ETI responds to the Immigration and Asylum Bill following its second reading

This week the Government's Immigration and Asylum Bill received its second reading in Parliament. 

Among its provisions are amendments to section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the transparency in supply chains (TISC) requirements. These would add specificity to companies' reporting obligations, extend those obligations to public authorities, and strengthen enforcement relating to reporting requirements.

For almost 30 years, the Ethical Trading Initiative has brought companies, trade unions and NGOs together to improve conditions for workers in global supply chains. That experience, and our consulted position on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence informs our assessment of this Bill: it takes a small step in the right direction on corporate transparency, but as drafted it falls short of what is needed, and parts of it risk real harm.

The wrong vehicle for tackling modern slavery

Measures to tackle modern slavery and forced labour should not sit within a Bill whose primary purpose is immigration control. Organisations across civil society, including ETI members Anti-Slavery International and Focus on Labour Exploitation, alongside the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, have set out how core provisions of this Bill would reduce protection, support and recovery for survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

This matters for supply chains too. Effective due diligence and remediation depend on workers and survivors being able to come forward safely. Provisions that make identification and support harder to access will make exploitation harder to find and address, for government and for responsible businesses alike.

We encourage the Government to work with survivors, experts by experience, frontline organisations, and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner as the Bill is scrutinised, and to remove or amend the provisions that would weaken survivor protections.

Transparency matters, but reporting alone does not change what happens to workers

ETI has long supported and contributed to strengthening the TISC regime, and there is much in these proposals to build on: mandatory reporting topics in place of discretionary ones, extension to public authorities, and meaningful enforcement are all improvements ETI and others have long supported. The proposals also recognise an important principle: that clear, mandatory obligations on business are needed to drive change at scale.

But a decade of experience with section 54 shows that reporting requirements alone do not prevent forced labour. Under these proposals, a company could still lawfully report that it has undertaken steps at all to address slavery in its supply chains – no risk assessment, no policies, no due diligence – provided it explains why. That is a duty to disclose, not a duty to act. As such it may have some impact on consumer-facing, reputationally sensitive companies who won’t want to be seen doing nothing. But the retail and consumer goods sectors are already leading in relative terms in this area – and it will do little to encourage laggard companies with little public reputation to care about.

The evidence points in a consistent direction. Parliamentary committees, leading businesses, investors, trade unions and civil society have all recommended mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD): a clear legal duty on companies to identify, prevent and address risks to people before harm occurs. The Government itself has confirmed that such measures are under active consideration through the Government's Responsible Business Conduct work. The direction of travel among the UK's major trading partners is clear: the United States and Canada have import bans on goods made with forced labour, France and Germany have mandatory due diligence laws, and the EU is implementing both.

Transparency and due diligence work together

Stronger TISC requirements and mHREDD legislation serve different functions, and both can be useful – though the latter is far more important. Reporting creates the public accountability and comparable information that investors, consumers, workers' representatives and civil society rely on to scrutinise company practice. A due diligence duty ensures that companies act on the risks they identify, rather than simply reporting on them.

ETI's consulted position, developed with our company, trade union and NGO members, is that due diligence obligations should apply to enterprises of all sizes and sectors, public and private, with the scale of due diligence expected proportionate to each enterprise's size, influence and leverage. Reporting requirements should integrate with existing modern slavery statements, so that businesses face one coherent framework rather than overlapping regimes.

Pursued together, these measures would give businesses what responsible companies and investors are asking for: clarity, certainty and a level playing-field. 

A practical way forward

As the Bill progresses, ETI encourages the Government to:

1. Remove or amend the provisions that weaken protections for survivors of modern slavery and trafficking, drawing on the evidence of survivors, frontline organisations and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.

    

2. Strengthen the supply chain provisions so that companies are required to act, not only to report; closing the gap that allows businesses to disclose that they have taken no steps, and ensuring enforcement is properly resourced.

    

3. Publish the outcomes of the Responsible Business Conduct Review and commit to mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence; building on the principle of mandatory obligations that this Bill, and the Government's recent commitments on forest risk commodities, have already established.

Giles Bolton, Executive Director at ETI said: 

“The Government has recognised that companies need clear obligations to address forced labour in their supply chains. That's welcome, and it's a foundation to build on. But almost 30 years of working with companies, trade unions and NGOs tells us that transparency on its own simply isn’t enough to change actual conditions for workers. A duty to report needs to sit alongside a duty to act. The Government has the evidence, the review and now the legislative opportunity to get this right, and it can do so without weakening the protections that survivors of modern slavery depend on."