Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure Government contracts are not granted to companies that are complicit in serious human rights abuses.

The Cabinet Office published in Procurement Policy Note 05/19 comprehensive commercial policy and guidance to identify and tackle modern slavery and labour abuse risks throughout the commercial life cycle. This advocates a risk based approach and applies to central government, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Other public sector contracting authorities may wish to apply the approach set out in this PPN.

This is being updated to strengthen the guidance on using the existing grounds in the Public Contracts Regulations for excluding suppliers and will set out enhanced due diligence activities. This will be published in due course.