My Lords, I welcome this amendment as an opportunity to look at the financial proceeds of this wicked crime. We will deal with this in subsequent groups and amendments, and I have no doubt that we will return to it at various stages on the way through. Amendment 30 allows us to debate how the Modern Slavery Bill will ensure that committing modern slavery offences does not benefit the offenders or third parties who either benefit or look the other way when these crimes are committed. It would place a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations to ensure that legal persons benefiting from modern slavery offences or whose lack of supervision makes them possible will have committed an offence.
I greatly welcome the opportunity presented by the amendment to debate the role of legal persons, such as companies, in modern slavery. We will return to that subject in more detail—in particular, as the noble Baroness referred to, when we come to the section on supply chains. It is absolutely right that companies who profit from modern slavery can be held responsible, so it is right that the offences in the Bill can be committed by all persons, including legal persons. That means they can be committed by companies provided that the usual legal principles of corporate criminal liability apply. As the noble Baroness mentioned, companies can also be held liable under the civil law —such as negligence and proceeds of crime legislation—where they benefit from modern slavery committed for their benefit. Therefore, companies who make money as a result of modern slavery committed for their benefit can be deprived of those profits and pursued for damages by the victims. Article 5.2 of the EU trafficking directive does not require legal persons to be criminally liable; liability for the commission of offences by third parties that occur as a result of lack of supervision can be criminal, civil or administrative.
We are confident that currently—and under the Modern Slavery Bill—we are fully compliant with the requirements of the trafficking directive around the liability of legal persons. We want to make sure that we recover the ill gotten gains of slave-masters and traffickers. That is why Clause 7 subjects those convicted of slavery and trafficking to the most robust available asset recovery regime. That element of recovery of assets was also a provision of the Serious Crime Bill, part of the Proceeds of Crime Act, and all those provisions will of course apply in the case of modern slavery. It is absolutely vital that modern slavery should be viewed as no different from any other organised criminal activity in that where we can obtain the proceeds of that—so that criminals do not see the profits—and use it to help the victims of these evil crimes, that is what the Government want to do. We are satisfied at this stage that the law provides for that, as currently drafted in the Bill, but we have listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness has said and we will continue to review this in the light of that. Perhaps, therefore, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.