Modern Slavery Act 2015 - alert

The ‘Transparency in Supply Chains’ provision in the Modern Slavery Act seeks to address the role of businesses in preventing modern slavery from occurring in their supply chains and organisations and came into force on 29 October 2015. It deals with offences relating to trafficking and slavery. It will affect many operators in the licensed trade, which is why we are alerting to it.

This requires all UK businesses with a turnover of £36m or more to publish a slavery and human trafficking statement on their website.

This should set out the steps the company has taken during the financial year to ensure that human trafficking and/or slavery is not taking place in any of its supply chains and in any part of its own business. Alternatively, if no steps have been taken, the statement should make this clear.

“Slavery” is defined as the offences of “slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour”. “Human Trafficking” is defined as the arrangement or facilitation of the travel of another person with a view to exploiting them.

An organisation’s slavery and human trafficking statement may include information about:

• the organisation's structure, its business and supply chains
• policies relating to slavery and human trafficking
• due diligence processes in relation to slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chains
• the parts of its business and supply chains where there is a risk of slavery and human trafficking taking place and the steps taken to assess and manage that risk
• training about slavery and human trafficking available to its staff

The slavery and human trafficking statement should be published on company websites.

There is no financial penalty for failing to publish a statement. However, the Government can apply to the High Court for an injunction to force an organisation to comply if they persistently fail to produce a statement.

The requirement for organisations to publish a statement was commenced on 29 October 2015. However, as the Guidance below points out, many organisations may not be in a position to produce a statement immediately. Therefore, transitional provisions have been included to allow organisations sufficient time to understand the requirement and produce a statement.

‘Businesses with a financial year-end date between 29 October and 30 March 2016 will not be required to publish a statement for that financial year of the organisation. However businesses with a year-end of 31 March 2016 will be the first businesses required to publish a statement for their 2015-16 financial year. These organisations will be required to produce a statement covering the full financial year of the organisation. However, where an organisation has only recently undertaken activities they may choose to produce a statement that indicates that activity undertaken covers a particular part of the financial year.’

The Guidance has just been published by Government and can be found here: Transparency in Supply Chains etc. A practical guide.

We are grateful to the BBPA for alerting us to these provisions and for much of the above detail.