Slavery

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for securing this debate and for her excellent introduction that laid out the ground clearly. I want to make some remarks from my experience of working with victims, the police and other agencies within our national context. We have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, about the sheer horror of the way in which human beings are being treated in our own country.

I begin by welcoming Karen Bradley’s recent announcement that there will be amendments to secure proper reporting and disclosure. The key will be the level of reporting and the size of the company. I also welcome the strong support from many leaders in our industries. On the Select Committee, the people who represented Primark and Tesco, for instance, were supportive of a framework to require proper reporting and accountability, which would help their business case and standing in the community.

I want to make a number of points and then ask some questions of the Minister. Quite rightly, we see modern slavery as a moral issue and the horrific treatment of human beings by other human beings. However, it is, in terms of the proposed legislation, an economic issue. In our economy, businesses are under enormous pressure and there is a proper mantra to reduce the pressure of red tape. What that means in practice, of course, is that this country has one of the lowest levels of inspection in the labour market of any western country. Although I do not want to advocate upping red tape, having such an informal labour market that is desperate, for understandable reasons, to have maximum flexibility and efficiency means that, in all that flexibility and informality, slavery can easily be hidden because one does not have such regular and public ways of employing people. The continuing flourishing of gangmasters is an illustration of how people gathered, were taken on or not on the day, not cared for by the system of work, and just used as hands.

There is an economic issue about how we do our business in this country and how we balance the proper economic and efficient performance of companies with the treatment of human beings who provide the labour and create the wealth. That urgent debate is the background to what we are talking about.

As we have heard, modern slavery is built on the exploitation of vulnerable people. It is interesting how the people who are recruited in our country into the slavery industry are targeted because they are homeless, have mental health issues and are struggling in life. In Derby, we have recently had a case where two Slovakian traffickers have been imprisoned. They were bringing in Slovakian men, cramming them in a terraced house, confiscating their passports, sending them out to work—all the usual things. All these people being trafficked were extremely vulnerable; easily abused and oppressed by that kind of brutal regime. We have had recent cases with Latvian women and Indian women in Derby; in every case they were vulnerable people.

As well as the economic context, the broader point is the fact of vulnerable people. We live in a culture that is rightly concerned about safeguarding. We are concerned rightly about the safeguarding of children at the moment. We have to get up to speed with the safeguarding of vulnerable adults, many of whom are in exploited forced labour.

There has been some discussion—it came to the Select Committee—about the Companies Act, which requires companies to report in terms of human rights issues and their compliance with safeguarding the human rights of those whom they employ. However, there is some debate about how modern slavery is covered by this. Although the Government’s amendments might place in the Bill a good way of trying to get transparency, it may be worth their considering a clarification of the Companies Act, simply because many countries have companies legislation. Although they may be well behind us in terms of having a Modern Slavery Bill, it could be a model of how company law can be tweaked to make slavery a key part of what has to be reported on and accounted for in the operation of companies. If we want to be a world leader, we should not lose the potential of using the Companies Act ourselves as a model.

On the issue of scale, I entirely take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, that big companies can set an example that smaller companies can follow. In the national context, a high proportion of those enslaved are operating in an informal, murky economy. They are employed through agencies and other mediators. We have to try very hard when we propose legislation, besides requiring big companies to use their resources to set an example and show models for others, to tackle the difficult area of an informal economy that is hard to pin down. That may generate some protest from small and medium-sized enterprises. We have to debate with them robustly and graciously; not wanting to load red tape, but to balance economic efficiency and profitability with honouring God’s image in human beings who are being treated as mere hands in this terrible way.

Finally, perhaps I may raise a number of questions for the Minister. There is an opportunity for the public sector to take a lead. We have supply chains for things such as hospitals and prisons, and I think that the Government could set a high bar in terms of how we expect our own supply chains for hospitals and prisons to perform and be accountable. First, will the Minister comment on the possibility of due diligence in our supply chains in the public sector? Secondly, due diligence is well established in VAT procedures, showing how to gather information on figures for the performance of companies. Could those procedures be developed to pick up more information about business practices in terms of employment, wage bills, and the people who are subject to them? Thirdly, business crime forums use police resources to combat fraud in supply chains. Could we learn from them how to expand the notion of fraud in supply chains from the merely financial to the exploitation of human beings? All of these are models for trying to help businesses perform well by monitoring them and encouraging transparency, so could we build on some of them to help with regard to the human element in supply chains?

I want to say how important it is to encourage businesses to develop better practices and a generous attitude. It may interest noble Lords to know that in Derbyshire a partnership has developed recently between the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and Derbyshire Constabulary to look at companies which might be susceptible to harbouring slavery in their supply chains because they use a lot of agency workers or whatever it may be, and to approach those companies proactively. They can explain how these practices operate and talk about how to combat them. Businesses have welcomed this initiative. If, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has said, the GLA had its resourcing and remit expanded, I think it could have an important role to play not just in prevention by controlling criminals, but in proactively educating businesses so that they are able to read the signs within their operations and learn how best to respond positively.

I shall finish by reminding your Lordships that our country is rightly very concerned about safeguarding at the moment. This is part of the debate about safeguarding vulnerable adults and we need to step up to it urgently to ensure the highest standards.