The Home Office has launched (Thursday 11 March), a modern slavery statement registry online, to provide a platform for organisations to share the steps they have taken to tackle and prevent modern slavery.

The registry will enhance transparency and accessibility, by bringing modern slavery statements together in one place and will make it easier to find and compare them.

It will allow users such as consumers, investors and civil society, to search for statements and scrutinise the action organisations are taking to identify and address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains.

The registry follows commitment from the government to strengthen the reporting requirements under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, following the Transparency in Supply Chains Consultation, and publication of the world’s first Government Modern Slavery Statement in March 2020.

All organisations are strongly encouraged to submit their most recently published statement on the registry to demonstrate that they have reported.

If your organisation is required to produce a statement under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, in future it will be mandatory for you to submit your statement to the registry as part of the proposed changes to strengthen the reporting requirements to the Act. These measures require legislative change and will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows.