Reposted from Edie.

It's not just forced labour that's at issue. Plenty of the stuff coming into the country, especially from SE Asia, is produced by people working for less than anything representing a minimum wage. Inequality is rampant everywhere.

UK ‘risks becoming dumping ground’ for products linked to modern slavery

As the EU and other markets modernise regulation in this field, the UK needs new legislation to tackle modern slavery domestically and end the import of products produced with forced labour.

 

Sarah George

 

This is the call to action from the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (IASC), following a review which found that forced labour costs the UK around £60bn each year – equivalent to about 2% of GDP.

The review additionally found that the UK imports around £20bn worth of goods each year which are likely linked to forced labour in their supply chains. The Commissioner warned that this figure is likely to increase as other nations clamp down on these imports, leaving the UK as a “dumping ground for goods which were blocked by others”.

Changes to legislation

With these challenges in mind, the 2015 Modern Slavery Act is no longer sufficient, the IASC concludes. The Act requires all large businesses to publish a statement on how they manage slavery risks in their operations and supply chains.

New legislation to tackle this challenge, without over-burdening businesses and private sector bodies already navigating complex rules, is set out in the IASC’s review conclusion.

The proposed design of the legislation has been drawn up with input from trade unions, businesses and human rights experts in the UK and beyond, as well as the general public in Britain.

Public polling found that four in five Brits would welcome new laws to prevent goods made with forced labour from entering the UK market.

The IASC’s proposed new legislation would prohibit forced labour-risk products from the UK market, placing the burden of compliance on importers and retailers. It would also confer new duties on Ministers to protect human rights in supply chains, while compelling businesses found to have committed serious harm to take appropriate remedial action.

The Fairtrade Foundation has stated that, should such legislation be introduced, it must be more closely tied to UK efforts to tackle environmental harms in supply chains.

“Environmental harm and human rights abuses are two sides of the same coin in supply chains, and the government must restrict both,” the Foundation said in a statement.

“It would be an unacceptable oversight to limit supply chain transparency only to human rights abuses.”

The Foundation is one of several NGOs supporting a new Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) law, aligning the UK’s approach to that of many other nations and preparing for mounting international legal cases over ecocide.