PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Business: Human Rights (13 July 2017)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the effect of the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights on (a) business practices and (b) international efforts to uphold human rights.

Asked by:
Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

The UK was the first state to publish a National Action Plan to implement the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This Plan brings together a range of measures – national and international, mandatory and voluntary – to foster business respect for human rights. These include the world leading provision in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which requires large companies to say what they do to ensure modern slavery is not taking place in their business or through their supply chains, support for the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, a business-led initiative to rank the world’s largest businesses on their approach to human rights and continuing encouragement to other countries to produce their own National Action Plans.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights’ recent inquiry on human rights and business which culminated in its report “Human Rights and Business 2017: Promoting responsibility and ensuring accountability” examined human rights and business in the UK including the implementation of the UK’s National Action Plan. The Government will respond to the report when the Committee reconvenes after summer recess.

Answered by:
Margot James (Conservative)
18 July 2017