14
Examination of witnesses
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega and Oliver Holland.
Q15 The Chair: Welcome to today’s 11th meeting of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The meeting is part of our inquiry into forced labour in United Kingdom supply chains. Those who have attended or watched previous sessions will know that we have been concerned particularly about violations of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act and the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act. Among witnesses we have heard from in the past was Rahima Mahmut of the World Uyghur Congress, who described to us the use of slave labour in Xinjiang and the role played by that slave labour in producing goods sold into United Kingdom supply chains.
We have expert witnesses here to help us in our inquiry. The purpose of the session is to understand a range of business perspectives and legal approaches to addressing forced labour in supply chains. In this first panel, the committee will examine the legal framework in relation to forced labour in greater detail. In previous sessions, the committee has heard analysis of the Modern Slavery Act and the European Union and United States comparators. In this session, we would like to explore criminal, civil and international aspects with experts at the forefront of the latest legal developments. We will look more closely at the impact that procurement measures can have in reducing the risks of forced labour. When we get to the second session I will tell you what the purpose of that is, but also introduce those witnesses in due course.
Now it is my pleasure to welcome Professor Olga Martin-Ortega, who is professor of international law at the University of Greenwich, where she leads the business, human rights and environment research group and is a senior adviser on remedy in global supply chains at Electronics Watch. Her work focuses on business and human rights in global supply chains. She has acted as an adviser to the UK Home Office modern slavery prevention unit, the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the International Labour Organization, the UN high-level procurement network, the UK Local Government Association and the Government of Canada.
Alongside her, we have Mr Oliver Holland, who is a partner at Leigh Day. Mr Holland is a partner in the international and group litigation department, where he has been representing claimants in litigation against multinational companies for 15 years. He has represented thousands of members of communities, workers and customers in group actions relating to human rights abuses, environmental damage, parent company liability, supply chain liability and consumer law. He has been at the forefront of legal developments in this area, establishing that UK companies could owe a duty of care to those impacted by their operations abroad, including in supply chains.
We are very pleased to have two such distinguished experts here at the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which of course consists of Members of both Houses of Parliament. There are six Members of the Commons and six of the Lords. All of them, I know, will want to ask you questions as we proceed. Let me, if I may, ask a curtain-raising question. Can you give us your view on how well the UK is doing at addressing forced labour in supply chains? Are we keeping up with the approaches taken in other developed nations?
Oliver Holland: Good afternoon and thank you very much for inviting me here to give evidence. Thank you for looking at this really important issue. In my opinion, the UK is not doing well at addressing forced labour in supply chains. In my practice of representing victims of forced labour, I regularly have to investigate many supply and value chains for products coming into the UK. In my experience, forced labour is prevalent across many products entering the UK. This is across a range of industries, from the electronics industry to the garment industry, the car industry, the construction industry and many food products coming into the UK, including fish, cocoa, coffee and fruit. I could go on. It is quite difficult to find products coming into the UK from certain areas that are not tainted by forced labour, unfortunately.
The level of forced labour varies from the most extreme, state-imposed forced labour, as we see in Xinjiang, through to more localised issues of forced labour. Those may be sector-specific or affect a particular group of people within a country, and might have to do with aspects such as debt bondage that fall under the ILO forced labour indicators. Unfortunately, we also see a lot of forced child labour. I have clients as young as four years old who are trapped in forced labour making products coming into the UK.
The Chair: Which countries would you identify as being most prevalent in the use of child labour?
Oliver Holland: It is quite a range. Rather than countries, it is more to do with products. It is much more common in agricultural products. That, unfortunately, is often on the African continent. It is very difficult for me to say that the UK is in a good position. There are five primary reasons that I would like to outline from the outset as to why the UK is not doing well.
First, the Modern Slavery Act is not sufficient for tackling forced labour in UK supply chains. When it came out in 2015, it was world leading. It was the first of its kind. Unfortunately, we have fallen well behind neighbouring countries and even those outside the EU. As we have seen in France and Germany, they have due diligence legislation. As we have seen in the EU with the corporate sustainability due diligence directive—CSDDD—next year all member states will have to transpose that into their national laws, so we will be even further behind then. There is a risk that the UK is becoming a dumping ground for bad products.
Secondly, there is not really proper access to justice for victims of forced labour in UK supply chains. While I represent many victims of forced labour, this really is just the tip of the iceberg. Routes to redress for victims of forced labour are limited and difficult and can take years to conclude. Thirdly, related to that, that is partly because the Modern Slavery Act has no civil liability for companies to enable victims of forced labour to hold them to account.
Fourthly, there is a lack of transparency and traceability as to the origins of products both at a company level, in terms of companies being properly transparent and tracing products to the end of the value chain, not just the supply chain, and at a government level, in terms of making import records public so we can see what is coming into the UK. We see that the US has that, for example.
Fifthly, there is a failure by the auditing industry to carry out proper social audits to identify forced labour. Companies are able to hide behind these audits. I believe that the auditing industry is perpetuating this issue.
All these issues can be addressed through the UK introducing mandatory due diligence legislation. That could put the UK back as a world-leading country in terms of issues of forced labour and other human rights abuses.
The Chair: I know that my colleague Peter Swallow is going to ask you more about the 2015 legislation in due course. Perhaps we can turn to you, Professor. Can you give us that overview? The second leg of my question was about how we compare with other countries. How are we doing?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: I join Mr Holland in thanking you for the time to be able to bring our expertise and, in my case, my research on the topic. I totally agree with the situation and the picture on the ground. In principle, on paper, we are not that bad. We have signed all the relevant conventions and transposed the legislation that we had to. However, this is not translating, as we have just heard, into prevention of goods that have been produced with forced labour arriving here.
What is it that we are missing? We are missing the enforcement of some of these international obligations that we have assumed, specifically a commitment to monitoring and oversight, and to making victims, survivors and rights holders part of the processes of design, enforcement and monitoring of the legislation. If we think about what these legal frameworks are for, they are for the protection of those more vulnerable to these exploitations.
How do we compare to other states? We are pretty good in the indices. For example, the Global Slavery Index puts us really high, although I know that lots of my colleagues have reservations over the way these kinds of statistics are done. We do not compare badly in terms of laws and policies, but we are not providing the remedies, the fora or the support and empowerment that we need for those whom these laws are made to protect.
The Chair: I am going to turn now to Sir Desmond Swayne, who is going to ask you further questions and drill deeper into this issue about obligations, international organisations, what we are signed up to and what we actually do.
Q16 Sir Desmond Swayne: Do we have any internationally binding, enforceable obligations on supply chains beyond our own borders?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: That is a very interesting question and it is very debated in the scholarship. We signed the Palermo protocol in 2000, the UN protocol on the prevention of human trafficking, which establishes specifically that we have an obligation as a state to take all the measures possible to prevent human trafficking—that is the language of the protocol—from happening. This includes all sorts of measures, criminal but also administrative, educational, et cetera, to disrupt the supply of and demand for goods produced with forced labour. So we do have an obligation, albeit a progressive obligation, of prevention.
We have a system that is crystallising and becoming hard law of business and human rights. We have the commitments. The UK has made commitments to uphold the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We hope that there will be a new action plan on business and human rights soon. The last one was 2016. We have made international commitments under the business and human rights framework to have a duty to protect victims of corporate-related harms.
Sir Desmond Swayne: I stress the word “enforceable”.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: We have the obligation to insert these duties into our legal system. That is not enforceable at an international level. There is no body at international level that is going to sit us in the dock, but we have the obligations that we should be putting into legislation.
Q17 Peter Swallow: Professor, you mentioned that we have these obligations on paper, to use your phrase, but we are missing enforcement of them. What, in your view, needs to change to make sure that the UK is compliant with our obligations? I wondered whether you wanted to touch specifically on Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act and whether anything there needs to be strengthened.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: On this, I agree very much with my colleague about the need for Section 54 to become a substantive obligation of due diligence. It should be an obligation to not just report what you are doing but identify, prevent, mitigate and remediate the instances of harm in which a company has been involved. I believe that mandatory human rights and environment due diligence is important. I do not want to leave out the environment, which, in principle, may not automatically seem related to forced labour in supply chains but in fact is. As we know, climate change generates a higher risk of forced labour, for example.
Yes, we need mandatory human rights due diligence as part of Section 54; enforcement and oversight by a central body that is independent and has the resources; and capacitation for companies and the public sector. I know that we are going to discuss public procurement later. The public sector should definitely be part of Section 54 obligations. This could be a way, through the Modern Slavery Act, to enforce and strengthen the legislation that we already have and for the UK to continue to be a leading actor in this.
Q18 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Some years ago, when South Africa was part of the apartheid, you were able to identify which goods were from where, so the consumer had an opportunity to choose. Does that exist now? When we go to the supermarket, everything is just there. We have no idea where it is from. Is anything happening now? Is that in place?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: I do not think that we as the consumer, and this includes the institutional consumer, so the public buyer, have that capacity. Supply chains are, by design, opaque and work in a way that jumps jurisdictions. Therefore, we are not able to trace this and make it fit neatly within one jurisdiction under the law.
I do not see the problem of making them available, traceable and transparent. I have some experience of working in the electronics industry supply chain. A laptop has thousands of components and the company that finally sells it to us needs to know where they are coming from, when, and of what quality they are, to see whether they are going to fit in the laptop and create a product. We have the capability to understand where it comes from. If it is left to the consumer, to be honest, we will continue to be in the dark. It is too much of a burden for the consumer to understand a supply chain.
Q19 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You are saying that the obligation has to lie with those who are purchasing these things from often illicit contexts. My question is for Mr Oliver Holland, whose work is very familiar to me. I am very conscious, Mr Holland, that you cannot talk about cases that you have on currently. They are sub judice. Perhaps you could speak in generalities. It seems to me that relying on survivors of forced labour to bring extraterritorial claims is not the most effective way for us to try to secure some accountability for the exploitation that is involved in many of these chains. How can we do it better? What is your recommendation for something more effective we can do to secure redress for survivors and make sure that they can access justice, which I know you are deeply involved in? How do we do that more effectively?
Oliver Holland: Perhaps I should set out some of the challenges we face in very general terms without making specific reference to any particular cases. As I said earlier, I represent victims of forced labour in different cases against UK companies. The cases that we represent people on are really only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more cases that we turn away than we are able to bring. That is because of the challenges that we face in bringing them. It is also really important to remind ourselves that victims of forced labour are some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised individuals in the world and are powerless against these companies. That is part of the issue as well.
There are some main issues that I would like to highlight. First, the way that we bring these cases is that we establish tort law liability. To do that, we need to demonstrate corporate responsibility. We have to obtain extensive evidence of knowledge, control and assumption of responsibility by the UK companies. While these civil claims can be a really empowering process for victims—and that is a really important thing to consider as well—these cases can take a number of years to conclude. This is often because of the approach of defending companies fighting the cases on procedural issues, particularly on jurisdiction. It can take a number of years to overcome these issues.
That brings with it a high cost to bring these claims. The legal costs from the defendant and our costs can run into very high figures, sometimes exceeding the amount of actual damages that the victims are seeking. In our experience, defending companies will seek any way to delay things. All these issues are primarily because the burden of proof rests on the victims, on the people who are at the bottom of the supply chain and are disenfranchised. That is the primary issue. That is why it is so difficult to bring cases like this.
The solution to that, to enable access to justice and remedy, is for new legislation that reverses the burden of proof, so that it is on the companies to show what steps they have taken to ensure that forced labour is not present in their supply chains. If it is found that it is, civil liability could be established. There would be greater access to justice and effective remedy, and it would be easier to achieve, largely removing these lengthy and arduous court battles.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It is important for those who are listening, not just here inside the Chamber but also viewing this, that we go back to the first principle. Normally in civil litigation it is the case that the person bringing the allegation and cause of action to the courts will have to carry the burden of proof. It would be an exceptional course to take to move it to the company, but it happens in some other circumstances. Can you explain to people that this is not completely out of the ordinary? There are circumstances where it works in this way.
Oliver Holland: Yes, exactly. There are a few examples of that, the most obvious one being the Bribery Act. That was brought in also reversing the burden of proof, requiring companies to take steps to ensure that bribery was not present.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: They had to show that they were not giving bribes in order to get contracts.
Oliver Holland: Exactly, yes, and that has been shown to be highly effective, as against statistics around the Modern Slavery Act that have shown it to be ineffective. That is partly because of this issue, I believe.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: The really important point for us to understand, which I hope will find its way into the report, is that this is not asking for the impossible. This is something that has been shown to work in other areas that are very comparable.
Oliver Holland: Yes, exactly.
The Chair: It would help the committee in that respect if you could provide in writing sometime some examples of how the Bribery Act has been used in these extraterritorial cases that have been referred to. That would be very helpful for us.
Oliver Holland: Absolutely, I would be happy to. There are also instances involving other legislation. We can provide examples of that as well.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It is a rather sad thing to say that the United States, under one of the President’s newest executive orders, is removing the piece of legislation that deals with this and creates the crime of bribery for corporates in America. He wants it to be possible to bribe people, apparently.
The Chair: We will not ask you to respond to that, but many of us will be cheering Lady Kennedy on.
Q20 Lord Murray of Blidworth: I am going to ask some questions now about other legal avenues that are available in this space beyond the Modern Slavery Act. My questions are first to you, Mr Holland. The three particular legal areas we might look at are sanctions, the Proceeds of Crime Act and free trade agreements, and then regulatory oversight if we have time.
To what extent do you think existing legal and political instruments, those that I have just listed perhaps, could be more effectively used to address forced labour in supply chains? In particular, where goods are linked to a supply chain that may involve forced labour, could they be seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act? Could the profits from the sale of those goods be captured by conceivable sanctions designations? Could we prevent goods linked to forced labour entering the UK by putting provisions into free trade agreements? I would be interested to hear your views on those three.
Oliver Holland: There are some existing measures that could be used more effectively to address issues of forced labour. My broad opinion is that, without new legislation, that is going to be difficult. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, as you will probably know, authorities have the power to investigate suspected money-laundering offences relating to the import of goods made with forced labour. Then such goods can be considered criminal property and trading in them could be considered criminal conduct. The National Crime Agency is tasked with ensuring compliance with the POCA regime, and, as we have seen so far, is reluctant to investigate. There was a case last year that was concluded, so I believe I can refer to it. It was a World Uyghur Congress case.
Lord Murray of Blidworth: Was this a case of criminal proceedings, or was this a civil measure under POCA?
Oliver Holland: This was a judicial review challenging the NCA for not having investigated the allegations of forced labour in cotton.
The Chair: It was referred to in our earlier proceedings by Rahima Mahmut.
Lord Murray of Blidworth: Indeed. Can you think of any actual cases where assets have been seized using the Proceeds of Crime Act for this reason?
Oliver Holland: No, not off the top of my head. I can certainly write with further information, but not as far as I am aware, no. Assuming changes are made so that it can be more effectively enforced, POCA could help in creating some deterrence and be useful in that way, but it is still not getting to the crux of the issue.
It may be that POCA and the sanctions regime could be used in the most extreme instances of forced labour. We have seen that with the sanctions regime in relation to Myanmar, for example, but I do not think that that is going to get to the more common, pervasive and systemic issues of forced labour, in terms of addressing the victims and what they are suffering, and trying to ensure that there is some accountability, which will hopefully result in change along the supply chains of these companies in the UK. So, yes, those measures could be used in extreme circumstances, but I do not think that they could be used commonly in the way that, ideally, new legislation would achieve.
Lord Murray of Blidworth: We have the example of this free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada, which includes an agreement to prohibit the trade in goods produced by forced labour, including forced child labour. Do you think that those measures can be effective?
Oliver Holland: It is very difficult to police, I suppose. That is one of the issues. With CSDDD coming in Europe, I imagine any free trade agreements with Europe may need to include such provisions. I believe that, if we were to bring in new legislation, we could also more effectively enforce those, but it is a difficult thing to police. There are some options there for that to be used, but it is still not going to get to the crux of the issue. That is my general opinion.
The Chair: Do you want to add to that, Professor?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: I have the same view as Mr Holland.
Q21 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Thank you both for being here. My question is about procurement. We have had the Procurement Act 2023. Is it adequate to ensure that public procurement in the UK will have supply chains free from forced labour? What else could be done to reduce the risk of forced labour in the procurement supply chain?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: Procurement is a field that is normally left out of modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour discussions, but it is a really important and relevant one. As we know, procurement is the key way in which goods come into our country for our public services. We need these goods, and we need them quickly on some occasions, as the Covid crisis demonstrated.
Worldwide, the value of procurement is around $13 trillion, which is 15% of global GDP and 13% of the GDP of OECD countries. According to the latest figures from the Cabinet Office some months ago, £120 billion a year is spent on goods and services in the UK by the public sector, so it is definitely an important lever that the UK has to influence global supply chains through its supply chains.
I applaud the new law. It has direct references to the UK Modern Slavery Act and the risk of exploitation in supply chains. However, from what I can see from my research on the application of the previous law and having the opportunity to talk to my professional public procurement colleagues, there is a lot of bureaucracy involved. There are a lot of competing priorities for public buyers. During the tender process, in which a public buyer puts out to the market the needs they have for buying these goods and services, the public buyer has many competing priorities, of which investigating whether suppliers are involved in modern slavery is only one.
That is the practice that we have seen. Even if we have the tools in the law—and we do in the new law—such as mandatory and discretionary exclusions of suppliers, which get put on a debarment list so that we cannot do business with them, we need to empower public buyers to have a constructive relationship with their suppliers. They need to be able to exercise their leverage with their suppliers to send a clear message that we will not tolerate forced labour and about how we are going to do this.
The new law is quite a good step because of this specific and direct link, but it is going to be about how we enforce the law, how entities such as the procurement review unit enable public buyers to understand their own responsibilities in public procurement and forced labour, and monitoring to what extent public buyers address these concerns in their contracts or contract management.
I would like to point quickly to the national procurement policy statement, which was published on 13 February—literally the same week and within days of the Procurement Act coming into force. I am very happy to see that, as part of the value for money that public procurement has, it has included that it should deliver social and economic value. This means ensuring that suppliers are actively working with the public buyer to tackle bribery, corruption, fraud, modern slavery, human rights violations and environmental violations. We are going in the right direction. I hope that public buyers can make use of this law, but they are going to need support and help from enforcement and oversight bodies.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: You have answered my second question about whether public buyers are empowered in the consideration of human rights and the risk of forced labour for their tendering decisions. I do not know whether there is anything else around the human rights bit that you would like to add.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: Just to complement that, the idea that the public sector also has a responsibility towards its own supply chain was very much propelled by Section 54 and how some public buyers interpreted their own obligations to report under the Modern Slavery Act. The first ones were universities, which were pioneers in reporting, and then local government. We need to praise the institutions that pushed for this, including the Local Government Association.
Some of the public sector is aware and empowered. It maybe does not have the capacity or backing, but we need to do that to be able to influence that sector. We definitely need to continue on that side. Including public procurement within a new mandatory human rights and environment law, or within the reform of the Modern Slavery Act, is key.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Basically, you are saying that we are going in the right direction.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: Yes, just continue pushing.
The Chair: I was very pleased to hear what you had to say about the procurement legislation, because I moved amendments to the Procurement Act, specifically on National Health Service procurement policies, but it moves me to think that there are different silos here. There is no comprehensive approach across government. I am thinking in the context now of the green transition and the vast number of solar panels, for instance, that we will be buying, some of which will have been produced in Xinjiang. Will we need to look inside other pieces of legislation to do the same sorts of things? I just want a very brief answer, because we should move on to Lord Dholakia.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: I absolutely agree, because we might be patching one hole with another. The green energy transition needs to be a just energy transition, not just an energy transition. We have to be very aware of this. Some of the social priorities in public procurement may be falling off the agenda while we pursue green. We have to be very clear that these are totally interrelated and we cannot achieve one without the others.
The Chair: You mean a no-tolerance approach to the use of modern slavery in our procurement policies.
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: Yes.
The Chair: Do you want to quickly add to that?
Oliver Holland: I am not particularly experienced in the Procurement Act yet. I hope that I will be soon. It is obviously very new. To pick up on your point, Lord Alton, these are silos of really effective pieces of legislation, but they need to be brought together. That is what this proposed mandatory due diligence legislation would do. It would encompass everything.
Q22 Lord Dholakia: Mr Holland, how effective are corporate approaches to managing forced labour in global supply chains?
Oliver Holland: As stated previously, existing laws do not do enough to ensure that companies and public bodies take responsibility for human rights abuses and environmental harms. As I said already, there is a strong and urgent need for mandatory due diligence legislation. This must include a failure-to-prevent mechanism, which would create civil liability and which should, at a minimum, provide for a right to civil action for those affected, for compensation, damages and effective redress. A duty of care for human rights due diligence would allow for legal action, such as tort law claims and negligence. This approach would align with the UN guiding principles, requiring both states and businesses to provide effective remedies for human rights violations.
There is strong industry support for this approach. This is not just me as a lawyer in this area advocating for it. As I am sure you have heard, businesses and investors are clear that there must be a level playing field on these issues. That is becoming ever more important, given what is happening in Europe. Also, the cost to businesses is relatively small. The EU commissioned a study on this and found that it was less than 0.1% of revenue to bring in proper legislation and due diligence legislation.
Lord Dholakia: Should greater duties be placed on corporations, for example to prevent harm occurring in their supply chains?
Oliver Holland: Yes, absolutely. I believe that a duty to prevent harm is essential. If it is helpful, I can briefly outline how it might look. We would recommend that there would be a legal duty of care, a duty to prevent harm, on multinational companies in the UK. That would provide a route to civil liability. There would be an available defence to companies, a statutory defence of procedures, where they would be able to say that they had taken all reasonable steps in all the circumstances. This model, as I mentioned earlier, has been shown to be highly effective with the Bribery Act and the Criminal Finances Act. Indeed, this committee, in 2017, recommended this approach as well, so is well versed in it.
We would say that it would apply to all companies regardless of size, but it would be tailored appropriately, depending on the size of the company. Some larger companies with more complex supply chains may bear more of the brunt. Smaller companies with lower turnover are more likely to have smaller supply chains. Therefore, it would be tailored appropriately and depending on the risk that is there. Certain countries are higher risk than other countries, for example. We suggest that it would be applicable to all companies. Ultimately, it would align the UK with our neighbouring countries in the EU and even further afield. That is essential. It is essential for fair competition and good business practice, which is why we suggest that this is the way forward.
Lord Dholakia: I expected your answer to be yes, but how could such duties be enforced? Is it too easy for corporations to defer such matters to their auditors?
Oliver Holland: Yes, this would be enforced. The duty would be on the companies to do that. Enforcement would come where companies have failed and there would be civil legal action, I suppose.
In terms of auditing, companies certainly shift responsibility on to auditing companies. That creates issues because the audits that are carried out by those auditing companies, particularly social audits, are often tick-box exercises. That can mean that companies rely on those to say, “We’ve done a good job”. If those audits are ineffective, it is not having any positive effect and it is perpetuating the issue.
Q23 The Chair: It is sometimes said that politics is the religion of priorities. Sooner or later, we will have to prioritise recommendations to the Government. It would be very helpful to the committee if you could set out for us a couple of the things that you think we should perhaps emphasise most of all. You have identified, for instance, Section 54. Even the author of the original legislation, Baroness May, then Home Secretary, has said that Section 54 needs to be looked at again. We have had evidence to that effect. It would be interesting to know how high you would place that on your list.
Picking up a point that Baroness Lawrence made as well, it is not so much about the complexities of all the parts in the computer; it is more the person going into the supermarket. We had evidence from a BBC journalist who came and talked to us about tomatoes. It was not just a few tomatoes but containerload after containerload of tomatoes that had been brought here from Xinjiang, relabelled as Italian and then sold in the kind of supermarkets that Baroness Lawrence referred to. While this is not the only approach to combating modern slavery, why should the consumer not become part of the battle against it? They can do that only if knowledge is provided through things such as information on labelling.
As a supplementary to my invitation to give us some recommendations, is there a role for the consumer and what do we do about Section 54?
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega: My main recommendation would be to bring the obligations of the public sector in line with the obligations of the private sector and maintain policy coherence. What we demand of the private sector, we need to demand of the public sector as well. I would definitely include public buyers in any modified Section 54, while calling for Section 54 to be a substantive human rights and environmental due diligence provision and giving the procurement review unit the powers to monitor due diligence in the public sector. We need to demand due diligence from the public sector as well.
That is my main recommendation with regards to public procurement. Continue with the capacitation and professionalisation of the sector, and try to push for collaboration of the public sector with civil society and stakeholders. We must not forget why we are doing this. We are doing this because the rights holders are at risk.
We absolutely have a role to play as the consumer. Transparency and traceability need to be made easy for us. I recently discovered this app where I could go and put in the barcode, and it tells me whether my product, from food to cosmetics, has dangerous chemicals in it. It tells me very clearly with a tick. Why can we not have the information available in barcodes, for example, on where the product has come from and how many hoops it has had to jump through to be in our hands?
Having said that, people are limited in their capacity to pay attention and prioritise. Therefore, I do not think that it should be the responsibility of the consumer. I do not think that we should guilt anyone into having to understand and know where their £5 T-shirt comes from. Obviously, if it is £5 you can assume that someone along the supply chain has not been paid properly, because it costs more than £5 to make a T-shirt. It is not for the consumer to be shamed and pushed. The companies, the public sector, the Government and law enforcement are the ones that have to do their jobs.
The Chair: I think that two of my colleagues wanted to come back in on this.
Oliver Holland: If I may, I will highlight briefly four, or possibly five, recommendations, as a summary of what I have said so far. First, most importantly, imposing a legal duty of care and duty to prevent harm on UK companies is essential. Secondly, shifting the burden of proof away from victims of forced labour is absolutely integral, perhaps through amendments to the Modern Slavery Act. I suspect that that is going to be difficult. It would probably require new legislation. The third is mandating more detailed and enforceable modern slavery statements if they are to remain. Fourthly, establishing legally binding, independent and unannounced auditing is also essential.
Following on from Professor Martin-Ortega’s point on transparency and consumers, transparency is absolutely integral to all of this. If we do not know what is coming into the UK, how can we see what is happening from a government, consumer and legal perspective?
Q24 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Mr Holland, when you started speaking about slave labour, you mentioned a child of the age of four. What method can we use to identify ages? What are they enslaved to do? Is it fruit picking? What is it that they are being tasked to do?
Oliver Holland: I have to speak in general terms. While obviously incredibly shocking, unfortunately it is relatively common, particularly in agricultural products. There is a lot of that kind of forced labour going on in products that are made on farms. That is ultimately where it is coming from. It is unfortunately a major issue and it is not only one client I have; it is a number. It is a really difficult issue to address, but it is one we really need to.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: This business of having the barcode and an app to tell us things is not so much about the consumer having to be the proactive person. It is just that, if companies feel that they have to put that kind of information on a barcode, that in itself is one way in which you tame this kind of conduct.
The Chair: That was a point very well made. Thank you very much to you both. Professor Martin-Ortega and Mr Holland, you have been terrific witnesses. We have been informed, enlivened and challenged. You have done all that you needed to do. Thank you again for being with us.
