Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 in ensuring the (a) reliable and accurate reporting of and (b) reduction of modern slavery in company supply chains since it came into force.

Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires businesses with a turnover of £36m or more to report annually on the steps taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.

Compliance with section 54 is high. Following a Home Office commission, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre completed an audit of compliance with Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. The high-level findings of this audit were published on 17 September 2020 in the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s annual report (available here): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-anti-slavery-commissioners-annual-report-2019-to-2020).

To further increase compliance with section 54, the Government response to the Transparency in Supply Chains consultation, published on 22 September 2020, committed to taking forwards an ambitious package of measures to strengthen the Act’s transparency legislation, including: extending the reporting requirement to public bodies with a budget of £36 million or more; mandating the specific reporting topics statements must cover; and requiring organisations to publish their statement on the new Government registry.

The Government has also committed to introduce financial penalties for organisations who fail to meet their statutory obligations to publish annual modern slavery statements. These measures require primary legislation and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.

In March 2021, the Government launched the modern slavery statement registry as a key tool to monitor and improve compliance with Section 54. Since launch, over 9,800 modern slavery statements covering over 32,800 organisations have been voluntarily submitted.