Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, whether his Department plans to use bilateral trade negotiations as an opportunity to reduce modern slavery by proposing the inclusion in trade agreements of provisions on that issue; and whether the Government plans to implement indices and metrics to monitor changes in the risk of modern slavery taking place in that context.

The UK is committed to working with international partners and businesses to tackle modern slavery in global supply chains. It is vital that increased trade is not based on the exploitation and abuse of workers. We will be considering what further steps we may be able to take, to prevent modern slavery, through our future trade policy.

We are in the process of developing our approach to impact assessments (IAs), pertaining to new future trade agreements. The approach will be consistent with the Government’s current impact assessment process for new legislation, which considers environmental and social impacts where appropriate.