The Corporate Justice Coalition strongly welcomes the new report on Forced Labour in UK Supply Chains, by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Published today (24 July 2025) the new report builds on recommendations first made in 2017, calling for the government to introduce mandatory human rights due diligence and a “failure to prevent” mechanism into domestic law.
We agree with the inquiry’s key finding that the UK’s existing piecemeal and ad hoc domestic law framework for addressing forced labour is “inadequate”. More broadly, the report is clear that the Government’s current approach to modern slavery lacks effective leadership and cross-departmental co-ordination; it doesn’t provide clarity for business; and ultimately it is failing ensure that the supply chains of UK companies are free from forced labour. As a result, “the UK is failing to keep pace with international comparator states”.
We also firmly support the key recommendations as delivered by the committee: In particular, we agree that, within the next year, the Government must:
- Introduce mandatory human rights due diligence duties for businesses;
- Establish effective regulatory arrangements to ensure compliance with the new rules for mHRDD, including penalties for non-compliance that are proportional to company turn over.
- Establish a right for those who have suffered forced labour to bring a claim for civil liability against those responsible
- Implement the recommendation of the 2017 report by creating a civil cause of action of “failure to prevent forced labour”, thus making corporations liable to pay compensation to victims if those corporations cannot prove that they had adequate procedure in place to prevent such forced labour.
Regarding the fourth recommendation in the list above (recommendation 271 in the report), we would like to highlight the fact that the 2017 JCHR report that is referred to here called for “legislation to impose a duty on all companies to prevent human rights abuses, as well as an offence of failure to prevent human rights abuses for all companies.” We recognise that this 2025 report is focused specifically on the issue of forced labour in supply chains but we assert that, in line with the 2017 report, new mandatory due diligence legislation should be accompanied with a corporate duty to prevent all human rights abuses including the right to a clean healthy and sustainable environment – not just forced labour.
All of the above recommendations including an expanded duty to prevent human rights abuses and environmental harm, can be met through the implementation of a Business Human Rights and Environment Act, as proposed by our coalition. Our campaign also has support from over 60 parliamentarians, more than 150 businesses and investors and our petition calling for a new law also has over 145,000 signatures from the public.
Spurred on by this report from the JCHR, we will continue to engage the Government to call for stronger UK legislation to protect people and the planet from corporate abuse.