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The estate from the report is one of three that we bought from in 2022. The amount of tea bought was small and we have not bought any this year.

Sri Lankan tea is mainly sold via auction and we must buy from approved estates through an auction agent. This has meant that it is more difficult to build the strong strategic relationships directly with estates that are part of Taylors of Harrogate’s sourcing approach. The development work that we have helped to support in Sri Lanka has been mainly via our membership of the Ethical Tea Partnership who have representatives based in the country.

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Our ambition is for all workers in our supply chain to receive a living wage. We’re currently partnering with IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative, to develop wage benchmarking studies that will give us an estimate of the living wage gap that exists for our tea products...

...our first route to resolving supply chain issues is to work both directly with our trade partners and through wider collaborations, to promote change across the sector. We aim to understand underlying causes and address the challenges, rather than take the decision to trade elsewhere.

Our tea is third party certified through the Rainforest Alliance to monitor social and environmental standards, but we know certification only provides limited protection, so it is important that we go beyond this baseline and have developed a broader approach to human rights due diligence.

We follow up on specific issues as we are made aware of them. This could be through a variety of means, including our own monitoring and review of media reports and we welcome contact from anyone with concerns to raise.

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Full response below.