Sarah Jones, Daniel Cox and Matthew Davies.

The Chair: Welcome to the 18th meeting of the Joint Committee on Human Rights being held in this Session of Parliament. Today, we will take evidence from Sarah Jones, a Member of Parliament and the Minister for Industry in both the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade. It is a pleasure to welcome her here. She is joined by two officials from her department, Daniel Cox and Matthew Davies, whom I also welcome.

As the committee’s name implies—I say this particularly for the benefit of those who are watching our proceedings online—we are a committee comprising six members from the House of Commons and six members from the House of Lords, drawn from different political traditions but working together to uphold the human rights of British citizens and residents of the United Kingdom. We are currently holding several major inquiries: one into the genocide against Yazidis and other minorities in Syria and northern Iraq, some of whose atrocities were perpetrated by UK nationals; one into transnational repression; and one into forced labour in the supply chains that provide everyday items for sale in the UK. We have also been undertaking major legislative scrutiny on the Mental Health Bill, which will shortly begin its passage through the House of Commons, and on the Government’s remedial order on Northern Ireland legislation. Details of these inquiries, including some of the significant written evidence and earlier oral sessions, are available on the Joint Committee’s website.

We are close to completing our taking of evidence on supply chain transparency and the use of forced labour. That is the purpose of today’s hearing: to provide members with an opportunity to question how the Government will ensure that new measures under both the Great British Energy Bill and the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on 24 February 2025, will be implemented effectively.

Minister Jones holds ministerial positions at both the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade. As the Minister for Industry, her responsibilities include consumer goods, advanced manufacturing, energy sector supply chains and critical minerals. During this session, the Minister will focus on her responsibilities under the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Some of the questions that members would like answered fall to her ministerial colleagues; we will write to them seeking answers to questions that remain unaddressed today.

Members will ask Minister Jones and her team whether the UK’s existing framework is sufficient to ensure that the Government’s ambition to have supply chains free from forced labour can be achieved, as well as how the UK can avoid becoming a dumping ground for goods linked to forced labour as international partners legislate to ban such products—a point raised with the committee by previous witnesses.

This session is particularly topical given the Government’s amendment to the Great British Energy Bill last Wednesday, which added to the objectives of GBE so that they include ensuring that slavery and human trafficking do not take place in its business or supply chains. It was a pleasure, incidentally, to work with Minister Philip Hunt and the Bill team from the department in securing agreement for that all-party initiative. The committee has heard repeatedly during our inquiry that commitments, although welcome, must be paired with the necessary enforcement measures to ensure that they are delivered effectively.

Before I turn to the first question, I should say a bit more about the Minister. Sarah Jones MP was appointed as Minister of State at both the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade on 8 July 2024. She was elected as the Member of Parliament for Croydon West, formerly Croydon Central, in June 2017. She studied history at Durham University. She served in the shadow Cabinet in a number of positions, including as shadow Minister for Industry and Decarbonisation, shadow Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, and shadow Housing Minister. A former senior civil servant at DCMS, she was a member of the team delivering the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. After leaving the Civil Service, she worked in a series of public and private sector roles, including the Gatwick Airport expansion campaign.

Minister, before I turn to my colleague Sir Desmond Swayne, who will dive deeper into some of the evidence that we have received, may I ask you a curtain-raising question? It has been suggested to us that goods linked to forced labour—everything from garments to tomatoes and solar panels to batteries—which benefit from lower production costs, may grow to dominate the market, pricing out competitors, incentivising the use of supply chains at risk of forced labour and hindering the growth of other businesses that could meet domestic and global demand. Two weeks ago, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner told us: “Sadly, it is the case that goods made with forced labour are currently being sold to consumers across the country”. Can you, Minister, explain to us why it is important to the Government that the UK is free from products linked to forced labour?

Sarah Jones: Thank you for inviting me to come to the committee and for the work that you are doing. I also thank you for the work that you did during the passage of the Great British Energy Bill; you were instrumental in the new clause and the amendment as it stands at the moment.

The Government want to be clear that we adhere to certain principles. We recognise that, according to the ILO, 27.6 million people across the globe are subject to forced labour, 3.3 million of which are children. We believe that no company in the UK should have any form of forced labour in its supply chain, and we expect UK businesses to do everything in their power to remove any instances of forced labour in their supply chains.

As the Chair said, incidents of forced labour exist across a wide spectrum of products, from food, fishing and agriculture to textiles, health and energy. We know that there are particular problems in solar, cotton, cocoa and other areas. We also know, from looking at the maps of the numbers of people in forced labour and the prevalence as a proportion in different countries, that the problem spans the globe. We need to look at it in that sense. We fundamentally believe that the partnerships we develop with other countries are very important in the work that we do, as are legislation, guidelines and the work that we do in the country as a starting point.

I know that there will be particular concern about the supply chains in energy—the work on Great British Energy highlighted this—including problems in the solar area when it comes to the Xinjiang region in China, with the Uyghur people and the forced labour that we see there. I want to be really clear that, in all our engagement with China—it is a very important trading partner for us—whether it involves the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Energy or others, we raise concerns about this issue. We expect China, as a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to observe its international obligations. We will continue to raise these issues.

We will probably get into more of the detail of some of these issues later but there is a whole raft of areas where we can look, focus and make sure that we are doing more if we need to—whether it is Great British Energy, the Procurement Act, the national baseline assessment that the FCDO is doing, or the work that the Department for Business and Trade is doing in looking at both our trading strategy and how effective some of the due diligence approaches have been to date.

The Chair: Thank you very much for giving us such a good scene-setting beginning to our proceedings. I will leave it to you to decide when and if you want to bring in your colleagues from the department as we turn now to more detailed questions. We will go first to Sir Desmond Swayne, Member of Parliament, and then to Dr Peter Swallow, Member of Parliament.

Sir Desmond Swayne: Minister, as Lord Alton has pointed out, one of the themes that has permeated the evidence we have received in this inquiry is that we were an outlier—we were the first into the field in legislating on this. However, since then, other jurisdictions have caught up and overtaken us, particularly with the legislation in the USA and the European Union’s forced labour regulations, which will come into effect in 2027. The argument is made that, unless we refresh and tighten up our regulations, we will find that we become a dumping ground for forced labour products because they will not have anywhere else to go. Do the Government recognise that as a criticism that may occur? Do we have any plans to see it off?

Sarah Jones: I absolutely recognise the argument that is made. You are right that we were ahead of the curve when the modern slavery legislation came in, and that there has been movement in other countries since to catch up and potentially go beyond where we are.

I will say a few things in response. First, we are looking closely at what has happened in the US and in the EU. We want to understand whether it is effective. With the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the US, what appears to have happened is that, in China, there has been a split between in-country manufacturing and export. Where there is export, some of the production and assembly has shifted to Vietnam, Cambodia or Thailand, and the polysilicon for that export does not come from Xinjiang. We need to establish and monitor whether that is just a shift in how they are doing things or whether the legislation has actually had an impact on modern slavery and forced labour; that is where the jury is out.

In the EU, there have been two interesting developments. One is the regulation on forced labour, which you referred to and which will come in in December 2027. We do not know exactly how that is going to work yet, because it has not come in and has not been established. Each member state has to have a competent authority that is going to oversee this. We do not know whether it is going to be in the Border Force area or the trading standards area but, presumably, they will have to monitor individual shipments that come in and see if there is a flagged risk. The Commission will have a role in investigating those risks and producing a central list of companies. How that works and how effective it is, in what is a quite difficult and complex supply chain, again, we want to see and understand.

The second piece of work that the EU has done is the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. Businesses are going to have to do that from 2028. It looks at an obligation for businesses to look at their supply chains and do due diligence on them. It is mandatory but Ursula von der Leyen, through her review of rules in the EU and her attempt to simplify some of them, is looking at those at the moment. We do not know where that is going to land and whether they are going to make changes in the scope, the threshold or the penalties that have been outlined there. So there is a lot to watch.

I completely acknowledge the central point of your question. Jess Phillips, the Minister in the Home Office with responsibility for the Modern Slavery Act, is now looking at Section 54, which, as we know, says that companies beyond a certain size—I think it is £36 million in turnover, which I should say is much lower than the EU, which has a much higher register—have to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery. That is a mandatory piece of law but, as we know, its impact—what they actually have to do as a response—is perhaps something that we should be looking at. I have talked to Jess about this so I know that she is keen to do more.

We have taken some steps on this since we came into government, such as updating the guidelines. The new guidance came out in March and encourages more transparency; it lays out more about what we would expect, but I recognise that that does not perhaps go far enough and that we need to look at the legislation.

The Procurement Act is quite significant in this space and will make quite a big difference. Being able to disregard players that are known to use forced labour in their supply chain is significant, and having a debarment list held by the Cabinet Office so that people can see who those players are is really important. There are layers on top of that so that, if the contract is significant, we can also mandate that we use the modern slavery assessment tool. Again, though, we need to monitor all of these things. You might look at the modern slavery assessment tool and think it is useful, but is it actually going to deliver the changes that we want to see? So all of these things need to be monitored.

I should tell the Committee that, at 4 pm today, Ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Home Office, the Department for Business and Trade and the Foreign Office are meeting to talk about exactly this issue. Following the work that was done in the Lords on GB Energy, Michael Shanks, the Minister for Energy, committed to do this. We are doing it this afternoon. There is a good argument for looking across government and asking, “Do all the different bits of government that are trying to navigate this need to work more effectively?”

Sir Desmond Swayne: You stress the importance of building partnerships. The EU regulations for implementation in December 2027 make for extensive data sharing between third countries, which would be a welcome change to decisions that were denied to us this week. Would the Government be interested in pursuing that offer of information?

Sarah Jones: Of data sharing? Yes. Transparency has to be at the heart of a lot of this. It is about trying to see down those supply chains, right the way from the mining up to the final sale of the product. Transparency in the whole supply chain is really important, and we in the UK want to show leadership in this space. Look at the work of the Global Clean Power Alliance, which we are setting up and which the Prime Minister has announced. At the moment, it is looking at two areas: finance and supply chains. It was a big part of the global conference on energy security that the Prime Minister hosted a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that we will look at is data sharing, as well as the standardisation of regulation, for example. Are there easier ways to do this? Is there even joint procurement that we could do across countries? There is a whole raft of things that we could do in this space where, if we show the leadership that we need to show, perhaps we can go further. I really want to look at what the EU does and how it works, because we have to root out a lot of challenges and transparency data is important.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Minister. I think you saying that there will be greater cross-departmental co-operation in trying to tackle these issues will be music to the committee’s ears. Baroness Kennedy has just caught my eye as she would like to ask a brief supplementary question.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I want to raise how the United States has been dealing with this issue. It happened during the Biden years. What the US introduced was a presumption—in relation to China, though it could be done for other areas—that, for certain places, not even whole nations but parts of nations, the assumption should be that goods that come from there are the product of forced labour. Xinjiang province in China is an obvious place because we have evidence; we know that, in Xinjiang province, the Uyghur people have been used for forced labour in the production of many different things, including cotton goods. We are also concerned about solar panels and other items.

The US has made the decision basically to presume that anything that comes from Xinjiang province is a product of forced labour. The burden of proof then falls on China and the province to show that that is not the case. This is a good way of raising standards and, possibly, making sure that people are paid for the work they do and that they are not being forced into it. I wonder whether any thought has been given to adopting that possibility of making an assumption.

The burden of proof is very difficult. I say as a lawyer that it is very difficult to prove when you go down the supply chains. For example, wily producers can mix their cotton with cotton from elsewhere, and the DNA then becomes mixed and it becomes more problematic to decide where the cotton has come from. I wondered whether you had put your mind to any of that.

Sarah Jones: Thank you for the question. We certainly are looking at that. The presumption in the UK to date has been to be actor agnostic in the way that we look at these things, in part because of the principles of the WTO laws and a belief that you need to focus on the full picture and introduce, if you can, systems where supply chains across the globe are more transparent and better, and do not use forced labour, rather than being actor specific and identifying particular regions. We need to look at whether the US intervention has led to a reduced number of people in forced labour or whether it has just split the way that they manufacture.

It is an interesting question. The principle of this Government so far, and of previous Governments, has been that that is not the approach they want, but we need to look at how effective it is. You are right to highlight that this is a particularly difficult region. Multiple pieces of work, including by the Helena Kennedy Centre, have shown this challenge. There is more to be done, whether through the Great British Energy Bill, the Procurement Act or the work looking at our trade strategy. We will be doing more, but whether that is the answer, I could not say.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I wondered whether one could ask the United States for more and better information about how productive shifting the burden of proof has been.

Something that I have come to understand about the United States is that it is much better at having bill-of-goods information about what is coming in, where it has come from and so on, but that does not seem to be done with the same kind of detail for goods coming into Britain. It is not readily available for open-source research and that sort of thing, whereas in the United States it is through open-source research that one has found out a lot about the nature of supply chains.

Sarah Jones: We certainly talk to our counterparts in the US a lot, and we are keeping an eye on what the legislation delivers. We are open-minded about whatever we need to implement, but, at the moment, that is not a route that we are going down.

The Chair: Thank you, Minister. You may want to look at the evidence we received recently from Border Force and the National Crime Agency, which spoke to us in detail about the rebuttable presumption that Baroness Kennedy has referred to. Of course, the author of the 2015 Act, Baroness May, has herself said that Section 54 is not fit for purpose. Clearly, we need to do more.

Peter Swallow: Minister, in your opening remarks, you referred to the fact that the Government have repeatedly raised the issue of modern slavery with China, which I know will be welcome to the committee. I ask you to expand on that. When building international relationships and negotiating trade deals, how do the Government use the UK’s leverage to ensure that the risks of forced labour are meaningfully addressed by our trading partners? The important point here is this: what evidence is there that this approach is having the positive effect that we want it to have?

Sarah Jones: The evidence base is tricky in this space. The numbers of people in forced labour are going up globally, not down. In the context of the Modern Slavery Act, here in the UK there is more reporting of modern slavery and a lot more support given to people, and there are good case studies of how that has helped individuals. The numbers being reported have to be a positive thing. The evidence globally is much harder to come by. There are organisations such as the ILO and Walk Free that really provide some colour in this space, but the evidence base is difficult. One of the reasons why Ministers are coming together to look at this is to see if we can pause and think about whether we are doing enough.

The work that the Foreign Office is doing, reviewing the whole way that we implement our UN obligations, is important, and the voice of people with lived experience of forced labour or slave labour is important as well. When we look at, for example, our trade deals, that has to be a part of those conversations. It was part of the conversations around the India trade deal that was announced yesterday; although I do not have the detail, I am sure we can send to the committee material showing that issues around forced labour and gender discrimination were all there as part of that deal. We know that the numbers of people in forced labour in India are high, so we can use tools like FTAs, and we should.

We can also use our soft power. The Commonwealth is doing work in this space, for example, and that is important. It is also important in work such as the critical minerals strategy that I am developing. We are making sure that, in the strategy, there is a responsible extractives chapter, because we know there have been huge historical problems of forced labour and child labour in mining. We need to make sure that is there. So we can use our influence.

Ministers intervene where they need to. There was the recent case involving tomatoes—people were supposedly from Italy but it turned out they were not—and the Minister for Trade has written to all the supermarkets about that. We have also committed to change through the new changes that will be in Great British Energy Bill and the Procurement Act, and we are going to write to FTSE 100 companies and say, “We need to understand what you’re doing”. There are there are things you can do in that space, and then there is the law and how we make sure that is implemented.

I completely agree with the premise that we need to look at this and make sure we are doing the right thing. The Home Office view is that Section 54 needs to be reviewed, updated and improved. The trade strategy will look at that; the Minister, Douglas Alexander, is looking at it; and the Foreign Office is looking at this. There are a lot of players across the Government saying, “Hang on a minute, are we doing what we should?” Baroness May’s report makes it clear why it is not just a moral issue or a political issue but an economic issue as well. I have asked to meet Baroness May, if she has time, to talk about the supply chain responsibilities that I have and the work that she is doing on supply chains. I think we can do better.

Peter Swallow: Since you have specifically mentioned it, is it your view that the trade deal with India will have a positive impact on modern slavery in India?

Sarah Jones: That is certainly the intention, and what we would hope to be able to do by using our influence in whatever capacity. Whether it is the Prime Minister raising these issues, the formal FTAs or the work we do in specific sectors—solar being one that is particularly problematic—we want all these things to have an impact. When it comes to what those impacts really are, some of the evidence is difficult to understand, and the data is going in the wrong direction on forced labour, not least because of climate change, war and poverty—all the big influences that lie behind it.

The Chair: In your reply, you talked about the effects on some of the people who get caught up in forced labour and slave labour. Indeed, in our witness sessions we heard from Rahima Mahmut from the World Uyghur Congress, whose evidence I think you would like to read, as it would help to inform the debate.

The position of survivors is an issue that my colleague Baroness Lawrence wants to take us to now.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Sir Desmond pointed out that witnesses have come to give us evidence. One witness suggested that it would be beneficial to establish a survivors’ advisory council. How are survivors’ voices being integrated into the policy-making decision process to make sure that the risks of forced labour, including those posed by the green transition, are meaningfully addressed?

Sarah Jones: That is a good question and one that I hope the Ministers think about when they meet. We have seen significant engagement with survivors through the Modern Slavery Act. There is funding to engage with survivors as part of the Act itself. The Home Office has a lived experience group that has had multiple events, round tables and conversations with people, and that is incredibly important.

The Foreign Office also has a lived experience panel, through the work and the review that it is doing. It has told me that, going forward, it wants to prioritise engagement with people with lived experience.

Civil society has huge examples here and huge help that we can draw on, as you have already spoken of. The global commission that Theresa May has just reported on has a lived experience group as well.

We need to look across government at all these different interactions and say, “Is that enough? Is that right?” GB Energy wants to be a world leader in this space. We have put a new and novel amendment into the Bill and we want to be sector leaders in this space, so I am sure the Minister will be looking at it from that point of view as well.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Do you think it is a good idea to have a survivors’ council set up in the UK? What are your thoughts on that?

Sarah Jones: It is a good idea to have those kinds of bodies. How and where that sits, I do not know. Given that there is a council or a body in the Foreign Office and one in the Home Office, and we are looking at what we can do with Great British Energy, do we need to have one that brings all those together? I am not sure; I do not know enough about how effective we think those are.

On the principle of whether we need to make sure that the voices of people with lived experience are at the heart of this, the answer is absolutely yes, otherwise we do not know what we are talking about. That is clear. We need to carry on speaking to organisations that have those voices front and centre. We can get useful information from individual case studies, but having that voice there constantly as you are developing policy is important.

The Chair: It was encouraging last week to have a conversation with Jurgen Maier from Great British Energy, who was saying how committed he is to the new amendment that has been added to the Great British Energy Bill.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Minister, given that China has really had a head start on the whole business of manufacturing green technology—its solar panels are now the least expensive on the market—the question that arises is this. Is there any real prospect for the UK to compete in this market given that fact, and given that China has the facilities, processing plants and so on that can do that with speed, and we do not have any of that?

Sarah Jones: There are a number of points here. First, the principle of developing more manufacturing in the UK generally is one that this Government are very keen on. As you saw through our intervention on British Steel, we want to make sure that we are manufacturing things here in the UK where we can.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I can see it for wind.

Sarah Jones: For wind, yes, but for solar, as you rightly say, it is difficult. The Chinese have been developing their solar manufacturing since the early 2000s, and had cornered the market by 2010. A huge proportion of solar panels come from China and the cost of them is significantly lower than anything that we can produce here. That said, I do not think that we should completely give up. I know that the solar road map is looking at where we can do something. There is a company—Solar Roll, is it?

Daniel Cox: Power Roll.

Sarah Jones: Power Roll. You might have heard of it. It is very interesting: it makes very thin solar panels that you can roll up. That has been designed and created, and we want to make sure it can be supported, here in the UK. That is a novel technology. That is what we are very good at, and we have done it before the Chinese have. We should support that.

There are some smaller areas of manufacturing where we can have a presence, but the cost is the challenge. The focus for solar has to be on making sure that supply chains are more diverse, where we can do that, and making sure we are removing forced labour in those supply chains. There is a lot of work through the solar road map to look at how we do that, as well as a lot of work through Great British Energy. Frances O’Grady is on the board of Great British Energy, and she is going to lead on this aspect.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: A great woman.

Sarah Jones: She is a great woman. I have messaged her a little about this, and we said we should probably meet and have a chat about it. Obviously, this is developing and all quite new, but I think she will be quite a good champion.

We can do a bit in the UK and we need to focus on the supply chains for wind, but you are right that we can do a lot more. Indeed, the Government have done so: we announced only a few days ago £300 million to support supply chains through Great British Energy here in the UK, on wind in particular. But I think we can do a lot more.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I want to ask you about funding research. How do we assess who should be recipients of government funding for the sort of research that we need done?

Sarah Jones: A huge amount of money from the Government goes on research through lots of different pots and in lots of different ways. Great British Energy has its pot of £8.3 billion that we are going to invest over the lifetime of the Parliament. Through the industrial strategy, we are doing a big piece of work looking at how we fund research and how we distribute funding in that space, and at how we give people more longevity so they longer-term research pots rather than shorter. There is more work to be done there, for sure. While we support industry generally through novel technologies and development at the initial stage, what we in this country are less good at is supporting them to grow to the manufacturing stage.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It is the old story.

Sarah Jones: It is the old story of the valley of death, which we are hoping to tackle with the industrial strategy.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Good luck.

The Chair: I think we are all agreed that the redoubtable Baroness O’Grady is the perfect guardian and watchdog. Ultimately, if slave labour is being used, we will never be able to compete. Why would we be able to compete with people on no wages or very minimum wages, something that we would never tolerate in the UK?

The solar road map is an issue that Tom Gordon wants to ask you about.

Tom Gordon: You mentioned the solar road map in response to the previous questions. Could you comment further on it? Are you confident that it can be used to detail a strategy on excluding forced labour from the supply chains? What further measures would you like to see as part of it?

Sarah Jones: The Solar Taskforce, as you know, was set up under the previous Government; Andrew Bowie established it. It has got a range of people on it, from the developers and Solar Energy UK, which I think you have heard evidence from, to various other players, such as different government departments, and the nations. It will publish its road map next month, so I am limited in what I can say about what will be in it. However, both the Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, and the Minister, Michael Shanks, have been working hard to make sure that it is as effective as possible. We have outlined the challenges within solar, particularly with regard to Uyghur forced labour in China, and we want to make sure we are doing all we can.

We are doing a lot of work looking at the Solar Stewardship Initiative, the SSI, which is really interesting. It is at its early stages and has done only a few of the audits that have been set up. We need to watch how effective it is, and I am sure that will be there in the road map as an important player. There is an option, which we need to consider, that we as the Government could sit on the SSI, which we do not at the moment. We need to look at that. I know that there are three people on the board from civil society, and we need to establish whether civil society thinks that process works for them. They have a kind of veto on the board, but we need to monitor all these things and see whether they work. We need to look at our CfD process and how that helps us to unpick some of these supply chain issues. There are a lot of areas that we need to look at, but I cannot, sadly, tell you what is in the road map.

Tom Gordon: I appreciate that. You mentioned the SSI, which was going to be my next line of questioning. Has the work of the Solar Taskforce been superseded by the SSI, where suppliers can direct which sites they want to be inspected? Do you have any concerns that the SSI is not independent enough from industry and, if so, how will that be addressed?

Sarah Jones: Concerns have been raised about the SSI, which we will of course listen to. I talk to Sarah Champion, who has led a lot of the work in the Commons in this space, and she raises concerns. Because it is in its early stages, we need to monitor it. I do not think it has superseded the work of the task force at all. Indeed, when I talked to the Minister, Michael Shanks, about how he is thinking about how we implement the new legislation in the Great British Energy Bill, he said that SSI is one part of what we will be doing. There will be a lot of other ways in which we are making sure that we are world leaders in this space. We want to be out there; this is a state-owned company, and we want to be best in class. That is one element in our armoury, but there will be others as well.

The Chair: When Mr Miliband was in China, did he specifically raise, for instance, the Motion passed by the House of Commons that there is a genocide under way in Xinjiang? Did he ask about slave labour in Xinjiang involving Uyghur Muslims and, if so, what response did he receive?

Sarah Jones: I can write to you with exactly what was raised. I know that conversations were had as part of his visit, as they were when the Chancellor went, and I know that the Prime Minister and others have raised this. The Secretary of State raised these issues, but in exactly what format I cannot tell you. I am sure we could write and let you know.

The Chair: It would be very helpful to the committee if you could. Thank you very much indeed.

Sir Desmond Swayne: Our critical minerals strategy was published in 2022. Do we have any critical minerals of our own, or are we wholly reliant on imports, with all the supply chain issues that that raises?

Sarah Jones: A critical minerals strategy was published in 2022—Kwasi Kwarteng was responsible at the time, just before he became Chancellor—but we are developing a brand new one. It will be significantly different from the previous one, and we are looking at exactly this point. A lot of very good new Members of Parliament are pushing hard for the Government to support the mining and processing of some critical minerals in the UK, such as lithium in Cornwall, for example.

The strategy will do a number of things. First, we have a list of critical minerals in the UK—I think there are 32 of them, but I cannot remember exactly—which is a reflection of a moment in time. What we are trying to do is look ahead and ask, of the eight growth sectors that we think we can develop in the industrial strategy—which include clean energy, advanced manufacturing and defence—what are the critical minerals that we will need in the future, and how will we secure access to them? One element is what more we can do in the UK in mining and processing.

Another really important element is recycling. I was at the Celsa Steel plant a few weeks ago, where they melt scrap and break it down into different parts first. There was a big pile of aluminium there that can be sold and used for other things. There is a huge amount we can do around recycling.

Then there are the questions: what can we do with our supply chains and how do we diversify? How do we work with other countries? How do we ensure good standards of mining and that we are getting our critical minerals from as wide a source as possible? There will be a slightly different look at the types of critical minerals that we will need in the long term, and a different approach, which I hope will be more robust. If the spending review is successful, maybe there will be a bit of funding—we do not know—to help us on the way.

Sir Desmond Swayne: Will the emissions that are consequent on the processing that you will want to do, and indeed on the recycling, be part of that strategy?

Sarah Jones: Emissions are really important. I think the point was made to your committee before that, if we are not tackling climate change, we are exacerbating the risk of modern slavery. We need to do all these things at the same time. Obviously, in the example I just gave of Celsa and separating out those metals before we use electric arc furnaces, the pollution of an electric arc furnace is massively lower than that of a blast furnace. These things are all part of the picture.

The Chair: You will know that the committee has responsibilities, among other things, to monitor the exploitation of children under our duties under the convention on the treatment of children. We have had evidence about children in mines in the DRC. I know that my colleague, Miss Campbell, wants to press you further on that issue.

Juliet Campbell: Staying with the issue of critical minerals, how is the UK using its leverage as a major global economy to drive forward better standards and eliminate forced and child labour in the mining industry?

Sarah Jones: It is a really important part of the picture, and we know that the history of mining has not been good. A lot of work is under way to try to fix these problems, but the challenges are great. We know that just over 3.3 million children are in forced labour across the world, and mining is one of the challenges.

In our critical minerals strategy, there will be a responsible extractives chapter, which will be all about making sure that, where companies in the UK are using mines, they are doing so in a responsible way. There are lots of different things that we need to do in a responsible way. We need to look at the way countries benefit economically and the way that areas are treated. Part of that involves looking at who is being used; forced labour and, potentially, child labour is all part of that.

There are some global initiatives that have some benefit in these spaces. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a big alliance of, I think, 57 countries that are looking at some of these issues. Other gatherings include the Minerals Security Partnership, which the US set up, and the Future Minerals Forum, which Saudi Arabia set up. There are global partnerships in this space, but they are all voluntary, so success is built on people wanting to come together and work together—which sometimes excludes people who you would want to be involved but perhaps do not want to be. There is more work to be done, but it is certainly something we are thinking about in the critical minerals strategy.

Juliet Campbell: Do you see that improving in the near future?

Sarah Jones: Absolutely. One of the most egregious forms of forced labour is child labour. Looking at all the UN obligations we have, we need to make sure that we are doing what we can. The work that the Foreign Office is doing on its national baseline assessment of how we are implementing those standards is important as well. It will report later this year, I think.

Juliet Campbell: Could you tell us a bit about which countries the UK has signed bilateral critical minerals agreements with?

Sarah Jones: We have signed bilateral agreements with a lot of countries: Australia, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Zambia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Uzbekistan. All those, apart from Saudi Arabia, were signed under the previous Government. I signed the Saudi partnership agreement. Saudi Arabia is interesting because, although the forced labour numbers as a proportion of the population are very high, according to data from Walk Free, it is one of the countries doing the most to try to tackle the problem and is very aware of it as an issue. It is a significant global player in critical minerals, and it is absolutely right that we work with it, but we are very mindful of the challenges in that country.

Lord Sewell of Sanderstead: There is a question of public education here, particularly on critical minerals—for example, the definite link between our mobile phones and the DRC, and understanding what goes inside those things. Do you think the Government could do more about that public education?

Sarah Jones: Yes. I hope that, in the kind of world we are in at the moment, these things come to the fore more. President Trump talks about critical minerals and rare minerals all the time in the conversations he is having about various countries.

Lord Sewell of Sanderstead: Trump was not really the example I had in mind.

Sarah Jones: But that points to the fact that we as countries need to be much more secure about where we are getting our critical minerals from. We know there is a huge increase in the number of critical minerals we are going to need. Part of the work that we are doing, which hopefully will speak to your question on the critical minerals strategy, is to say, “We know that on clean energy we want to do X, Y and Z so we’re going to need these minerals; we know that on advanced manufacturing we’re going to need these; and for defence we’re going to need these”, so we can help people to start to think about these things. The whole world of materials, critical minerals and manufacturing is hidden from view. Ed Conway’s book Material World is a brilliant example of eye-opening work on what actually goes into a lot of the things that we completely take for granted. I am sure that you are right and we can do more.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: On minerals, considering that Trump is looking at that within the structure of Ukraine—part of his thinking now involves using minerals from Ukraine to pay for up-and-coming military stuff—do you think Britain should also be thinking about that, also considering how much we have already put into Ukraine? Do you think we should also have a say in Ukraine’s minerals?

Sarah Jones: I do not think that is on our agenda at all. We are supporting Ukraine because it is incredibly important that we take a stand against Russia in its illegal war and we want to support Ukraine. We are doing lots of work to try to help it in a number of ways beyond military air support. I went to a conference in Poland, taking a delegation of UK businesses to talk to many countries about how we support Ukraine in rebuilding its energy infrastructure. The Russians keep bombing its energy infrastructure and it keeps having to rebuild, and a lot of British businesses and businesses from around the world are supporting that process—not saying, “We want payback”, but more in a supportive way.

The Chair: Minister, you will have realised that a number of members of the Committee are concerned about the exploitation of children. You have referred to the DRC. We took evidence that maybe as many as 25,000 children are in mines in the DRC. If possible, it would help the committee for you to write to us subsequently outlining what the Government are doing to ensure the protection of children in mines, some of which are owned by China, so that touches on the supply chains from more than one direction. Jurgen Maier also made the point last week that there is some brilliant new British technology that might remove the need for some of these critical minerals. If you are able to share anything more with us about that, we would be very interested to see it.

The committee has asked me to ask you about Great British Energy and how it will use its leverage and buying power to address the risks of forced labour in the energy supply chains. How will the Government monitor whether Great British Energy is meeting its obligations in relation to suppliers and supply chains in the light of the amendment that has now been incorporated in the Great British Energy Bill? What oversight and review processes will be put in place to oversee its choice of suppliers?

Sarah Jones: As you know well, Chair—because of the close attention you have paid to all these issues, for which we are grateful—the new clause introduces measures for ensuring that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place in its business or supply chains. The Minister will set out the strategic priorities of Great British Energy once the Bill is passed, and that will give us more of the detail that you want to see about implementation and monitoring. I stress again that the Minister and the Secretary of State with responsibility for Great British Energy are clear that they want to lead the sector here. It is important that we do this right and that we monitor, evaluate and are held to account for that; as a state-owned company, we want to make sure that we do that.

The Modern Slavery Act, the Procurement Act and all these issues feed into what we will be looking at. We have talked about things like the SSI initiative and going beyond. We have talked about Frances O’Grady being on the board, which is important. The Minister, Michael Shanks, has said to me specifically that SSI is one measure but we will be looking at others to make sure we are doing what we need to. When the strategic priorities are published, that will help us, but how that develops is work in progress. The amendment was introduced only last week and the Bill has not finally passed, but this is an area where we want to make sure we are leaders. I am sure the committee might have thoughts on how it thinks we should go about that, which we would very gratefully receive.

The Chair: Thank you, Minister. We look forward to providing you with our full report once it is prepared.

Lord Sewell of Sanderstead: The whole issue of procurement is a complex one, especially for companies. What I want to try to unravel here is how providers would be forced to be excluded from a list, or something like that. Under the Procurement Act, how effective do you think you are going to be once faced with that situation?

Sarah Jones: The Procurement Act came in in February 2025, so on the question of how it works over time we are going to have to monitor it. The provision allows the contracting authority to disregard players that are known to have used forced labour themselves in their supply chain, or where there is evidence. That could be a range of different evidence since it does not specify exactly what that evidence has to be—whether a big report from Sheffield Hallam or whatever will be evidence enough to mean that the Cabinet Office can put that company on the debarment list.

There is specific guidance for contracting authorities. If it is a high-risk contract or a certain level of contract, there are additional measures that they need to take. If you are dealing with, say, the Warm Homes local government grant and you are giving out a grant of more than £200,000, then you have to complete the modern slavery assessment tool. That is an additional process that you have to go through—I have read it and it is a very long document—setting out things like the risk of certain countries that you or your supply chains might operate in and how you are doing more to be aware of what some of the risks are. They can also use the social value model, another part of the procurement process that is an extra resource. That is important because we spend huge amounts of public money—I have the figure of £358 billion but I have seen other figures, so I do not know if that is entirely accurate, but it is in the billions so it is a huge amount of money we are using to procure—so we need to make sure we are using this right. Whether with the Procurement Act itself or with the assessment tool, there is a lot there to help us to get this right.

Lord Sewell of Sanderstead: There might be a tension here between yourself and the Chancellor, in the sense that the Chancellor has talked about companies being free of bureaucracy, running free and being able to make money. At the same time, you have a very complex procurement tool. Is that not just additional bureaucracy on top of companies?

Sarah Jones: Obviously there are never disagreements between me and the Chancellor, but there is a challenge there that we have to navigate, which is that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said, for example, that we want to reduce regulation on business by 25% over the coming period, but we have to make sure that by reducing regulation we do not end up doing harm. Everybody is interested in procurement, for good reason: we should be spending government money in a way that supports our country as well as doing the right thing. At the moment, everybody is interested in procurement, asking whether we can make more things in the UK and do procurement in a better way.

That is right, but in the department for business, the approach that we have taken in the past is one of voluntary due diligence—we adopt a voluntary approach with businesses, based on implementing UN principles and OECD guidelines. Douglas Alexander will look at that in the trade strategy, but you are right to ask how we reduce regulation. How do we make sure that businesses can have burdens removed? We have to be really clear that, if we put more burdens on business, if we shift the current voluntary approach or we reform Section 54, it has to be in a way that is not incredibly burdensome with no good impact. That is why the evidence needs to be there that it will have an impact. It is why we are looking at what the EU is doing and what the Americans have done—to see where there an evidence base, so that if we are asking business to do more, it is for good reason.

The Chair: Again, you will be interested to look at the evidence we received about the contrast between the rebuttal presumption on the one hand and import controls on the other, with all the cumbersome things that then become involved. We heard directly from Border Force and the National Crime Agency on that question two weeks ago. Mr Gordon also has a question on procurement, and then we will turn to two questions from my colleague Lord Dholakia.

Tom Gordon: The Procurement Review Unit was launched earlier this year. Can you elaborate on how it will monitor and report on the use of the Act, what functions it will have, and any insights you have into how it is getting on so far?

Sarah Jones: I do not know whether my colleague can help on that.

Matthew Davies: I cannot.

Sarah Jones: I am not entirely up to speed with that. Obviously, we have redone the national procurement policy statement and the work that sits beneath it. The social value Act feeds into that, too. I am very happy to write to you to help with more detail. A lot of parts of Government are very interested in procurement generally. I am very interested, for example, from a British Steel point of view, in how we can make sure we are procuring, within the law, more steel in this country. But I will come back to you on your question.

Tom Gordon: The Procurement Review Unit was set up only earlier this year, but now that we are nearly three months in, I would be really keen to get an early steer on how it has been implemented, how it is getting on and what functions it has. It is really important for us to have an understanding of that.

Sarah Jones: We will get in touch with Georgia Gould, the Minister doing all the procurement, and get you that detail.

The Chair: That is really helpful, thank you.

Lord Dholakia: Minister, can I declare an interest first? I am one of your constituents—although I have no right to vote in general elections. I add that I have served on a number of committees that you chaired before the general election.

How will the new central debarment list relate to the global human rights sanctions regime? Will those sanctioned be automatically excluded from public contracts?

Sarah Jones: It is nice to see you. I am always here to serve, if there are any local issues that you want to raise with me. The debarment list will be really useful for contracting authorities, which will be able to look at it and immediately see who we should not be operating with and contracting to. Having that list in and of itself will be incredibly helpful. I should say that it is time-limited work, in that it looks at what a company might have done over the last five years, so it is not for ever; it is five years. It is a risk-based approach, in terms of how it will operate. I do not know whether you have any other thoughts that you wanted to come in on, Matthew.

Matthew Davies: I will add only what I think you said earlier: the idea of the Procurement Act powers is that they give the Minister responsible some flexibility to determine how to use the debarment list. Clearly, looking at sanctions would be relevant. It is still being worked through but is a relevant factor.

The Chair: Perhaps you could write further on that to the committee.

Lord Dholakia: Is it your view that corporations in the UK are effectively allowed to self-regulate when it comes to forced labour and modern slavery in their supply chains?

Sarah Jones: This is the challenge we have to overcome and make sure that the policies we put in place have an impact rather than enabling people to work around the system. Through things such as the Solar Stewardship Initiative we are looking at how we make sure that we can do that, and how we balance—to speak to Lord Sewell’s point—the burdens that we put on companies with the outcomes, so that we are doing things that have an impact. But the scale of forced labour—the 26 million people across the world who are its victims—is clearly a massive challenge.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: We have heard in previous evidence sessions that the question of supply-chain regulation is one that is divided among many government agencies at present. To what extent do you think there is a need in the UK for a regulator specifically to address the question of forced labour in supply chains?

Sarah Jones: That is a good question and one that Ministers should think about when they come together at 4 pm today to work out what we need to look at. When I have questions on modern slavery and forced labour, I have to go to multiple people in multiple government departments to get answers. Clearly, there is an issue there, whether it is regulation or co-ordination across Government. We need to make sure that we are enforcing as well as co-ordinating across Government. There is the national contact point, which sits in DBT; what other functions do we have in terms of monitoring?

The Chair: Border Force.

Sarah Jones: Yes, Border Force. The Home Office is responsible ultimately for the Modern Slavery Act; the Foreign Office has oversight of some of our obligations; DBT looks at the voluntary side in terms of the UN guiding principles and the OECD guidelines. A lot of different agencies are involved in different ways.

Matthew Davies: One thing to add, however, is that, as part of the Government’s “make work pay” proposal, the fair work agency has been created, which is bringing together a number of the agencies and organisations that have a role in monitoring or regulating labour market conditions in this country. That is bringing together quite a number of the bodies, such as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority—

Lord Murray of Blidworth: The licensing agency.

Matthew Davies: Exactly—just bringing it together. That is providing an aggregation that will help in the monitoring of all those wider aspects.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: To summarise, your answer is that you are not sure whether, pending this meeting, it will be sensible to set up a new regulator. I sense from your earlier answer that there is a tension with the deregulation agenda in terms of encouraging the freeing up of business from excessive regulation.

Sarah Jones: I think it is fair to say that it is quite a complex landscape. My colleague is absolutely right to say—I should have raised it—that the fair work agency will do some of this bringing together, but it is quite a complex landscape, and we need to look at it. When we engage with business and industry, there will always be the challenge of how we make sure that we are being a responsible Government and ensuring that we reduce, for example, forced labour in supply chains, as well as enabling businesses to be much more productive and grow. We have to balance those things, which is why I keep coming back to the point that if we make changes, we have to be sure that they will have the impact that we want, which is to reduce forced labour and not just add burdens to businesses.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: Certainly. Can I suggest that when you go to the meeting, you will also consider the role of the NCA and Border Force in enforcing the seizure of goods at the border? Presently, there is no power. We were told previously by one of the Border Force witnesses that it has no power to seize goods made by forced labour, so that may be something to consider. Will you also consider the question of, from the NCA’s perspective, using the proceeds of crime legislation to come down on those who may be benefiting from the crime of modern slavery? Again, this does not make your focus any easier, because this becomes an even more disparate cross-government approach.

Sarah Jones: I will certainly take those points back to the Home Office. I know that Jess Phillips wants to do more on this around the Modern Slavery Act and Section 54.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Do you have any further questions on that, Lord Murray?

Lord Murray of Blidworth: No, those are all my questions on that topic, but I think I have the next question.

The Chair: Please continue.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: Forgive me; you have me twice in a row. This set of questions is about the recommendation from the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, and others, about the potential for creating mandatory human rights due diligence checks—something with which I am sure you are familiar. We know that there is a directive for EU member states: the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. To what extent do you think it would be sensible to introduce a similar provision here for mandatory human rights due diligence for United Kingdom companies?

Sarah Jones: The starting principle in Government, previously and to this point, has been that voluntary due diligence is the best approach. The Minister for Trade will be looking at this through his trade strategy. The challenges that we just spoke about—of making sure that businesses do not have huge amounts of burdens on them, versus wanting to make sure that we do something on this—are playing out as we speak in the EU in its work on corporate sustainability due diligence. It introduced changes that have to be implemented by 2028, but, as we speak, it is going through a review of those changes based on the Omnibus work that Ursula von der Leyen is doing to try to simplify. Its Omnibus I process is looking at the regulation that it is introducing on forced labour. It is looking at other green taxonomy, CBAM and other reporting measures to see whether a simplification or change to the framework can be made, because it is concerned about burdens on business.

We will see how that plays out and where it lands—whether it makes significant changes or tweaks around the edges—but that is the challenge. How do you make sure you get an outcome that you want without putting burden on business? That is what Douglas Alexander will be looking at, through the trade strategy in particular.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: So, in practical terms, in order to trade into Europe, British businesses will presumably have to match an equivalent level of standard. Is that your understanding?

Sarah Jones: Yes. As I understand it, it is for businesses that have a much higher turnover, of €450 million. It is the bigger guys.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: To what extent do you think there is any merit in the United Kingdom going any further than the EU in this area?

Sarah Jones: As I say, the Trade Minister will definitely look at this—at whether the voluntary measures we have at the moment are enough, whether they need to be different, and, if we implement changes, how we make sure that they are not performative but impactful. He will publish the trade strategy soon, but I cannot tell you what is in it. He is one of the Ministers meeting today to talk about these things.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: Of course, he has to balance it against not unduly burdening businesses with regulation.

Sarah Jones: He does; 100%.

The Chair: Minister, you will be relieved to know that we are almost at the end of the questioning. You were a student of history in your youth and will know that William Wilberforce, the great Member of the House of Commons who worked for 40 years to end the transatlantic slave trade, said to his colleagues, “You can never say again that you did not know”, arising out of hearings of a Select Committee that had been created in order to take evidence about that slave trade.

Many of us know what is happening in places such as Xinjiang or in the mines of Congo and do not want to have to buy goods that we know are part of those supply chains, but there is no labelling; there are no kitemarks to tell us that a product may come from a country where there is credible evidence, such as that produced by the Helena Kennedy Centre, referred to earlier. There is plenty of evidence out there. How do we make those decisions? Are the Government looking at any ways to enable consumers to make those decisions that they know are ethically right, even though it may cost them a bit more to take that decision?

Sarah Jones: We are not working on any explicit changes at the moment, as far as I am aware, but it is an interesting question that I will reflect on. Of course, “You can’t say you didn’t know” is very important. London is a world leader in mining finance and, as part of the critical minerals strategy, we are looking at whether, for example, there are measures we can take to identify mining that is done in a sustainable way that we can carve out and show to companies. In the same way, a lot of companies that are buying steel now want to know that they are buying steel that has been created in an environmentally sustainable way rather than not.

In the critical minerals space, we are looking at this. In the wider consumer space, there is precedent in things such as fair trade and models like that, but we do not have a specific piece of work looking at this. We get calls for this from different directions. For example, the ceramics industry, which I am meeting this afternoon, is very keen that we have labelling on products coming from China that might be sold as though they are made in the UK. It is not something that this Government have done so far or that the previous Government did, but maybe it will change over time.

Matthew Davies: There are consumer laws that mandate that labelling cannot be misleading or inaccurate, but, as the Minister has said a number of times, one of the challenges is the very complex nature of many supply chains. Therefore, thinking about how we integrate that into our future strategy goes to the question of where the right balance of obligation is, and how we can create the right incentives for businesses to make it part of their selling.

The Chair: My colleague Lord Rooker—former Member of Parliament Jeff Rooker—has regularly made the point that technology can now aid and abet us in the identification, for instance, of materials that are coming out of somewhere such as Xinjiang, so that, despite the fact that they may have tried to disguise the origins of the goods, it is always now possible in those circumstances to identify their true origins. Perhaps you could reflect, as you think about what to do next, on whether consumers should have greater knowledge and information about what they are buying, and whether there might also be an enhanced and increased role for the use of technology in doing those things.

Sarah Jones: Yes. You can now have codes embedded into products in a way that we never could before; that is true.

The Chair: It is clear to me, Minister, that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet: we want to do more to make this legislation more effective. I know that you will treat the work of this committee very seriously when it completes. We will certainly share our findings and recommendations with you. We look forward to hearing further from you in due course about some of the questions that perhaps remain unanswered from today’s session, but I am extremely grateful to you and your two colleagues from the department for joining us this afternoon. With those remarks, I bring the proceedings to a conclusion.