Click the link here or download below to read the full model law.
For several decades, the UK Government has relied on weak voluntary corporate responsibility frameworks that have failed to protect people and ecosystems from corporate abuse.
As a result, workers in public supply chains are facing exploitation, UK-linked business activity is driving climate breakdown and victims of forced labour, violent attacks or devastating water pollution are facing insurmountable barriers to justice.
Fortunately, there is growing recognition that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Right now, the UK Government is joining countries around the world in considering the introduction of stronger mandatory rules to ensure that businesses act responsibly and victims have access to remedy if they experience harm. These laws are commonly known as mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) laws, based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Recommendations for the UK to introduce new due diligence legislation have now been published by the House of Lords Select Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Business and Trade Select Committee, the Trade Unions Congress, the Ethical Trading Initiative and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. With support also from 4 out of 5 members of the public, over 150 businesses and investors, this growing consensus is now impossible to ignore.
In this context and following extensive consultation with legal experts and rightsholders from around the world, CJC has published an updated model legal proposal that centres the needs of rightsholders and shows concretely, how the UK legal system can be strengthened to protect people and the planet from corporate harm.
This model law is also being proposed as a Private Members Bill by Baroness Lola Young and has been published by the Public Bill Office under the title: the “Commercial Organisations and Public Authorities Duty (Human Rights and Environment) Bill”, in the House of Lords. It updates a 2023 PMB known by the same name. The updated version draws on additional legal expertise and insights gained through a major global consultation process carried out throughout 2025.
“Behind every gap in UK law is a real person – a worker facing exploitation, a community watching their land be destroyed, a family without remedy. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our model law offers a concrete solution, and offers the Government a choice: allow harm to continue, or set clear rules for all that will protect people from harm and change corporate behaviour for the better.”
To read the model law in full download it below. You can also find it on the Parliamentary website here.
To learn more about why this law is needed click here.
For an explainer of how this law would work, click here.
Posted by: CJC Team | Tagged as: Other
