Question to the Home Office:

To the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary-Under-Secretary of State for Health of 19 June 2019, Official Report, column 145WH, what steps his Department has taken since it sent a letter to the CEOs of 17,000 businesses regarding the audit of compliance with the requirement to produce modern slavery supply chain statements.

The Home Office has written twice to approximately 17,000 organisations identified as being required to prepare a Modern Slavery Statement under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. As a result almost 4,000 organisations have registered to receive tools and guidance from the Home Office to support effective reporting under the Act.

The Home Office is commencing an audit of compliance and organisations which persist in flouting their obligations risk being publicly named. The Home Office is also developing a central registry for modern slavery statements published under the Act to enable the Government to continually monitor compliance.