As the UK starts a new financial year, the latest report on corporate compliance with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act makes for sobering reading.
The report, produced by TISCreport.org, found that 50.8% of organisations (9627 out of 18939) that should have complied by now still have no locatable statements. This compares with 50.6% as reported in TISCreport’s interim briefing at Westminster in September 2017 at the halfway point.
What’s more, a unique data sharing alliance with the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline, run by Unseen, has been enabled by the platform’s GOV.UK compatible architecture. With in excess of 0.5 Million UK supplier records in TISCreport, the critical mass in order to drive change through supply chains has been reached. The data sharing alliance is breaking new ground by joining live compliance data sets at the top of supply chains with geographical modern slavery hotspots on the ground.
Andrew Wallis OBE, CEO of Unseen says of the alliance:
“The power of a solidly built register that works with UK Government systems means that our anonymised and redacted data can help companies who subscribe identify where their greatest risks lie, just by sharing their business premises with TISCreport. There is no other register where our data could possibly have this sort of impact.”
Says Jaya Chakrabarti MBE, CEO of TISCreport,
“TISCreport is the only live platform in existence capable of proving non-compliance of individual financial entities. We’ve built our system to enable procurers to quickly check their supply chains for compliance, partial compliance and non-compliance. Just by uploading their suppliers, buyers can keep their supply chains transparent, and they can do this for free.”
TISCreport tracks websites of all those companies and groups known by the system to be over £36M as well as recording voluntary compliance from organisations below the threshold. More critically, the system automatically alerts companies that are overdue that they need to take action where social media or email contact details are available.
The TISCreport dynamic dataset is continually being updated, and there are now 917 UK public bodies within the system. It is a certified open data provider, free to join and enables an in-depth drill down of the data against shared supply chains via private, secure dashboard. Uniquely, beyond the UK, TISCreport interlocks intelligently with related global legislations focussing on supply chain transparency and tackling modern slavery/human trafficking.
Says Stuart Gallemore, CTO of TISCreport,
“We’re worked hard to create a platform to help organisations fight modern slavery collaboratively, compatible with global technology systems. With critical mass reached on the compliance side we are now looking to join things up quickly with intelligence on the ground that can help real victims of exploitation. We’re integrating rapidly now with numerous related data sets that provide even deeper insights for all our members. The Anti-Slavery Helpline team are on the front foot with their approach to data sharing. These are exciting times!”
As a B-Corp social enterprise, TISCreport funds itself through subscription fees and data services from organisations able to afford the £200 annual fee. 50% of the subscription fee goes directly to anti-slavery charity Unseen, which runs the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline.