My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate—and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for moving his amendment—and for the wide welcome that has been given to the clause. I will just bask in that statement of welcome just for a couple of seconds, because it probably will not endure for very long. As is the case not only in Part Six but in all parts of the Bill, I totally understand the impatience of the Committee and of civil society on this issue. There is a wrong that is happening out there and we all want to tackle it. We want to go after the perpetrators and stop the abuse as much as possible.
I will deal with some of the issues that have been raised in some general opening remarks and, if the Committee will bear with me, I will put some remarks relating to the Government’s position on the record. I am also conscious that we are now coming to three groups that look at the supply chain from slightly different angles. Therefore, some of the issues and comments will overlap.
I certainly subscribe to the view of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I refer to my own experience in supply chains because I did my MBA dissertation in China, in Qingdao, where I was commissioned to research Nike footwear factories and analyse how they were performing against Nike’s standard and code—the apparel industry code, as I recall. We found some amazing stories, which made me very alert to the issues.
There is one issue that is worth putting on the record at this point. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned the statistic that four-fifths of the public want us to go further and want more information on this. Although the factories were located in China, they were operated by Korean companies. Part of the reason those factories were being driven so hard was that the consumers were not prepared to pay the market price for the footwear. They wanted more and more features and more and more design intricacies, but they did not want to pay any more for them. Therefore, the price had to come down. The intricacies of the design meant that the level of injuries that workers received in these factories was substantially higher. So part of the debate here is about how to engage the consumers in this. Part of it is about providing information, but the other part is to say that they cannot be exempt from the process. Yes, it is something for government and for business, but it is also something for consumers.
That very helpful meeting was triggered by the timely debate initiated at the end of October by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, which came out with perfect timing because the debate was on or around the day when the new clause was published in another place. Then we had the follow-up meeting and a helpful discussion about what could be done, and some very good ideas were generated there. A lot of those ideas are now working their way through the policy machine to be tested for feasibility, perhaps to come back at a later stage of the Bill.
A number of the points that were raised then are effectively about whether we should be prescriptive in the Bill or try to engage with the industry and business to make them aware of the risks that they face of reputational damage, in an age where often the biggest
item on a balance sheet is not a physical asset but good will towards the brand, which disappears very quickly when you find yourself on the front page of a newspaper or in a TV documentary, having not checked your supply chain sufficiently. That is also a reason why investors, such as major pension funds and public sector pension funds, should be looking at the companies that they invest in and asking the question: are their supply chains robust and checked? We should look at that area.
Meanwhile, we are engaging in a consultation. I know that there are many consultations; it is a good job that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is not here or I think he would be intervening at this point. The reality is that it is a tough time out there for businesses and we want them to succeed and develop, so we want to try to take them with us as far as we can without being too prescriptive. We have been talking to a list of organisations and stakeholders, and it might be useful for the record to say that we are talking to the Ethical Trading Initiative—I know that that is something that the noble Lord, Lord Young, is involved in, as is the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, who has done a lot of work in this area—the British Retail Consortium, the Engineering Employers’ Confederation, the Association of Labour Providers, the CBI, high street retailers including Next, Primark and Marks & Spencer and supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and the Co-op. We have also been engaging with other NGOs, including Unseen and the Environmental Justice Foundation, as well as working with Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers. I think that it is useful to place on the record that meaningful consultation is going on here to see how we can get the changes that we all want to see.
That consultation will formally start next month and follow the usual guidelines that we now have for consultations. It will last for three months; therefore, we will probably not see its results until the Bill has—we hope—received Royal Assent. That is why it is phrased in the present format about regulations coming forward with regard to how that will be applied.
I turn to the specific questions. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked whether Clause 51 allows enforcement by way of injunction. So far in the Bill, I have learnt this much: when talking about matters legal, I had better take my own injunction and consult my colleagues at the Home Office in detail before responding on the record. I will respond in writing on that point.
The duties are a duty to prepare an annual slavery and human trafficking statement, and to publish it prominently on the organisation’s website homepage or, if it does not have a website, to provide a copy on request. It was that latter point that the noble Baroness referred to. Who is meant to see that? The many NGOs, which are doing terrific work in this area and being vigilant in monitoring organisations, trade unions and other organisations should all be paying attention to what that statement says and holding companies to account for it. Civil society and the media will also be able to look at it, and if it is not there then that raises another set of questions. The idea is to provide the information to the public domain in the first place and then allow people to scrutinise it further.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked what role the Government were going to play in this. There are two constructive roles that the Government can have. The first is through the interdepartmental ministerial group on modern slavery. I mentioned this yesterday and listed the departments; the noble Baroness mentioned the Foreign Office in her remarks, but it goes much wider than that. It includes the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education. I will not go through the whole list.
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