Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help ensure that UK companies are transparent about the actions they are taking to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains.

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

The transparency legislation was designed to enable consumers, investors and civil society to scrutinise business action. In March 2021, the Government launched the Modern Slavery Statement Registry to radically enhance transparency by bringing together modern slavery statements on a single platform and making the data readily available for the public. Since launch, over 8,950 modern slavery statements covering over 30,320 organisations, have been submitted to the registry on a voluntary basis.

The Government is committed to strengthening our approach to modern slavery and building on the world-leading legislation on transparent supply chains introduced in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Following a public consultation, the Government committed to taking forward 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;
• Requiring organisations to publish their statement on the Government Modern Slavery Statement Registry.

In January 2021 the Government further 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 which will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.