This parliamentary briefing argues that we urgently need a new UK law to hold companies to account when they fail to prevent human rights abuses and environmental harms in their global value chains. A new law is called for by UK civil society organisations, businesses, investors, and more than 125,000 people in the UK who...
Ten years on from the introduction of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), voluntary initiatives have failed to have a meaningful impact on tackling abuse in business operations and supply chains. This includes modern slavery, unsafe working conditions, attacks on human rights defenders including trade unions, pollution of land and water,...
46 leading businesses and investors have called on the UK Government to introduce a new legal requirement for companies and investors to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence. A group including Microsoft, Tesco, Primark and Nestlé said: “Legislation can contribute to a competitive level playing field, increase legal certainty about the standards expected...
Attached is the joint submission that CJC and Traidcraft Exchange filed to the Law Commission consultation on corporate criminal liability. Its co-authored by Stuart Biggs (Barrister at Three Raymond Buildings) and Rachel Chambers (Professor in Business Law at the University of Connecticut). In the submission we make the case that the Law Commission’s review...
The Law Commission has published an options paper for the Government on how it can improve the law to ensure that corporations are effectively held to account for committing serious crimes. You can read the summary of the opitions paper here.
Despite the efforts made by civil society groups, an amendment tabled in the Commons in 2020, a series of interventions by Peers during report stage, and several amendments being put forwards in the House of Lords, Schedule 17 leaves very significant and concerning gaps in human rights protections due to: The lack of reference in...
The European Commission is tabling a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive which obliges EU Member States to introduce ‘mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence’ laws. The Commission’s move builds on advances already made in Europe through an emerging new generation of corporate accountability laws. In many instances, these laws will apply to UK companies...
Written by Clare Oxborrow at Friends of the Earth Commodity supply chains are trashing forests and trampling human rights. Clare Oxborrow explains why the government’s new Environment Act will fail to protect communities and why it must take effective action to regulate UK companies. Read full blog below.
A new report from Amnesty International UK detailing JCB’s failure to conduct proper human rights due diligence on the end use of its products, representing a failure to respect human rights. For many years JCB’s heavy machinery has been used in situations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) where war crimes and human rights violations have been...
