29/05/2025
It is estimated that 50 million people worldwide are in modern slavery. The Home Office says that modern slavery is so prevalent that if businesses are not identifying risks and cases, they are probably not looking hard enough.
When the Modern Slavery Act 2015 came into force, it was considered to be a world-leading milestone. Its focus however was mainly on making modern slavery a criminal offence. It did little to change the behaviour of businesses, the only requirement being on those with a turnover at or above £36million to produce an annual modern slavery statement.
Whilst the Act did provide a non-exhaustive list of information that may be included in a statement, and the Government launched the ‘Transparency in Supply Chains guidance’ in October 2015, outlining what it sees as good practice in statement content, none of this was mandatory and there were no legal consequences for those that failed to publish one or published a poor one. A statement saying that no steps were taken in relation to modern slavery was in fact enough to comply with the legal requirement to publish a statement.
In 2019, a Government consultation resulted in commitments to improve transparency in supply chains by extending requirements to public bodies and requiring statements to be published on a register. Although the Government launched a register of modern slavery statements in 2020, it is up to organisations to upload their statements if they want to, it is not mandatory to do so.
In October 2024, we published an article (The Impact and effectiveness of the UK Modern Slavery regime | Bevan Brittan LLP) about a report published by the House of Lords Select Committee named ‘The Modern Slavery act 2015: becoming world-leading again’ which summarised ways for the new Labour Government to take action and make the UK world-leading in the battle against modern slavery once again. One of the three key issues raised in the report was the Act’s provisions on supply chains and the report recommended that the Government should introduce legislation requiring companies meeting the threshold to undertake modern slavery due diligence in their supply chains and to take reasonable steps to address problems; and that introduces proportionate sanctions for organisations that do not comply with supply chain requirements.
The report also recommended that publications of modern slavery statements be made mandatory, and recommended again, that the requirement to publish a statement be extended to the public sector.
The Government published its response to this report in mid December 2024. Although supportive of the need for change, many recommendations were met with re-confirmation of current processes and procedures or comments that legislation needed to be considered as part of a wider review. In respect to supply chains, no tangible commitments were made to implement the committee’s recommendations, such as introducing proportionate sanctions for companies that do not comply with supply chain requirements.
The Government instead states that it is “reviewing how best it can use legislative and non-legislative measures to tackle forced labour and increase transparency in global supply chains” with no firm timeline in place. The Government’s response side-stepped the recommendation to make publication of statements mandatory, instead focussing on their plans to develop a public facing dashboard summarising the data pulled from the statements that are uploaded. Whilst this will increase the accessibility of the data, without mandatory uploading to the register it is likely to be incomplete.
Although the requirement for modern slavery statements has still not been extended to the public sector, the new Procurement Act 2023 strengthens the exclusion regime in relation to modern slavery, to prevent exploitative companies from securing government contracts, by expanding the mandatory exclusion grounds which apply if the supplier or a connected person has been convicted of certain offences under modern slavery legislation. Suppliers can be investigated for debarment on modern slavery grounds and be placed on a central debarment list of suppliers who must or may be excluded across the whole of the public sector.
On 25 March 2025, the Home Office also published an updated version of its Transparency in Supply Chains Guidance, which focuses on how organisations can ensure there is no modern slavery in its business or supply chains in accordance with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA 2015) which was the section requiring businesses that have a global turnover above £36 million and operate in the UK to produce an annual statement (MSA Statement) setting out the steps they have taken to ensure there is no modern slavery in their business and supply chains. The guidance can be found at Transparency in supply chains: a practical guide (accessible) - GOV.UK.
The updated guidance provides much greater detail on the type of content a MSA statement should contain, focusing on Level 1 (good practice / basic level of compliance) and Level 2 (best practice / more comprehensive) suggestions. It still focuses on the six areas listed in section 54, those being Organisational structure, its business and its supply chains (54(5)(a)), Organisational policies (54(5)(b)), Assessing and managing risk (54(5)(d)), Due diligence (54(5)(c)), Training (54(5)(f)) and Monitoring and evaluation (54(5)(e)). The expectation is that organisations build on what they are doing year-on-year, starting with Level 1 and progressing to Level 2 and beyond. A number of case studies are provided to aid understanding.
The updated version also encourages out of scope and particularly public sector organisations to voluntarily publish an MSA statement despite there being no legal obligation for them to do so.
The guidance states that responsible organisations are those which acknowledge the risks, take active steps to identify and mitigate risks, remediate harms, and can demonstrate publicly that they are tracking progress and continuously improving. Through this guidance, and by focusing on transparency, accountability, and sustained progress, the Government seeks to inspire a ‘race to the top’ culture where organisations aim to lead the way in tackling modern slavery in their businesses and supply chains.
There are also a number of standards on how businesses should tackle modern slavery. The guidance above now refers to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (including the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct) (published June 2023) and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (published 2011).
In addition, British Standard 25700 was introduced in 2022 as a comprehensive framework for organisations of all sizes to tackle modern slavery risks, covering prevention, identification, mitigation and reporting. The BS 25700 is set to be adopted into a new international standard, ISO 37200, by June 2026. The hope is that by having a global standard, focus will increase on all businesses in supply chains and benchmarking will be easier. All of these however remain voluntary standards.
Whilst we wait to see if further legislative changes are made to implement other recommendations made in both 2019 and 2024, businesses should review the updated guidance to ensure that both their own statements and those of supply chain partners are consistent. Businesses that are not required to produce their own statements should consider whether they wish to voluntarily do so but should also check the statements of supply chain partners as part of their due diligence processes.
For further information, please contact Louise, Tijen or Oonagh.
