The report published on 25 July by the UK parliamentary Committee on Human Rights is unequivocal: companies are not seeking to find out whether their supply chains present risks and have no incentive to do so. As a result, products linked to forced labour are being sold on the British market. “Legal requirements are weak, and enforcement mechanisms are virtually non-existent,” says Alexander Trautrims, professor of supply chain management at the University of Nottingham. These requirements are contained in the 2015 Modern Slavery Act: they require companies with an annual turnover of more than £36 million (€42 million) to publish an annual statement detailing the measures taken to combat forced labour in their supply chains.
An inadequate legal framework
However, the law does not specify what this statement must contain.
