Inclusion of Scottish public bodies in Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC) reporting

Overview

This consultation is seeking your views on proposals to extend the reporting requirements to Scottish public bodies for the publication of modern slavery statements as part of work to improve Transparency in Supply Chains. It also seeks your views on the mechanisms for this reporting and associated enforcement regimes.

Public Sector

Alongside commercial organisations, the public sector has a crucial role to play in addressing the risks of modern slavery in its supply chains, with £13.3bn of procurement spend annually across the Scottish public sector alone. Many public sector organisations have already started to identify and address the modern slavery risks within their supply chains and beyond.

The UK Government propose that public sector bodies be included in the formal requirement to publish a modern slavery statement. As per the requirements for commercial organisations, this would extend to public sector organisations with an annual budget – as opposed to turnover – of £36 million or more, unless they are already captured by the existing legislation.

This would include, for example, Central Government Departments, including the Scottish Government and devolved public bodies, local government bodies - including Local Authorities, NHS bodies and non-market and market public bodies (such as public corporations) - which meet the budget threshold.

UK proposals regarding Public Sector organisations

This consultation is seeking views on the proposed UK Modern Slavery Bill announced on 10 May 2022. This consultation allows the Scottish Government to provide targeted questions to public sector bodies ahead of further policy development. Proposals include:

• inclusion of public bodies in the reporting requirement for a modern slavery statement
• introduction of a single reporting deadline by which all organisations must publish their statement each year
• mandating that the reporting of specific topics within the statement be compulsory to facilitate transparency

Consultation Period

An 8 week consultation period has been set to allow responses to be analysed and provided to the Home Office ahead of the proposed publication of the UK Modern Slavery Bill in September 2022.

Please provide any responses on Citizen Space or send them to the Scottish Government’s Human Trafficking team by emailing human.trafficking@gov.scot

Read the consultation document

What happens next

Handling your response

If you respond using the consultation hub, you will be directed to the About You page before submitting your response. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are content for your response to published. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

If you are unable to respond via Citizen Space, please complete and return the Respondent Information Form included in this document.

To find out how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy policy:

https://www.gov.scot/privacy/

Next steps

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public, and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public at http://consult.gov.scot. If you use the consultation hub to respond, you will receive a copy of your response via email.

These responses will then be provided to the Home Office to inform their wider consultation on Transparency in Supply Chains. 

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted,

please send them to the contact address above or at human.trafficking@gov.scot.

Scottish Government consultation process

Consultation is an essential part of the policymaking process. It gives us the opportunity to consider your opinion and expertise on a proposed area of work.

You can find all our consultations online: http://consult.gov.scot. Each consultation details the issues under consideration, as well as a way for you to give us your views, either online, by email or by post.

Responses will be analysed and used as part of the decision making process, along with a range of other available information and evidence. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise the responses received may:

• indicate the need for policy development or review
• inform the development of a particular policy
• help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals
• be used to finalise legislation before it is implemented

While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and comments, which should be directed to the relevant public body.