MPs demand stronger laws to combat modern slavery

A parliamentary committee has called for tougher enforcement of updated modern slavery legislation after concluding that many UK companies were displaying “wilful blindness” to the potential use of slave labour from China’s Xinjiang region.

The business, energy and industrial strategy committee said in a report released on Wednesday that there was “compelling evidence” that companies were “complicit in the forced labour of Uighurs in Xinjiang”.

More than a million Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China, are known to have been sent to detention centres since a crackdown began in 2017.

The committee contacted 15 companies, some of whom were featured in a 2020 report by an Australian think-tank alleging they were supplied by Chinese factories that used prison labour.

While all the companies confirmed they did not directly source products from Xinjiang, “none could guarantee definitively” that the raw cotton did not partly originate there, the report said. Xinjiang produces over four-fifths of China’s cotton.

The MPs said they were “appalled” by the admissions. “Many companies asserted they have robust procedures for prohibiting human rights abuses while failing to undertake the necessary and basic due diligence procedures to know that their supply chains are not implicated in slave labour or the abuse of minorities,” the report concluded.

Sourcing ethically and sustainably is core to how we do business and the promise we make to our customers, that’s why we do not source cotton from Xinjiang

Marks and Spencer, one of the companies that submitted evidence to the committee last year, said on Wednesday that it now sourced cotton through the Better Cotton Initiative.

“Sourcing ethically and sustainably is core to how we do business and the promise we make to our customers, that’s why we do not source cotton from Xinjiang,” said Richard Price, the company’s managing director for clothing and home.

The committee also urged the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to “do more to meet its commitments to uphold human rights, particularly in relation to businesses with links to China”.

“The department has shown little sign that it is taking a proactive or meaningful lead on investigating UK business links to forced labour and other human rights abuses,” it said.

In response, Beis said forced labour was “one of the world’s most despicable practices and the government will not stand for it”.

It said the UK was first country to require businesses to report on how they are tackling modern slavery, adding “we are taking forward plans to extend that to certain public bodies and introduce financial penalties for organisations that don’t comply”.

The committee said the Modern Slavery Act, the UK’s main legislative tool for dealing with abuses in supply chains, was “out of date and has no teeth” and that it was “disappointed by the government’s refusal to commit to a clear timetable for making changes”.

The Ethical Trading Initiative, whose members include M&S, John Lewis, Next, Primark and Asos, said it welcomed the report: “The documented abuses [of Uighurs] are intolerable and abhorrent; no business should permit its activities to support them in any way”.

It added that responsible businesses “should be supported to overcome challenges such as opaque supply chains and constraints on freely conducting independent audits as is the case [in Xinjiang]”.

“We also welcome the call for government to accelerate and strengthen its plans to further develop the Modern Slavery Act,” it concluded.

The tone of the report also reflects a wider hardening of attitudes to China among British politicians. Nusrat Ghani, one of the Conservative MPs on the committee, in January co-sponsored an amendment aimed at preventing the UK from signing trade deals with countries found guilty of genocide. The amendment secured strong opposition support and was only narrowly defeated.