A guest blog from Martin Buttle, Head of Good Work at ShareAction

An open letter from ETI Director Peter McAllister, to the Environmental Audit Committee regarding ETI's contact with Boohoo

Now is the time for the government to invest in the UK garment industry, especially as the industry faces big challenges in global supply chains over the coming years.

UK consumers buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe while globally the fashion sector is reportedly the world’s third biggest manufacturing industry.

For the past three years, ETI has been raising serious concerns about very low wages and poor working conditions in Leicester’s garment trade.

In Undercover: Britain's Cheap Clothes, Chanel 4's flagship current affairs programme Dispatches, examines wages and working conditions in Leicester's apparel and textiles factories. 

Working conditions can vary but inadequate health and safety standards and verbal abuse, bullying, threats and humiliation are too often commonplace.