Factory claims not new – as MPs should know
JUST over four years ago, Leicester became front page news across the world for wonderful, almost surreal reasons... We are the champions!
Now it is in the headlines for much sadder reasons, with the renewed restrictions imposed after the rise in coronavirus cases. There has understandably been much correspondence on your letter pages about this.
The Mercury has reported Health Secretary Matthew Hancock as expressing concerns about the employment practices of many clothing factories in the city, along with criticism of the slowness of responses to the increases.
“Clearly some problems have been under the radar in Leicester,” he said in June.
Home Secretary Priti Patel joined in, warning: “I will not tolerate sick criminals forcing innocent people into slave labour and a life of exploitation.”
She went on to commend North West Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen for his part in “uncovering” this earlier in the year.
He was equally damning, describing it in January as a “national shame”.
Fine words, and clearly we need urgently to get this sorted out. I suspect no one would choose to argue with that.
What is surprising, however, is the impression given by these experienced politicians that this is all fairly new to them.
Mr Bridgen and the Sunday Times were by no means the first to uncover what was going on.
Sarah O’Connor reported in the Financial Times on July 3 that she had investigated the city’s clothing industry in 2018 and found that “legally compliant factories using expensive machines were being outcompeted by illegally underpaid humans”.
Following this investigation, she was asked to give evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee in February 2019.
That committee, having heard the evidence, made a number of recommendations to the government covering environmental issues, minimum wage enforcement and the use of the Modern Slavery Act.
However, in June the government rejected all eight key recommendations.
Mr Hancock was in the same cabinet post then as he is now – and so part of the government that took this decision to reject the recommendations having considered the evidence.
He has not referred to this in recent comments, preferring to accuse the council of being slow to respond.
Both Mr Bridgen and Ms Patel were Conservative backbenchers then and must surely have known of the investigation, the committee’s recommendations and the government’s decision to reject them. I cannot find reference to this in their comments.
It must be very difficult being a politician at this time, and many look to have aged considerably since March.
However, given examples like the above, it is also difficult being a citizen to make sense of it all.
Les Gallop, Syston