour transactions, and it is time for those to stop.

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I am sure many colleagues in the Chamber will focus on the Uyghurs in their contributions, but he is right to highlight the abuse in China and the need to address it.

That is the reality in UK supply chains: these products, which we use every day, are integrated into our lives. We need legislation to fix that, to prevent the abuse of human rights and the degradation of the environment.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. As a long-time trade unionist, I am proud of the work this Government have done to secure employment rights in our country, but last year the International Trade Union Confederation global rights index found that more than 80% of countries restricted the right to collective bargaining, and 75% denied the right to establish or join a trade union. Does my hon. Friend agree that our duty is to promote human and labour rights wherever we can and to regulate our global supply chains so that workers across the world can enjoy the protections we have?

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The lack of trade union rights globally is seriously worrying. I am a proud trade unionist, and we need to ensure that trade union rights are respected in our UK supply chains. I will come on to that shortly in my speech.

Our country is the birthplace of the trade union movement. We pride ourselves on championing workers’ rights, human rights and our democratic values. Our Labour Government recently passed the Employment Rights Act 2025, the biggest reform of workers’ rights in a generation, bringing more security to millions of workers and making work pay. Our freedoms of association and collective bargaining—some of the most important rights we have—allow workers to have representation in the face of unfair treatment and to advocate for fair pay and protections against dismissal, discrimination and other unfair and inhumane conditions.

The same cannot be said for workers around the world. Workers in 75% of countries are denied the right to freedom of association. In many countries, it is illegal to be a trade unionist. Coupled with attacks on freedom of speech, we have countless reports of human rights activists and environmental defenders being threatened, or even killed, when challenging or opposing abuses by large corporations. With 50 million people trapped in modern slavery globally—a number that is growing every year—and labour rights under threat almost everywhere, it has never been more critical to tackle this issue head on.

Without those freedoms, workers have no power to challenge inhumane conditions that exacerbate inequality and poverty, particularly for women and children. The UK was once a leader on safeguarding human rights and supply chains, but we are now falling behind. Currently, we have a patchwork of narrow legislation and guidelines on businesses and human rights that are not enforcing our moral duty to ensure that our supply chains are free from human rights abuses.

My hon. Friend will know that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which recently published a report called “Forced Labour in the UK’s Supply Chains”. One of our recommendations was that the Government need to strengthen section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and specifically the reporting duty, in a way that reflects the size and capacity of the business in question. Does my hon. Friend agree with that recommendation? Would he like to see more done to strengthen the Modern Slavery Act?

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.

I remind Members that we have about five or six minutes, give or take, per person. Just bear that in mind. I also remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I am sure I speak for us all in extending warm thanks to you for stepping into the breach at the last minute to enable us to have this timely and important debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing it.

It is clear that UK business has global environmental and human rights impacts. UK business has impacts on climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, waste management, deforestation, and of course on human rights and labour rights, as we have already discussed. The Government have acknowledged those concerns.

This debate comes at a particularly timely moment because, as the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green pointed out, we await with bated breath the Government release of announcements. I note that the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) tabled a question to the Secretary of State in January asking when the responsible business conduct review would be published. The Minister for Trade responded with one word: “Soon.” It is now five months later, so perhaps today’s Minister could assure us in her wind-up that soon really will mean soon. We would very much appreciate seeing that review.

Although we have some parts of an existing legal framework—for example, the Modern Slavery Act and the Environment Act 2021—they are too narrow to meet internationally accepted standards. Single-issue measures such as robust legislation to prevent and address modern slavery, including through import and export restrictions of goods and services that involve forced labour, are useful but not in themselves sufficient to address the full range of human rights and environmental risks and harms. In particular, if they require companies only to report, rather than to take action, they do not have the force that we need.

The UK risks falling behind its international partners. The UK was once a frontrunner on environmental and human rights legislation, but progress has stalled. The EU’s corporate sustainability due diligence directive will apply, of course, to UK companies that generate significant turnover in EU markets, meaning that UK businesses will face mandatory due diligence obligations abroad without equivalent domestic standards at home. That does not make sense. The UK would be better able to produce and sell goods and services in the EU single market, as well as continue to position itself strongly as a global leader on human rights, if we had our own mandatory environmental and human rights due diligence legislation.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing the debate, which is much needed. Also, it is not often that I thank an Everton supporter for anything, but thank you very much, Mr Dowd, for stepping into the breach.

A number of organisations have been working incredibly hard with me and other Members on a number of fronts relating to this issue for some time. I thank the Corporate Justice Coalition, which is a large coalition of organisations. I thank the TUC and my own union, Unison, for circulating briefings. I also thank Anti-Slavery International; ActionAid; Sarah Benn Gordon, who put together a range of information for me; and the wonderful House of Commons Library.

The report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights is an excellent piece of work, not surprisingly. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) has gone, but he is a specialist in Aristotle, and we can see the logic in the report. I have read the Government’s response and want to make sure that I have it clear; the Minister can clarify later in the debate. First, the response says that the Government share the Committee’s concerns and accept that there are real worries about global supply chains and that we have to ensure that, as a country, we are not complicit. Secondly, it states that

“the Government is actively exploring options to strengthen protections.”

Thirdly, it states—as hon. Members have noted—that their response will be based on the trade strategy review that was launched some time ago, which aims to ensure that we have responsible business conduct in supply chains and companies operating in the UK.

I found it interesting that the Government’s response listed exactly the same concerns, about

“human rights, labour rights, the environment, and anti-corruption”

I am pleased that the right hon. Member referred to my generosity, which extends even to Liverpool supporters.

It is always a blessing to have you chairing a meeting, Mr Dowd. It is particularly a blessing today, as we would not have this debate were you not here, so thank you.

I have been active on this subject for some time. I have been sanctioned by China because of the issues that we raised over modern-day slavery. I remind Members that it was the Centre for Social Justice, which I set up, that first published the paper “It Happens Here”. We were then able to get the Government to initiate the Modern Slavery Act—the first legislation of its kind in the world. We were all very proud of that Act, but sadly it really has no enforcement. Government and suppliers have no obligation to check. They are supposed to make a declaration, but we know that many of those declarations are in fact deliberately false—they know they will not be checked, and therefore they do not have to worry about it—so while the Act is great, it is rather toothless.