Methodology

This metric is asking whether the company has published a statement in relation to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, the Australian Act, the Canadian Act, Norwegian Transparency Act, or none of the above. If you can find a relevant statement give the company a "Yes - UK Modern Slavery Act" and/or "Yes - Australian Modern Slavery Act" and/or "Yes - California Transparency in Supply Chains Act" value, etc, and add/cite that statement as a source. There are other metrics which ask questions about whether the company's statement complies with the law and whether it contains certain kinds of information. For this metric, any statement that is intended as a "Modern Slavery Act statement" counts for a "Yes" value.

The UK and Australian governments maintain registries of statements:

Every quarter, Wikirate retrieves as many statements as it can from these registries using semi-automated techinques so you will find many statements waiting to be assessed on Wikirate.

Furthermore the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre maintains an archive of Modern Slavery Act statements.

If the company you are researching does not appear on the registries, try searching the web for terms like "[Company name] modern slavery statement". These statements should be linked to from a company's homepage but this is not always the case.

These statements can be called things like:

  • Modern Slavery Act statement

  • Slavery and Trafficking statement

If you cannot find a relevant statement by the company, and you believe they are required to produce one, add a new "report" source that explains how you searched, and give the company a value of "No - neither".

* Note on choosing the Year of your answer

Read the MSA Statement carefully to find out what year it covers.

When a statement is referring to a Financial Year (FY) ending in Q1 or early Q2, it should be labeled with the previous year. Example:


Statement for FY2018/19 ending in April 2019 = 2018
Statement for FY2018/19 ending in May 2019 (or later) = 2019

 



About

This metric records whether the company produced a statement in accordance with the UK's Modern Slavery Act 2015, Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018, and/or the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act.

Since August 2024, this metric also captures whether the statement in question is used to meet the company's obligations under the Canadian Act (Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act) and the Norwegian Transparency Act.

This metric includes only some of the statements available on the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre's registry of Modern Slavery Act statements - you are encouraged to consult the different available registries directly to find statement that are not yet available on Wikirate.

Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act requires a commercial organisation that has a turnover of over £36 million with operations in the UK to publish a slavery and human trafficking statement each year which sets out the steps it has taken to ensure there is no slavery or trafficking in its supply chains or its own business, or states that it has taken no such steps.