Questions, questions

SIR – I was recently asked to complete a questionnaire to keep my business on a customer’s approved supplier list.

To comply with the latest diktat on slavery and human trafficking it wanted to be assured that we had published a slavery and human trafficking statement, had a policy in relation to it, had undertaken a risk assessment, had identified steps to manage the risk, had provided training and were carrying out due diligence to ensure our suppliers were doing the same. It also wanted to know that we had policies on monitoring diversity, age, disability, gender-reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion, sex and sexual orientation and were committed to Global Compact Principles.

A section followed asking whether we were certificated to ISO 9001 (quality management), ISO 14001 (environmental management), OHSAS 18001 (occupational health and safety), ISO 27001 (information security), BS 10500 (anti-bribery management) and Cyber Essentials (whatever that is).

If my two-man engineering consultancy had written all these policies, monitored their application, and updated them, we would have done very little engineering.

Barry Johnson

Cambridge