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Article

24 Jan 2017

Author:
Joe Bardwell Corporate, Accountability & Communications Officer & Patricia Carrier, Project Manager, UK Modern Slavery Act Registry, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

Blog: How the UK Modern Slavery Act can find its bite

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For many advocates the [UK Modern Slavery] Act falls short … with regard to reporting. Critics claim that there is no monitoring mechanism to verify whether companies that are meant to report do so… The government…made clear it leaves the task of creating a central registry to civil society. [The] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre [have] creat[ed] the UK Modern Slavery Act Registry; the only free, public and transparent database of company statements. [We] recently analysed the statements of the first FTSE 100 companies to report under the act. The analysis found … a gulf in the quality of action between a handful of leading companies and the rest. [T]here needs to be a change in public reactions to such disclosure, where we applaud companies that have due diligence and risk assessments in place... Media will play an important part in changing this discourse. [C]ivil society, investors and consumers [need] to scrutinise reporting, applaud those leading companies and demand ever more action from laggards.