THE London Stock Exchange has hosted the launch of an initiative that calls on investors to find the victims of modern-day slavery within their supply chains and support their rehabilitation.

The initiative “Find It, Fix It, Prevent It” was launched on Tuesday by the CCLA, a charity fund manager with £10 billion of assets under management on behalf of charities, religious organisations, and the public sector.

It refers to estimates that the UK imports more than £14 billion goods worth annually which are “very likely to have incorporated slave labour in their production”. Despite the UK Modern Slavery Act’s coming into force in 2015, “few companies have made significant progress on tackling this issue,” it says (News, 11 May 2018).

The initiative seeks to build a coalition of investors able to “engage with companies in their portfolios to develop better policies, processes, and procedures for identifying then addressing modern slavery in their supply chains” over the next three years. An annual progress statement will be published.

“We believe that slavery exists somewhere in the supply chain of nearly every company,” the head of ethical and responsible investment at CCLA, James Corah, said.