Government reforms (4): Modern slavery – statement registry 

What do we already know?

Organisations which:

• have a worldwide turnover in excess of £36 million per year;
• supply goods or services; and
• carry on business, in whole or in part, in the United Kingdom;

need to comply with the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA) disclosure obligations.

Part of these obligations is to publish an annual slavery and human trafficking statement within six months of the organisation’s financial year-end.  This statement is to include what steps the organisation has taken to ensure that human trafficking is not taking place in any of its supply chains or its own business.

For further information on this obligation see our updates here.

What’s new?

The Government has launched an online modern slavery statement registry (available here) which consolidates modern slavery statements in one database. This will allow users to search for actions taken by organisations to address modern slavery risks.

This is intended to help improve reporting under the MSA and the Government has said it intends to make submissions to the registry mandatory as soon as parliamentary time allows for legislative changes. In the meantime, the Government strongly encourages organisations to submit their most recently published modern slavery statement to the registry.