The UK Modern Slavery Act 10 years on - where are we now?

The UK Modern Slavery Act introduced in 2015 was one of the first laws in the world to specifically address slavery and trafficking in the 21st Century. 10 years on, where are we now? Has the Act been effective in eradicating modern slavery? Do new patterns of exploitation mean the law needs changing?

IHRB’s Head of Migrant Workers Programme, Neill Wilkins, hears from Eleanor Lyons, the UK's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. They discuss the effectiveness of the legislation; the importance of corporate accountability in the fight to end modern slavery; and the need for more robust measures to ensure greater transparency in supply chains.

The Commissioner shares insights on the compliance challenges faced by businesses, the role of collective advocacy by business to help level the playing field, and the significance of new data technology to tackle emerging issues.

Revised guidance has been made available by the UK Government to help companies understand how to report in line with the Act, available here.

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Host: Deborah Sagoe, IHRB's Communications Coordinator
Producer & Editor: Helen Brown
Additional Contributors: Sam Simmons, IHRB's Head of Communications

Transcript

- When we're talking about transparency in the supply chains, the modern slavery act legislation was good for the time, but actually we probably need more robust legislation in this country to reflect what other international partners are doing. So actually the more businesses that group together and call on the government to go further and create that level playing field, I think the more impact they're likely to have.

- Hi there, and welcome to Voices from the Institute for Human Rights and Business, also known as IHRB. I am Debra Sago, and in this podcast, you will hear from people working to make respect for human rights part of everyday business. You've just heard from Eleanor Lyons, who's the independent anti-slavery commissioner in the UK. It's been 10 years since the UK Modern Slavery Act was first introduced. It was one of the first laws in the world to specifically address slavery and trafficking in the 21st century. Recently, revised guidance has been made available from the UK's Anti-Slavery Commission. It aims to help businesses understand how they should report under the act and create transparency in their supply chains. My colleague, Neil Wilkins, is the head of IHRB's Migrant Workers Programme. He spoke to Eleanor about the guidance, as well as her role in addressing modern slavery. Let's hear their conversation now.

- So the UK Modern Slavery Act was introduced to combat modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking. It aimed to improve law enforcement, corporate accountability and victim support. In this interview, we're most interested in corporate accountability and the recently revised guidance focused on transparency in supply chains. And I think maybe the best place to start is your role. Perhaps you can just remind us a little bit and explain about the role of the independent anti-slavery commissioner.

- Absolutely. So my role was created in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. I am independent from government and as independent anti-slavery commissioner, I represent the entire of the United Kingdom. My role is important because I am there to hold government to account, but also go further than that and hold law enforcement, the sector, businesses, charities to account and encourage them to prioritise tackling modern slavery. I also have statutory powers to be able to access some of the Home Office's data and encourage public bodies to also share their data with me too.

- That's a big brief. Since the introduction of the Modern Slavery Act in the UK, so it's 10 years now, how effective do you think it's been and why?

- So I think 10 years ago, if I take us back to 2015, it's worth noting that this was a space where the United Kingdom was world-leading. We were one of the first to put a Modern Slavery Act on the statute books, one of the first countries in the world to identify it as a real issue that we wanted to tackle. And actually, I do pay testament to the Prime Minister, Theresa May, the former Prime Minister, who did a lot of that work when she was Home Secretary. I think it's been really effective in some ways since then. Thousands of victims of modern slavery have been identified in this country. They've been supported and helped. And I think in other ways, we've now fallen behind. One of those ways in particular is the transparency and supply chains part of the legislation you mentioned. We've gone from being world-leading in that space to having other countries overtake us. It's almost one of those disadvantages of being one of the first movers, that actually sometimes you set the bar and others step up and meet it, and you've got to keep on evolving to try and be kind of first of the pack again.

- And of course, we're all waiting at the moment to see what happens with the EU legislation and the omnibus that's exercising a lot of people at the moment. Some critics, however, of this type of legislation, this reporting legislation, say that the Act places an unnecessary burden on business. I think actually it's often forgotten that there was a strong demand for the reporting requirement from business itself at the time that the Act was being formulated. But what role do you see the Act in delivering better practise? Okay, companies are reporting, but how does it deliver better practise?

- So I think the Act was important at the time for setting the precedent that businesses should be looking at their supply chains. It also created the Modern Slavery Statement Registry, was created after the Act, so that businesses had the chance to transparently show what steps they were taking to tackle slavery in their supply chains. And I think that was really important. I think where critics have some validity in the stuff that they're saying is actually there's not enough teeth behind the legislation. Good businesses are leading the way in this space. The Act doesn't go as far as they are choosing to when they are looking at their own supply chains, but actually in terms of bad actors, even though the Home Secretary has the empower to use injunctions against them, that's something that no Home Secretary has ever chosen to utilise. I think it's less about the legislation itself and more about how it's been operationalized.

- So do you think that what we're actually seeing is good companies doing more good things and it hasn't encouraged those who perhaps are further behind to step up the game and start taking more responsibility?

- So I think we are seeing good companies do good things and actually go further and faster and demand more action from the government, which is obviously a very welcome step. I think with bad actors, I think the legislation did encourage companies to publish modern slavery statements and that was positive. I think it's really important though that these statements aren't just a tick box exercise within a company. We want obviously there to be steps beyond a statement for them to be looking genuinely for risks within their supply chain and how they can address them. And actually, I think there's still a lot of way to go in that space when it comes to some of those companies that are choosing not to comply.

- And do you actually look at many of the statements and then contact companies afterwards? Is that really part of your role? Do you see, do you do things like that?

- So there's thousands of statements on the modern slavery registry. So I do look at them and I think they're really varied in quality. And I think that's part of the challenge that you have some companies who are actually very transparent about what they have found and how they've addressed it. We're not asking for businesses to submit a modern slavery statement saying, "There's nothing to see here, absolutely no risks." We're actually trying to encourage transparency and for reflection on what steps can be taken to prevent some of that exploitation occurring. It is part of my role to contact businesses who I am concerned about slavery in their supply chains. And a recent example actually be when I wrote to the FCA about Sheen's potential listing on the London Stock Exchange, that triggered Sheen being called in front of the Business and Trade Select Committee and also receiving similar questions from MPs too who were concerned about some of the potential exploitation in those areas. So my role is independent from businesses, like I said, I still have a role to play in calling on them to do their part. So I think that's quite an important thing that the role has the ability to do.

- And of course, this is important because otherwise companies who are trying to do the right thing are facing unfair competition from companies like Sheen, as you say, who aren't playing by the rules or have a business model that's predicated on versions of exploitation, of course. Now, many modern slavery statements in the companies choose to list their memberships of various multi-stakeholder and sectoral initiatives. They like to parade the badges, usually along the bottom of the modern slavery statement, these are the things that we are members of. We would say that we'd like to see companies, yeah, be a member of a multi-stakeholder initiative, but then also be telling us a little bit more about what you do as a member, not just rely on your membership to show that you're a good guy. Have you seen multi-stakeholder approaches to be an effective tool to help combat modern slavery?

- Yes, I have. When they're set up well, when there's good sharing of information between the group, but actually I think the thing that tends to make the main difference is when you happen to have a really committed individual in charge of that networking group. And that's always my concern, that if that person who's the leader chooses to change jobs or moves on, that sometimes you lose some of the impact from that network. But the ones that I have seen done well, I think provide a really good forum to also kind of keep the motivation going between businesses about tackling this. 'Cause I think as we were discussing before, this was something that we had a former prime minister talk about an awful lot, it had a lot of profile. It's kind of moved further down the political agenda. So it can sometimes be challenging for those within businesses to kind of put it back up to C-suite level to get businesses and leaders thinking that this is something they need to take incredibly seriously. So I think they can actually have a very important impact.

- So the example of your peers and competitors can also help to encourage you to do more. And that there's an advantage and benefit in companies acting collectively on these things, not least just sort of sharing information, sharing knowledge and building that knowledge base together, of course, and then have a collective voice.

- Yeah, I was gonna say exactly that. I think businesses, when they group together, actually can have a really big impact on making their voices heard by government. I think in this area, when we're talking about transparency in the supply chains, as we've touched upon, the Modern Slavery Act legislation was good for the time, but actually we probably need more robust legislation in this country to reflect what other international partners are doing. So actually, the more businesses that group together and call on the government to go further and create that level playing field, I think the more impact they're likely to have.

- Just on the collective thing here, perhaps a related question to that. So trade unions can play a vital role in monitoring workplaces to prevent and report exploitative practises. Though I'm in Great Britain, trade union membership I understand is around 20% only. But how does your office engage with trade unions as part of your mandate?

- So my office does engage with trade unions, particularly in sectors where there's potentially slightly higher risk of exploitation. What I will say though is modern slavery, often by its very nature, is a hidden crime that operates and is in the grey economy, so to speak. A lot of those who are being exploited won't have union representation and that is part of the issue and part of the problem. So one way that we see that being kind of tackled by new interventions is of course, the creation of the Fair Work Agency that will oversee exploitation from some of the more kind of workers' rights infringements through to severe exploitation and modern slavery. That's something that I've called for since coming into role, kind of a single enforcement body. And I think there's a role for that organisation to play in representing union voices, workers' voices, and also protecting some victims from exploitation occurring.

- Actually, IHRB, we did a whole podcast on the Fair Work Agency just a couple of months ago and it is something that we believe would add greatly to companies' ability to tackle modern slavery. An area that my organisation, the Institute for Human Rights and Business, is exploring at the moment, and it's part of our work on the global data partnership against forced labour, something that's being backed strongly by Theresa May, as you mentioned earlier. And this is using data and the use of what they call triangulated data from government, businesses, and NGOs to reveal points of risk in supply chains and areas where interventions might be most effective. So what do you see? Do you see a role for data technology like this or other technologies like AI in helping end modern slavery?

- Absolutely. So this is something that my office is looking into, looking at the role of AI and how it could be used to tackle modern slavery. I think one of the things that's very difficult in this space is actually the lack of data available and actually trying to, as you say, join the dots between different organisations, that whole data that's relevant to us, whether that's the CPS, whether that's the Home Office, whether that's local authorities, quite often we have different data systems which aren't sharing kind of that aggregated knowledge. So that's something that my office is looking into, whether you could create kind of a data lake to gather all that data together, how AI could be used, should there be a national data library? All these questions are ones that we're asking 'cause criminals are of course changing their approach to how they're willing to exploit. And I think we need to be able to respond to those technologies and those challenges from a prevention and also encouraging prosecution side of things.

- I certainly think there's no shortage of data out there. Now government have data, businesses have data, a whole slew of organisations that work with businesses to prevent exploitation have data. There's a large number of apps and worker helplines and things like that as well now. Very often, however, these things are siloed or kept behind pay or other firewalls. And I think that one of the things that the Global Data Partnership is trying to do is to break down those barriers and make it easy for AI crawlers to access that data and then find, as you say, different ways of using it and find the important points of intervention. And most decisions that any company make, of course, are strategic decisions based on data. And so having more data on modern slavery, as you say in the executive level, is one way that we can perhaps push this agenda forward. Moving on, there's a legitimate expectation from law-abiding business that if they operate to higher standards, they won't be undercut and disadvantaged in, especially at the moment, very competitive markets by those who don't, and particularly by those who break the law. But we see enforcement bodies such as the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authority having resources pared back. Now, I think you touched on this a little earlier on, but in your role as commissioner, how are you able to advocate for improved enforcement activity against noncompliance with the law?

- So I think there's firstly the point of individuals complying with the current legislation, which is critical. So I have advocated for more resource for the GLAA. I also work closely with law enforcement themselves and cross peace and crime commissioners, a lot of who were newly elected to make sure they understand some of the risks of modern slavery. It's on their radar and it's something that they are thinking about. But I think the difficulty that we've spoken about too, is what's next. We need people to, at a bare minimum, comply with the spirit of the current legislation as it's laid out. But I think we are also at a turning point now where we probably do need more legislation in this country to make a more robust framework about transparency and supply chains to reflect some of the steps our international partners have taken. Of course, businesses by their very nature tend to have international footprints and operate internationally. So I think there's obviously a challenge when there's lots of jurisdictions with different expectations. And that's why you end up in the United Kingdom with a lot of international organisations who are exceeding our expectations in the legislation of what they need to do to look at their supply chains. But of course, there's many that need to go further.

- But the enforcement piece though, must be critical for those companies that if they know that there's some form of enforcement body that's preventing them being undercut from below, then they're going to be more likely to comply with the law. Otherwise, why would they do so? Otherwise, it's only reputational risk perhaps that they face.

- Yeah, so I agree. I think there does need to be strong enforcement. I think that would be one of my, and has been one of my challenges to the government, say for instance, about the Fair Work Agency. That the Fair Work Agency at the moment is sitting within a government department. Actually, it should be independent from government. It should have proper teeth. It should have the ability to fine companies who aren't complying with their call to action. So I think we need to make sure that there's strong enforcement and strong deterrence there. At the moment, it's not strong enough in that space. And so I can completely understand why the good actors would be frustrated. Because as you say, one of the main issues is reputational risks. And we don't actually have fantastic criminal justice outcomes across modern slavery in this country. It's kind of prosecution rate around 2% at the moment.

- Right. Well, let's move us on to something else now. So in relation to modern slavery, much of the work focused on women seems to concentrate on preventing trafficking for sexual exploitation. Now, preventing that crime is clearly really important, but women face many other challenges in relation to exploitation at work. And I wonder what your office is doing to advocate with companies and other stakeholders to address the particular challenges faced by women workers.

- So it's interesting you touched upon that. Completely agree. I think that trafficking for sex is absolutely appalling. And that is one of my strategic priorities to tackle. Looking at the data from the National Referral Mechanism, the majority of those who are reporting labour exploitation are men. Although, of course, in this space, you tend to have stereotypes in terms of what people are looking for when they look for exploitation in victims. Of course, victims of modern slavery can't self-refer. They rely on a first responder organisation, spotting that they may be struggling to feed themselves. They may have a shared address with an individual, like lots of people at the same address. We're looking for red flags in this area. And I think, naturally, people look for labour exploitation more amongst men rather than women. I think part of the thing that my office is doing is some of the core practise of working with businesses and organisations to develop toolkits to help them be able to spot exploitation within their organisation and amongst their workers. And I think part of it, though, is also about moving on from some of the traditional stereotypes and actually encouraging businesses to keep an open mind and to be curious in understanding things that don't feel right to them.

- Yeah, it seems it's this continuum of low-level exploitation, whereas a lot of the focus has always been on the most extreme ends as an incident of forced labour, whereas for many workers, of course, it's just this continuous drip, drip, drip of exploitation, perhaps. And maybe that it's the case that that applies to women workers more than men. I'm sure that there's research about that.

- Yeah, I think there's also sectors where we traditionally would expect to see more women workers. So I think the care sector is a prime example where actually there's been a sharp increase in exploitation in the care sector over the last couple of years. In that sector, of course, we know there's a lot of women who work in it in those caregiving roles who can face extortionate agency fees that they shouldn't be paying in the first place, incredibly challenging working conditions when they do end up working here through to severe exploitation and modern slavery. And I think what you touched upon, Neil, is that level just below what we would deem to be extreme modern slavery exploitation, but it is still a very challenging workers' rights situation and still an individual facing trauma and harm at work.

- Very much so. And I think actually that leads us very neatly onto my next question, which was since the original Modern Slavery Act was introduced, we've seen Brexit and more recently the war in Ukraine. Leading to significant labour shortages across many sectors. And this has resulted in an increase in workers coming from much further away, migrant workers coming from much further away for employment across Britain and the North of Ireland. So, and there are a growing number of reports, as you've alluded to, often featured in the national press now of exploitation connected with the recruitment and employment of these workers in sectors that we hadn't considered before, like care. So how has your work changed to tackle these new patterns of exploitation?

- So I think taking a step back big picture wise, instability around the world does mean that more individuals are displaced. That obviously creates more insecurity and means people are more open to trafficking and exploitation. Criminals are incredibly ruthless at their ability to take advantage of these situations and exploit individuals. And part of my work and one of the pillars that I deliver on is improving knowledge and understanding of modern slavery. So as you outline when events occur, having the ability to really understand what impact that is gonna have on trafficking routes, on vulnerable individuals, on the way that people may be being exploited in this country. So that's something that my office explores in more detail, but it's also something that is a continuous journey that we need to make sure continuously questioning whether we are ahead of the game rather than always having to be responsive once a threat has emerged. That's almost too late for a lot of the individuals that have already faced exploitation.

- I agree with you. And I think there's one thing that we can see as we move forward is demographic change in Great Britain, but also in many countries across Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others. And demographic change with these ageing populations that increasingly will be needing care and that will need to be physical care. It won't be able to be delivered by AI and things like that. But also having a workforce that can maintain economic vitality in countries to support the tax base, to support these older populations. And it seems that although there's a lot of resistance to migration, that migration is one of the ways that countries can sort of overcome that lack. But what's required very much are going to be the safe labour migration pathways to allow legal migration into a country that's more effectively monitored, regulated, and overseen. I just think that that's inevitable. And demographic change just seems to be something that is not receiving the due prominence that perhaps it ought to.

- Yeah, I think also when you're thinking about shortage workforces, where we know we need a kind of large influx of workers to fill maybe a gap that we have in the workforce. I think the thing that's really important to me as commissioner is that blunt policy instruments aren't applied over an already vulnerable setting in a group. I represent and work closely with a sector who are deep experts in this area. They seem lots of iterations of different visa schemes and different government approaches to tackling this space. And actually I think some of the exploitation that took place in the care sector could have been reduced and the risks could have been reduced if actually policy makers who were introducing the visa had worked closely with anti-slavery experts to begin with. We are now in a space that they're making kind of changes in response to some of the challenges that actually could have been prevented.

- So everything reactive rather than proactive from the start.

- Yeah.

- And then finally, we've now seen similar legislation to the UK Modern Slavery Act introduced in other parts of the world and you alluded to this yourself. And in Australia, we've actually seen the establishment of an anti-slavery commissioner similar to yourself. So do you see that this is a sign that we're seeing greater global efforts to tackle modern slavery than we have previously?

- Yeah, we are seeing greater global efforts and I think there are fantastic world leaders who are doing a lot in this space. Like you say, there's an anti-slavery commissioner in Australia, we have a trafficking in persons ambassador in America and individuals in the OSCE as well. I think actually that kind of international join up that push to make sure that around the world, individuals are being protected and prevented from exploitation is something that has progressed in the last 10 years and actually it's a positive change.

- Eleanor, thank you ever so much for your time today. It's been really insightful and your role is very significant in leading the efforts to prevent modern slavery in both Great Britain and the North of Ireland but also within companies sort of extended supply chains abroad. And I think as our conversation reveals and as the new Home Office Transparency and Supply Chains Guidance suggests, however, there is still a great deal more that all of us could and should be doing to prevent forced labour and trafficking in the operations of companies big and small wherever they're operating. But thank you very much for your time today, it's much appreciated.

- Thank you very much.

- Thanks to my colleague, Neil Wilkins and Eleanor Lyons, the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner, for that context and insight. And thank you for listening to this episode of Voices, which is brought to you from the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Until next time, be sure to share and follow this podcast that way you'll never miss an episode. And if you'd like to find out more about the work that we do at IHRB, then head to ihrb.org.