My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for the very constructive way in which he closed. I thank everyone who contributed to this debate. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady O’Grady. To extend, perhaps, what the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, said, if you want something done well, get a respected trade unionist to chair your Select Committee. I have worked with my noble friend, and it has been done very well. This is a serious report doing two serious things: recommitting this Government—any Government—to the fight against modern slavery and, more importantly, to improving that response. I very much welcome this report.
This has been a thorough and thoughtful debate. Although the issues are of the utmost gravity, it has been reassuring and instructive for me to have had this exposure to the wealth of experience and expertise that exists across the House. It is also, of course, a timely debate, given that it is taking place just after the 10th anniversary of the Modern Slavery Act becoming law. On that note, I pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady May, who, as the then Home Secretary, was instrumental in getting this ground-breaking piece of legislation on to the statute book.
The Government responded to the committee’s report in December, as the House knows, but that was very shortly after the current Government took office. Inevitably, I will repeat some of the points that were made in that response but, clearly, we are now in March and the Government’s policy is starting to take shape. There have been many criticisms of that approach but it is accurate to say that the Government are pursuing a positive path on action to deal with the issues under the Modern Slavery Act.
Why do I say that? We can see the energetic activities of our Safeguarding Minister, Jess Phillips, who now has that responsibility and portfolio—we saw that yesterday in the other place. We also see some practical improvements to the approach. That is why, in October, the Government committed to eliminating the backlog within two years by recruiting 200 more decision-makers—not a given, given the financial constraints that we are currently under. In a few short months, the Home Office has hired over 100 new staff. As of last month, the backlog is now half the size it was at its worst in 2022. Noble Lords have mentioned that NRM decisions went up. The Government are at least now getting those numbers down—that is important.
Of course, as the report rightly said, we also need long-term reform of the modern slavery system. The threat has clearly evolved over time since 2015, as a number of noble Lords have said. The crimes have also changed significantly since the 2015 Act was passed. The scale is now very large. I know that some existential points were made by my noble friend Lord Whitty, but it is true that we are now dealing with three massive categories: the exploited, who are legally resident and have leave to remain or are even British citizens, and are being exploited in work, sometimes very brutally; people who come through the immigration system to work in this country, perhaps not legally but we deal with them; and then the sheer scale of the issue of supply chains, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned during this debate and which is complex.
The Government have already introduced measures that will support such broad reform—they are steps, of course—which include a new standalone offence of child criminal exploitation in order to go after the gangs that are luring young people into violence and crime. We are also trying to get to the heart of the matter in the areas of work and the care sector, which noble Lords have mentioned. We are trying to address all the areas in the shadows where people are suffering.
We are establishing the fair work agency, about which I will say a little more later, through the Employment Rights Bill. It will ensure a more cohesive and streamlined response to exploitation. Further, this week, as noble Lords will know, the Home Office published a significant update to the transparency in supply chain statutory guidance. This will further support businesses to produce high-quality statements and, more importantly, take concrete action to comply with the letter and spirit of Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act.
Clearly, further work is needed. That is what the Select Committee report was about. That is why the Government will soon be launching a public consultation on how we can improve the process of identifying victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. The Government will be working closely with survivors, first responders, law enforcement, prosecution services and devolved Administrations, among others. The Government will also provide details about this consultation in due course.
I turn now to the many detailed points made in the House today. First of all, the chair of the committee, my noble friend Lady O’Grady, raised the critical points. I begin with immigration legislation and what will be repealed. The Government understand that they have to take meaningful steps on this to decouple the issues of immigration and trafficking but also deal with the adverse effects of previous legislation.
The Government have, first, ensured that the portfolio for modern slavery is under the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, rather than the Ministers responsible for immigration, in recognition of the Government’s priorities in this space. I had thought I was answering for the Home Office. I had many invitations to answer for other departments, but I shall not take up any of them because, as I go on, noble Lords will see the complexity of departmental interest in this area. Public procurement, for example, concerns all the departments mentioned in the House this afternoon. However, we now have a Minister with a specific portfolio that is a legacy of the 2015 Act. It gives a branding and a kind of central point of focus for tackling modern slavery.
I will now answer my noble friend Lady O’Grady’s points specifically. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill seeks to repeal the modern slavery provisions. I was going to say “will repeal the modern slavery provisions”, but it has not happened yet so let me not be sacked on my first outing as Minister. It seeks to repeal the modern slavery provisions linked to the duty to remove in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. This would ensure that there is no blanket ban on irregular migrants seeking modern slavery protections.
The sole modern slavery measure being retained from the Illegal Migration Act would, if commenced, allow more foreign national offenders to be considered for removal from modern slavery protections on the ground of public order—for example, serious criminality and threats to national security. However, the repeal of the 2023 Act is there.
As with all disqualifications, decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. As noble Lords know, many of these cases are complex and decisions consider the public order risk against the individual’s need for modern slavery-specific support. That would take account of convictions for offences and the possible exploitation of an individual to commit those offences.
On the immigration White Paper, the Government recognise, as my noble friend Lady O’Grady said, the value of legal migration and the contribution it makes to our country. Many of the exploited people we see are coming to do jobs that need to be done in the care and other sectors. Migration has always been an important part of our nation’s history, but the immigration system should still be properly controlled and managed. In the upcoming immigration White Paper, we will set out a comprehensive plan to restore order to our broken immigration system, linking immigration, skills and visa systems to grow our domestic workforce, end some reliance on overseas labour and boost economic growth. Where we have a reliance on overseas labour—the matter before us today—we will not exploit those people, and we will do everything we can to take action to stop this happening.
My noble friend Lord Whitty, the noble Lord, Lord Randall, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and, importantly, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol—almost all noble Lords, I think—raised the issue of the care sector. To be clear, the care sector has become central because it is our current focus in where we see the exploitation. To answer the points made by noble Lords, the Government believe everyone deserves to be treated fairly at work and rewarded for their contribution to the economy.
The Government are deeply concerned about issues being raised in the adult care sector, including potential unethical employment practices by some sponsors of the health and care worker visa. The Home Office has zero tolerance for sponsors who seek to exploit workers and will take action against anyone found to be doing so. Noble Lords may ask what the evidence is of that. The Home Office now revokes sponsors’ licences if they fail to meet their obligations, so the evidence is that that is happening. I know that this was also a question in the report.
The care sector has been a priority area for the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority over the past couple of years, with a significant increase in intelligence and investigations being referred to the organisation. The GLAA has been working closely with the Care Quality Commission in response to the allegations of exploitation of overseas workers in the care sector under the visa system.
I should add to this because a number of noble Lords raised the fair work agency. As I have just mentioned the GLAA, I should in fairness also say that we are now in the process of creating a fair work agency through the Employment Rights Bill. The idea in relation to tackling modern slavery is that we are bringing under one roof multiple agencies that would have had some purview on tackling it. Those multiple agencies include the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and HMRC’s national minimum wage team. The issue raised this afternoon is whether this will improve things.
The idea is the same as that behind the creation of a recognisable way of fighting modern slavery, which is having an Act—the 2015 Act—and a single point of focus. Why would the new agency be better than those individual agencies in tackling modern slavery? Your Lordships can see, for example, that there will be investigations under the Fraud Act, which has a lower threshold than we had with those individual agencies, so we can probably prosecute more. We can certainly tackle the issue much more effectively.
I turn to the points raised by noble Lords on the right to work and the vulnerability of victims within the immigration system. This was a broad theme, and I want to provide an answer on it. On a victim’s right to work, we know that many victims already have the legal right to work owing to being British or having leave to remain. They are here, they are being exploited, they are British. Victims with a right to work in the UK can do so while receiving support through the national referral mechanism. Through the adult modern slavery victim care contract, support workers actively work with victims to support them with employment. This includes help to access the services of the DWP. We have DWP work coaches trained to tailor employment and benefits support based on the individual challenges faced by modern slavery victims.
Victims who have received a positive conclusive grounds decision may be considered for temporary permission to stay under certain circumstances. A victim who has been granted a period of temporary permission to stay will have recourse to public funds and no prohibition on work. They may also be able to enter higher education.
I should also mention, because I have gone a bit ahead of myself, that my noble friend Lady O’Grady raised many of these issues of fair pay and so on, but she also gave an example of good practice in the Australian visa scheme. While we have our consultations and look forward to how we can improve our response, it is important to take account of the Australian workplace justice visa scheme and other interesting laws that have been passed. For example, Australia is putting power back in victims’ hands to take legal action against exploitative employers. That is quite a new law and my noble friend Lady O’Grady mentioned this. It is the kind of thing that we should watch because this is an evolving area and protections, such as the workplace justice visa, are certainly interesting to watch to see how they unfold and whether those cases will in fact be taken.
I turn to the enforcement of the Modern Slavery Act, which a number of noble Lords raised. The Government will continue to work closely with key law enforcement partners—I realise that I am going over time, so I will speed up—to ensure that action is taken to bring the perpetrators of this horrific crime to justice. Over the next year, the national police lead in the modern slavery and organised crime immigration unit will lead work to develop a national framework for the investigation of modern slavery to support police forces domestically to secure better criminal justice outcomes. As was raised, we will work and co-operate with police forces across Europe and other areas to tackle modern slavery.
I turn to supply chains, which were raised by the right reverend Prelate and a number of other colleagues. This issue is vital and is, if you like, the growing area when it comes to tackling modern slavery. The Government are committed to working with international partners and businesses to ensure that global supply chains are free from human and labour rights abuses. We encourage businesses to monitor their global supply chains with rigour and to take steps to address and remedy any instances of modern slavery they may uncover. To answer the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, the Government take the approach that sustainable business is useless without ensuring that it is ethical and moral. We have seen a range of stakeholders, from civil society organisations to investors and media, scrutinise modern slavery statements and push businesses to go further. There have been some achievements, but the Government know that much more needs to be done on supply chains.
As I mentioned, this week the Home Office published a significant update to the Transparency in Supply Chains guidance, which will support business to produce high-quality statements. To further enhance transparency in supply chains, the Home Office runs the modern slavery statement registry, which brings together all the modern slavery statements in one place. It has proved a notable source for transparency and accountability in corporations. The registry now hosts over 17,000 modern slavery statements covering over 58,000 organisations. The Government are working on several improvements to the registry to increase the number of statements being uploaded voluntarily. I know the point was made by a number of noble Lords about the quality of data, which was of course a big issue in constructing the report. I know that the Home Office is very much engaged in improving the quality of data that we have.
I want to mention one point on public procurement, which was also raised. We now have the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force in February. While there is compelling evidence of modern slavery in supply chains, the Government understand the importance of ensuring that exploitative businesses do not take a share of the £400 billion that the public sector spends on goods and services each year. There is evidence to show that the Government are developing good tools to help public bodies put these policies into practice, including the modern slavery assessment tool. Public bodies can exclude suppliers from public procurement if they need to and if there is compelling evidence. It has been said in some places that there needs to have been a conviction before that can happen, but it is compelling evidence that needs to be adduced.
I apologise if I have not answered any other specific questions, but I want to make some closing remarks. First, I say to the chair of the committee, my noble friend Lady O’Grady, that I will contact my noble friend Lord Hanson to put together a meeting. That will help to maintain the momentum of the work in the report and to keep moving on these ideas with as much cross-party support as possible. I will ensure that many of the points raised today, including those not raised or answered today, are raised at such a meeting.
Modern slavery has no place in our society; it must be dealt with as the serious threat that it is. There is always more to do, of course, and the insight and knowledge on display here today will no doubt be of great assistance as we develop our approach. In the meantime, I hope my remarks have gone some way to reassuring noble Lords of the Government’s steadfast commitment to rooting out these crimes, stopping perpetrators and, most importantly, supporting survivors.