Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to bring proposed changes to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 before Parliament; whether these proposals will include fines for companies failing to comply with the legislation; how and when they will introduce export controls in order to prevent exports of goods potentially contributing, either directly or indirectly, to alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang; and why they decided not to implement the recommendation of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee to produce a whitelist of companies which evidence actions taken to rid their supply chains of forced labour in Xinjiang and a blacklist of firms which fail to do so.

The landmark transparency provisions contained in section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 made the UK the first country in the world to require businesses with a turnover of £36m or more to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.

To enhance the impact of transparency and accelerate action to prevent modern slavery, the Government has committed to strengthening the reporting requirements contained in section 54, including by introducing financial penalties for those that fail to meet their statutory obligation to publish modern slavery statements. These measures require primary legislation and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows. The Government will publish guidance in line with the legislative timescales to help organisations prepare for the new reporting requirements.

In January 2021, the Foreign Secretary announced a package of cross-Government policy measures seeking to ensure that UK private and public bodies are not complicit in, nor profiting from, the human rights violations in Xinjiang. This included a review of export controls, to ensure we are doing all we can to prevent the export of goods that may contribute to human rights violations in Xinjiang. This review is ongoing and we will report its outcome to Parliament in due course.

The Government’s reasons for not taking forward the recommendation made by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee were set out in our response to the Committee’s report, available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/365/business-energy-and-industrial-strategy-committee/publications.