A decade after the UK introduced world-leading modern slavery legislation, international best practice has moved on. Global Insight assesses flaws in the current system.

Centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, millions remain trapped in slavery. Anti-Slavery International estimates that 50 million people worldwide are in modern slavery, including child slavery, human trafficking and forced labour. Despite international efforts to stamp out these practices, modern slavery still exists in the UK and products linked to victims of forced labour continue to flow into Western markets, ranging from clothes sold by major fashion brands to food, smartphones and electric vehicles.

In recent years, human rights organisations and legislators have increased pressure on the government to do more to tackle modern slavery risks in business operations and supply chains. In January, the UK parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights launched an inquiry into forced labour in UK supply chains in response to concern that the country has fallen behind other nations in its approach to modern slavery. Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC, Director of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute, says the committee, of which she is a member, is considering whether the UK Modern Slavery Act needs to be amended to introduce more accountability for companies over their supply chains.

The UK Modern Slavery Act, introduced in 2015, criminalised slavery, servitude, forced labour and human trafficking. It also requires businesses with a turnover of £36m or more to publish an annual statement on their efforts to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains. The law was considered world-leading at the time, but, in recent years, has received criticism over its enforcement and the quality and scope of the modern slavery statements. ‘The sense is that there needs to be something that makes companies much more alert to their responsibilities because at the moment it’s a bit of a box ticking exercise’, says Kennedy.

The UK’s accounting regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), published research in 2022 alongside the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, which identified significant failures in companies’ modern slavery reporting. Within a sample of 100 major companies the FRC found that the majority of modern slavery statements were fragmented, lacked a clear focus and narrative, and often contained boilerplate language. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the regulator found one in ten businesses did not provide a modern slavery statement despite it being a legal requirement.

Experts who spoke to Global Insight say the transparency requirements of the Modern Slavery Act are outdated. They say that without actual due diligence requirements for businesses, other than exposing themselves to potential reputational damage, there are no repercussions for businesses that don’t investigate modern slavery risks. ‘If you have a piece of legislation where compliance is met by saying I have done nothing to identify or eradicate modern slavery in my supply chain, I don’t know how effective that can be’, says Lara Strangways, Head of Business and Human Rights at the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Global Rights Compliance.

Strangways believes that the UK government also needs to implement tougher enforcement of the reporting laws by introducing financial penalties or criminal liability for businesses who fail to comply. ‘We risk the UK becoming a dumping ground for forced labour products’, she says.

With many perceiving the Modern Slavery Act as lacking teeth some human rights organisations have looked to pressure enforcement authorities to use alternative legislation to hold businesses accountable for profiting from forced labour. In June, the Court of Appeal in London handed down a landmark judgment in a case brought by the World Uyghur Congress that removed certain legal barriers to proceeds of crime investigations into businesses suspected of profiting from forced labour in China.

Outside the UK, governments are moving towards holding companies to a higher standard when it comes to supply chain due diligence. France and Germany have introduced laws requiring companies to identify and prevent human rights and environmental harms in global supply chains. In May, the EU introduced similar legislation for companies in the bloc, although a proposed omnibus directive is expected to water down some of these reforms.

Elise Diggs, Member of the IBA Business Human Rights Committee Advisory Board and an international human rights barrister, says modern slavery is a major risk for companies but that the majority won’t take it seriously enough unless compelled to do so by law. She says that following the introduction of France’s Duty of Vigilance Law in 2017 she saw a significant change in corporate behaviour. ‘Before the law was adopted people were talking about reporting obligations and transparency but not human rights and environmental due diligence’, she says. ‘After the law on Devoir de Vigilance [Duty of Vigilance] became a reality, they realised they had to do much more and from year to year they put in place lots of measures and checks to meet the legal requirements.’

Forced labour in China under the microscope

In January, parliamentary sessions relating to an inquiry by the Business and Trade Committee into government policy on workers’ rights exposed the challenges faced by businesses with complex international supply chains. Testimonies revealed major shortcomings in corporate approaches to supply chain due diligence and transparency and the difficulties of identifying and mitigating forced labour risks.

Chinese fast fashion company SHEIN, one of the companies scrutinised by the committee, was unable to answer questions on whether the company sells clothing that contains cotton from the Xinjiang region in China where Uyghur Muslims and other Turkic minorities are allegedly forced to work and subject to abuse, torture and other human rights violations. The committee cited reports from 2022 that some of SHEIN’s clothing contained cotton from the Xinjiang region.

The UN, an independent people’s tribunal in London and the US government have concluded that China may have committed crimes against humanity against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In 2021 the US introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, prohibiting the import of goods from Xinjiang.

Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, Liam Byrne, said that SHEIN’s reluctance to answer ‘basic questions’ about the materials used in its products and the working conditions of its employees ‘bordered on contempt of the Committee’.

The committee, which said it had been left with ‘zero confidence’ in the integrity of SHEIN’s supply chains, also did not receive an answer from the company on how it defined appropriate working hours following allegations that manufacturers used by SHEIN had employees working 18-hour days with only one day off a month. The online fast fashion retailer reportedly generated $1bn in profits in 2024.

SHEIN told Global Insight: ‘SHEIN takes supply chain risks extremely seriously and strictly prohibits forced labour in its supply chain globally. SHEIN complies with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries in which it operates, including the Modern Slavery Act and the Proceeds of Crime Act in the UK.’

In response, UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, told the committee in a separate session that she had already written to the Financial Conduct Authority raising concerns about SHEIN’s supply chains and plans to list on the London Stock Exchange. In the same session, Lyons advocated for reforming the Modern Slavery Act to include supply chain due diligence requirements for businesses.

And it’s not only SHEIN and the cotton industry that is an issue. Tomatoes linked to Uyghur forced labour have reportedly been found in the own-brand tomato purees of major UK supermarkets. Kennedy believes that to prevent UK businesses selling products made by the forced labour of Uyghurs the government should follow the US and introduce import bans on goods from the Xinjiang region. ‘I would want to be looking at having import bans on commodities coming from certain places where we know there’s a presumption that forced labour is in the supply chain if it’s coming from Xinjiang’, she says.

Many companies in the UK, US and EU outsource the work of supply chain due diligence to law firms or corporate investigations companies. Anwar Darkazally, Diversity and Inclusion Officer of the IBA Business Human Rights Committee and a managing partner at London-based corporate investigations company Field Intelligence, says that sanctions related to the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act are something his clients take seriously when looking at the fast fashion sector. ‘Sanctions are an issue globally of great concern to our clients because they do not want to fall foul, and in particular be blocked from doing business with the US, or lose access to their banking facilities’, he says.

Darkazally explains that to mitigate risks companies can use open-source research, which examines publicly available data, and human source research, which involves speaking to people with firsthand knowledge of entities involved in a certain type of business. ‘It is possible, for example, if you have a Chinese speaker, to be able to navigate some Chinese websites and databases, which will show a chain of relationships in far more detail’, he says.

Strangways says that because many companies involved in state imposed forced labour are forced to become part of the system, and much information about them is hidden behind propaganda, it can make it difficult for many Western businesses to identify and mitigate risks. ‘Companies do not have adequate resources or understanding to identify risks related to state imposed forced labour, nor is there a compliance burden that puts a particular level of pressure on them’, she says.

In January, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves visited Beijing to strengthen economic cooperation and trade ties with China and boasted securing £600m worth of agreements for the UK economy. In a statement about the trip the UK government said Reeves raised human rights, including Xinjiang, and forced labour, with Chinese officials and made it clear that China’s sanctions against UK parliamentarians for speaking out about the abuses were unacceptable.

Kennedy, who is one of the sanctioned parliamentarians, says that conversations with China about trade and forced labour in Xinjiang need to be held within the wider context of global human rights standards and paying people fairly for the work they do. ‘I believe we should always be holding the doors open to have decent conversations and one of the ways that I would be wanting to see a conversation with China taking place on this is around employment practices. To be talking about the ways all of us struggle to create fairness in the workplace and proper reward for people’s work’, she says.

Modern slavery risks in the UK

While the UK government has not yet committed to reforming the Modern Slavery Act, improving fairness in the workplace is the goal behind its recently introduced Employment Rights Bill. The bill, which is currently going through parliament and isn’t expected to come into force until 2026, aims to centralise labour enforcement and strengthen worker protections, particularly in sectors at higher risk of forced labour. Changes include a ban on zero-hours contracts and the creation of a Fair Work Agency that will replace the separate authorities currently responsible for employment standards enforcement and modern slavery investigations.

Ed Mills, Membership Officer for the IBA Employment and Industrial Relations Law Committee and a London-based partner at Travers Smith, says that for the Fair Work Agency to be effective it will need to have sufficient resources and the appropriate enforcement powers to hold the most unscrupulous employers to account. ‘There’s been a bit of global trend for under-resourced and under-funded enforcement bodies that rely on naming and shaming regimes as opposed to issuing fines and other formal enforcement action’, says Mills. ‘I think there’s going to need to be a mixture of impactful naming and shaming enforcement coupled with fines that are meaningful.’

Modern slavery is mainly controlled by organised crime groups who have links to drug smuggling and other criminality. Slavery and labour exploitation have infiltrated legitimate business operations and supply chains from retail, construction, care homes, and the hotel and hospitality industry. In the UK, the number of modern slavery referrals to the authorities has grown over the last decade and in the last quarter of 2024 reached 4,758, the highest since records began. The real number of modern slavery victims in the UK, however, is estimated by anti-slavery NGOs to be much higher at 130,000.

Lauren Saunders, Deputy Director at UK-based anti-slavery charity Unseen, says that the increasing number of referrals could be for various reasons including a potential rise in exploitation, growing awareness about modern slavery and more training available in services. She says, however, the referral numbers are still ‘dangerously’ low compared to the overall predicted number of victims.

Saunders says one of the biggest challenges facing modern slavery detection and prevention is that people being exploited are often unaware of their rights. ‘An individual working for an organisation who is being exploited may not speak English or have access to relevant information, and they may have had identification documents taken away’, she says. ‘When people are unaware of their rights that puts them at much higher risk of exploitation.’

The ability of businesses to identify suspected modern slavery victims among their workforce is a challenge. In September, a BBC investigation revealed that a McDonald’s franchise in Cambridgeshire and a company supplying bread products to major UK supermarkets had failed to spot victims of modern slavery working at the businesses between 2012 and 2019. The companies allegedly missed red flags including multiple employees being paid into the same bank account alongside working extreme hours.

McDonalds UK told Global Insight that following an internal review it has since taken action to strengthen the ability of its people and systems to detect and prevent potential modern slavery risks, including by partnering with Unseen. ‘With our franchisees, we will play our part alongside government, NGOs and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery’, a company spokesperson said.

Another reason why people may be afraid to report themselves as modern slavery victims is fear about potential criminalisation or deportation. Saunders says that the government must be careful about not conflating modern slavery with immigration and treating human trafficking victims as potential immigration offenders. ‘Modern slavery is a human rights crime against an individual for someone else’s gain’, she says. ‘We need to foster an environment where potential victims or survivors are able to get support and talk openly about what they have been through.’

Alice Johnson is the IBA Multimedia Journalist and can be contacted at alice.johnson@int-bar.org

Image credit: Adobestock.com