Theresa May's legacy to end slavery

Will the outgoing UK Prime Minister cement her legacy in the global fight against Modern Slavery? This afternoon in Geneva, Theresa May will address the 108th Conference of the International Labour Organisation - an organisation which is celebrating its centenary this year. According to the BBC, she will announce ￡10m to reduce the exploitation of children in agriculture in Africa as well as the appointment of a new international modern slavery and migration envoy. She will also say that businesses must do more in terms of their global supply chains.

The critical question is what specifically she will say about committing the UK government to strengthening the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act and make it more firmly part of her legacy?

Earlier this month, the satirical UK public affairs magazine, Private Eye, cleared its cover page - quite literally left it blank - as their comment on Theresa May's legacy. This is funny but perhaps a little unfair. True, her premiership started and ended with promises about Brexit, with plenty of Brexit in between. When judged against its main objective it clearly failed - as she was unable to deliver the UK's exit from the European Union. Perhaps as a politician that never believed in Brexit herself, it was always a tall order and history might be kinder, particularly if it shows that leaving the European Union will be one of the country's greatest ever mistakes. To fail in making this mistake might actually mean that her long term legacy is more benign. She will in many ways be judged against what comes next: the next leader of the Conservative Party and, for the time being at least, our next Prime Minister. Their Brexit will frame the way we think about Theresa May's non-Brexit.

But does she have another legacy as of now, 11 June 2019? Whilst she spoke about fighting "burning injustices" during her premiership, there is perhaps less evidence of concrete delivery. Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty, has documented the way in which the country has become ever more divided over recent years and how policies of austerity and reforms to the UK's benefits scheme have impacted on the most vulnerable across the nation. His report has brought a strong reaction from many UK politicians but it is one part of the political legacy of recent years. So too the mishandling of the rights of the "Windrush" generation - the shameful denial of citizenship to the children of immigrants that came from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s. This overreach was a direct result of the "hostile environment" against immigrants that Theresa May was proud to promote when she was UK Home Secretary (interior minister), part of the aim of reducing net immigration to the UK to below 100,000 a year.

So it is perhaps surprising that during the same period, Theresa May should have become champion for the UK's first major piece of anti-slavery legislation since 1833. Pushing the legislation in 2013 and 2014 was linked, in part, to her broader efforts to control immigration as Home Secretary. Seeing migrants, at least some migrants, as the victims of unscrupulous criminals does help make the case for tighter border controls and interventions overseas to attempt to stem irregular migration flows. Whilst "human smuggling" has been distinguished from "human trafficking' in international law since 2000, in practice there is often a continuum - not all irregular migrants require the assistance of human smugglers but many do, and some smugglers are also - or can be - borderline human traffickers whilst many are not. All efforts to combat human trafficking are essentially political and impossible to ring-fence completely from immigration policies and the domestic context in which immigrants live. Put simply, if immigrants are to inform on the criminals that have abused them and their families, they will need to feel safe in doing so - both in terms of reprisals from the criminals, but also consequences from the UK state.

But Theresa May's interest in Modern Slavery was clearly more than any cynical attempt to play to the Conservative Party base. It seems, by all accounts, that she feels deeply that modern forms of slavery are harms that need to be addressed beyond all party political or national concerns. Of the 30 million victims of contemporary forms of slavery worldwide (such as forced labour, forced marriage or human trafficking) only a tiny fraction are in the UK (perhaps around 13,000). Whilst the original draft legislation did not refer to the truly global element of the problem – the supply chains of business – when Section 54 of the Bill was included, she is known to have been supportive. British business is rarely the cause of modern slavery and the economic model is not predicated on human suffering in the way it was on the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, but complex global supply chains are often directly linked to slavery in a number of ways:

• First, it might be deeply historic forms of slavery such those that persist in rural agriculture in some parts of the world.
• Second it might be the exploitation of populations that are already vulnerable such as refugee populations, children or sex trafficking.
• But third, it might be the all too frequent exploitation of migrant workers in global supply chains – where labour itself is the commodity. We know that systems in which labour agencies charge workers vast sums for jobs before they even leave their home villages and confiscate travel documents leave workers vulnerable to exploitation – and in its worst form in situations of modern slavery. The risk of such exploitation is in many global supply chains but we are a long way from transparent disclosure that this is the case.

The main strengths of Section 54 of the Act are that it requires the boards of companies to sign off annual statements of transparency and that a wide sweep of companies are required to do so, perhaps up to 20,000. However, there have been a multitude of limitations. We don’t know precisely how many UK-linked companies with a global turnover of ￡36 million a year have been captured by the Act, as no registry has been kept. Similarly, there has been no enforcement against non-reporters and many who have reported have done so in a minimalist way – not making reference to the known risks such as the use of third party labour providers several steps down a supply chain. Government itself has not been walking the talk – as public procurement was not included in the Act even though it can be around 20% of GDP.

Now we have reason to believe change is coming. An Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act was published by the Home Office on 22 May 2019 and it contained a number of important reforms in relation to Section 54, namely:

• Clarifying which companies are in scope;
• Improving the quality of the statements
• Embedding modern slavery reporting into business culture;
• Increasing transparency;
• Monitoring and enforcing compliance;
• Extending the Act to cover the supply chains of government and the public sector.

If accepted by Government, these reforms will bring the UK legislation into line with that recently enacted in Australia and planned in other countries such as Norway or Canada. Whilst the 2015 UK Act was not the first legislation of its kind, this honour goes to the State of California and also Federal Procurement in the USA, the UK Act has been the broadest in scope.

Will Theresa May’s speech today ensure that the UK Act remains the international standard on this issue and an important legacy for her – as the Home Secretary who then got the top job?

The legacy of any Prime Minister cannot rest on one issue alone, and there is much in the balance to off-set this achievement, but it would be churlish not to recognise the UK Modern Slavery Act for what it is – an important landmark in the fight against one of the worst abuses of human rights of our time and one that business and government can do much about. Here, at least, she can be deservedly proud as can the civil servants, NGOs, businesses and parliamentarians who worked across party divides to push forward the legislation.