Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that businesses who are required to provide statements on their supply chains (a) provide such a statement and (b) complete their statements to a sufficient standard; and what steps her Department is taking to monitor the performance of businesses in providing those statements.

As a result of the world-leading provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, we have seen thousands of transparency statements published and businesses are now more focused on this issue than ever before. The legislation was designed to harness pressure from civil society, consumers and investors rather than set up a burdensome system of Government monitoring. We are pleased that civil society organisations are using company statements to hold businesses to account, including contacting businesses that have not yet published statements.

The Government has strengthened guidance for businesses and recently wrote to over 10,000 businesses that may be required to publish statements reminding them of their obligations and providing useful resources. We expect this activity will further increase the number and quality of statements published.

In October the Government also launched a new ‘Business Against Slavery Forum’ which will establish a new partnership between Government and business to accelerate progress in tackling modern slavery. It will focus on sharing best practice and building new initiatives to tackle modern slavery, including improving business engagement with the Modern Slavery Act 2015.