Large companies can sell goods in Britain even when they have done little to check whether forced labour exists in their supply chains. They are mainly required to publish a statement.
The government now wants to strengthen those rules. Its Immigration and Asylum Bill would force companies to give clearer information about the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery, and some public bodies would be covered for the first time. Businesses and public authorities that fail to comply could face penalties of up to £1 million or 1 per cent of their turnover or budget.
That is real progress.
Lord David Alton, chair of Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, welcomed the measures on 15 July 2026. He said companies and public bodies must not treat the rules as a “rubber stamping exercise”.
The problem is larger than paperwork.
Modern supply chains can stretch across several countries. A British shop may buy clothes from a supplier that buys fabric from another company, which buys cotton grown or processed somewhere else. The further down the chain the abuse occurs, the easier it becomes for everyone near the top to say they didn’t know.
Britain’s current law relies heavily on transparency statements. Under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, certain businesses must publish a yearly statement explaining what they have done to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. The law does not guarantee that they have taken effective action. A company can describe its checks without proving that workers were protected, and the statement may look impressive while revealing little about where raw materials came from.
The proposed changes would set clearer rules about what those statements must contain, and extend the reporting duty to some public authorities. That matters because government departments, councils, hospitals and other public bodies spend billions of pounds buying goods and services. The taxpayer should not fund abusive labour through a contract nobody properly checked.
Financial penalties could give the law some bite. A duty without punishment is easy to ignore. But a stronger reporting system still depends on the quality of the checks behind it. A company can file a statement, hire a consultant, and ask a direct supplier to sign a policy. None of that proves what happened in a factory, field or workshop thousands of miles away.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights warned in July 2025 that Britain had fallen behind other countries, and said the UK risked becoming a dumping ground for goods made with forced labour. That is a grim possibility. If other countries block suspect imports while Britain relies on weak declarations, sellers may simply redirect those goods here.
The committee called for companies to carry out proper human rights checks, rather than merely report what they chose to do. It also wanted victims of forced labour to have better access to justice through British courts. Those demands go further than the measures Lord Alton welcomed in the Immigration and Asylum Bill.
Parliament is also pressing the National Crime Agency for answers about imported cotton. On 15 July, the committee wrote to the agency’s director general seeking an update on an NCA decision concerning cotton imports.
The correspondence does not prove that any named British retailer knowingly sold goods produced through forced labour. It does show why enforcement matters. When credible evidence reaches a British authority, somebody must decide whether to investigate, block the goods or take legal action. If nobody has a clear duty to act, responsibility gets passed around until the goods reach the shelves.
The government deserves credit for proposing fines and extending the rules to public bodies. Those changes could stop companies filing vague statements and forgetting about them.
They will not answer the harder question.
Did anyone check the workers were free?