Modern Slavery Act statement

Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking

Modern slavery takes many forms, the most prevalent being:

Human trafficking – involves transporting, recruiting or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation, using violence, threats or coercion. Forced labour – any work or services that people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form of punishment. Debt Bondage or bonded labour- the world’s most widespread form of slavery, when people borrow money they cannot repay and are required to work to pay off the debt.

Analysis by global organisations such as the ILO indicates that from a supply chain perspective, modern slavery is most likely to occur in the following expenditure categories:

Garments and Textiles; Cleaning; Security; Food Processing; Electronics – including ICT hardware

Since 2018, to identify and mitigate these risks we:

• Incorporated appropriate terms in contractual arrangements including:
  • (i) warranties that no slavery is used anywhere in the supplier’s business and is mitigated so far as possible in their own supply chains,
  • (ii) an obligation to comply with our policy,
  • (iii) indemnities and a right for The Royal Society of Research to terminate agreements in the event of a breach of our Policy; and
  • (iv) contractual rights to request compliance-related information and independently audit suppliers at our discretion;
• Revised our Associates’ Code of Conduct for our business partners to highlight our expectations;
• Undertaken a risk assessment to identify which areas of our business and suppliers are most at risk of modern slavery and created an action plan to enable us to better focus our efforts in this area

During the forthcoming year, we intend to:

• Continue to ensure that our contractual arrangements with our suppliers for other higher risk expenditure categories are robust and transparent;
• Provide more information and updates on emerging issues and information sources on modern slavery to our commissioners and contract managers;

Supplier adherence to our values

We will continue to carry out reviews of existing commercial relationships to ensure that suppliers and partners comply with our values. These will include:

• Engaging with our suppliers, contractors, associates and business partners via our contract management meetings and communications to convey our Policy and to gain undertakings to ensure modern slavery is not occurring within their business;
• Encouraging self-reporting by our suppliers;
• Where we have identified high-risk areas, we will ensure that we consider potential modern slavery risks in any future contract renewals.

Communication and Training

We will communicate this Statement and our Policy to all our employees, members and volunteers to ensure a clear understanding of the risks of slavery and human trafficking within our own business.

Further steps

We intend to review continually how effective we have been to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not occurring in any part of our business or supply chains and to improve our business relationships to work collectively to tackle slavery and human trafficking.

We will review and update this Statement and our Policy on an annual basis to ensure they reflect our ongoing commitment.