UK anti-slavery watchdog tells business to clean up supply chains Kevin Hyland, Britain's first anti-slavery commissioner Britain's first anti-slavery commissioner is threatening to expose companies that fail to take steps to eradicate forced labour from supply chains. Kevin Hyland, the former head of London's Metropolitan Police human trafficking unit, was appointed last week by the Home Office to improve law enforcement against forced labour. His role is being created as part of the Modern Slavery bill, due to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday, which will also require companies to disclose the efforts being made every year to tackle slavery in their supply chains. "Once they know they are being monitored . . . they will want to have clean supply chains," he told the Financial Times. If they fail they will be exposed - and no company in the world wants to be shown as employing slaves. Mr Hyland's appointment, which will be confirmed when the bill becomes law, comes as international efforts to stamp out human trafficking gather pace. According to the National Crime Agency, the number of people identified as potential victims of trafficking and forced labour in the UK rose 47 per cent last year. Though the number remains small at 1,746, the real total is believed to be far greater. Interpol estimates that only 5-10 per cent of cases are ever reported. Globally, the International Labour Organisation estimates that close to 21m people are victims of forced labour, generating illegal profits of $150bn. Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, will be in London on Tuesday to support an appeal by the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Trust Women conference for European financial institutions to collaborate on sharing client data to identify human trafficking. Mr Vance's office, along with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, launched a similar project in the US in January, backed by financial institutions such as JPMorgan, Western Union and Bank of America. Monique Villa, chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said collaboration was already bringing results, with a higher number of investigations being opened. The banks had incorporated "red flags" into their software designed to detect patterns of human trafficking or forced labour, and the results were passed on to law enforcement agencies. "After just nine to 10 months, it is working," she said. However, there were legal obstacles to sharing client data in Europe that would need to be overcome. "It will be difficult because you have privacy issues here," she said. Karen Bradley, the minister for modern slavery and organised crime, said more transparency "will give customers, campaigners and shareholders the information they need to hold all big business to account." Mr Hyland said in the UK, forced labour was now a concern for companies because their supply chains had become more international and complex. "A few years back it would have mainly been about the sex industry," he said. Now it is not far off 50-50 forced labour and those forced into sexual exploitation. The industries most affected were agriculture, construction, fisheries and domestic service, he said. Baker & McKenzie, a law firm, will publish findings from a survey of 100 companies at the Trust Women conference showing that government and public actions to hold business accountable for the behaviour of suppliers were beginning to have an effect. Although "the downward pressure on labour costs was feeding into [the problem of forced labour]," said Christopher Burkett of Baker & McKenzie, the poll showed that reputation was more important than cost when choosing suppliers. "Companies want to protect their brand," he said. However, some companies have suggested it would be impossible to be certain that forced labour was not being used somewhere low down their supply chains, given the vast and fragmented sourcing of some commodity products such as cotton. Primark, which found itself at the centre of a controversy over its suppliers after 1,000 workers died in a Bangladesh factory collapse last year, said it was working with lobby groups to monitor its supply chain and was developing a new method to identify cotton from regions of risk, such as Uzbekistan. On cotton in Uzbekistan specifically, we are aware of the issues there and have told our garment suppliers not to use cotton from this region. We are working on a new technology application to enable us to ensure that garment suppliers comply with this requirement. We will not accept slavery in our supply chain wherever it is.