The Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act, chaired by Baroness Butler-Sloss, Frank Field MP and Maria Miller MP, has this afternoon published its second interim report which focuses on the 'transparency in supply chains' requirement (section 54) of the Act...

...The report makes clear that it is time for government to step up and make businesses take this legislation seriously. In 2017, 43% of the FTSE 100 failed to comply with this law alongside only 58% of the top 100 companies awarded government contracts...

...FLEX welcomes the recommendations to:

• Develop sanctions against non-compliant companies
• Introduce a central state-run repository for statements
• Remove section 54(4)b which allows companies to be legally compliant with the law simply by stating that they have done nothing to address the issue
• Make it mandatory to cover specific areas of the business, instead of advisable to do so
• Extend section 54 to the public sector so that public procurement can also be used to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking in supply chains