Guide: Modern Slavery Act

167 countries still practice slavery in some form with the top five offenders being India, China, North Korea, Nigeria and Iran.

• Debt bondage;
• Child slavery;
• Forced marriage;
• Domestic servitude;
• Forced labour;
• Human trafficking;
• Sexual exploitation; and
• Criminal exploitation.

Usually, modern slavery takes the appearance of forced labour, domestic servitude, and sexual exploitation. There are an estimated 10,000-13,000 slaves in the UK currently, while nowhere near the numbers of other countries, it is considered an issue.

The act was developed by the UK Government to tackle modern slavery within commercial organisations.

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“MSA”) imposes reporting obligations on all commercial organisations supplying goods or services which carry on their business or part of their business in the UK, and which have a total turnover exceeding £36 million in any financial year.

These reporting obligations require organisations to publish a slavery and human trafficking statement which sets out the steps that the organisation has taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business and in its supply chains – subject to it still falling within the MSA criteria, the organisation’s statement should be updated and published annually – please see below for more information regarding the statement.

In addition to a failure to publish the statement, the corporate entity is liable to criminal prosecution if suspected of any of the following:

• Slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour
• Human trafficking, and/or
• Committing any offence with the intent to commit human trafficking.

Accordingly, the organisation should ensure it has in place the appropriate processes to enable it to remain vigilant to the risk of any of the above occurring within it. This responsibility ultimately falls to the senior management team of the organisation. It is therefore imperative that the modern slavery exercise is driven from the senior management team and cascaded as appropriate.

Any company with a turnover of £36 million or higher must produce an annual modern slavery and human trafficking statement. The statement must include the steps that the company took to identify and remove any slavery, or mitigate the risks of it, within their business or supply chains. It must be easily accessible via their website. There are no formatting or layout requirements.

As far as the slavery and human trafficking statement is concerned, a summary of the key elements are as follows:

• The statement (which must have been approved by the Board and signed by a Director) should have been first published by September 2017; the Home Office has recently written to organisations to advise that those which do not have in place statements will be “named and shamed” which will likely have reputational connotations
• The statement must be on the organisation’s website (there should be link to it on the homepage) but can also be published on an external website – The Modern Slavery Registry is one of these external websites – there is no legal obligation on it to publish on any external website.
• The statement needs to specify what has been done by the organisation to demonstrate the steps it has taken in the last financial year to ensure modern slavery is not taking place in its business/supply chains etc – the statement should be published within 6 months of the end of the financial year to which it relates.

It is recommended that the statement covers the following 6 areas:

• Organisation’s structure and supply chains
• Organisational policies
• Assessing and managing risk
• Training
• Due diligence, and
• Performance indicators

It is worth noting that the duty to produce a slavery and human trafficking statement does not require you to take any steps or guarantee that your supply chain is slavery free.

As mentioned, in the UK, forced labour is one of the most common types of Modern Slavery. Telltale signs for this could be the following:

• A workplace that is being lived in and used as accommodation;
• Employees taking a dislike and distrusting authorities;
• Malnourished workers;
• Employees showing signs of mental trauma;
• Employees and workers having a number of different injuries often left untreated;
• Common substance misuse among workers; and
• Workers being unaware of both their home or work address.

Companies should say, within their statements, the detail and extent they have gone to in order to eradicate modern slavery within their supply chain. They could say that they have done nothing to combat it within their supply chain, but this can bring negative publicity.

The Act doesn’t legislate for any specific steps on how to combat it within the supply chain. Neither does it demand a guarantee that the supply chain is completely slave free. The issue of policing the supply chain can come at an additional cost and effort at the company’s expense.