Combating modern slavery 2018/19

‘Modern Slavery’ is the phrase used to describe the crimes of human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices such as servitude, forced labour, forced or servile marriage, the sale and exploitation of children, and debt bondage. A common thread runs through all of these offences: they involve one person depriving another person of their liberty, in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.

This, our fourth Modern Slavery Statement has been published in accordance with the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015). Section 54 of the MSA requires every organisation with a global annual turnover of £36 million or more, which carries out business (or part of a business) in the UK, to produce a slavery and human trafficking statement for each financial year. The statement should set out the steps a business has taken that year to identify and eradicate modern slavery from its business and its supply chain. Lush’s financial year runs from July to the end of June.

In addition to the UK Modern Slavery Act similar legislation has been introduced in other parts of the world (the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (2010), French Duty of Vigilance Law (2017) and Australian Modern Slavery Bill (2018)) which is an important step in widening the reach and discussions around this important topic.

Publishing a Modern Slavery Statement is a step towards transparency with customers and a businesses wider stakeholder community and can encourage change.

This statement details what Lush is doing to combat the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our own business and in our supply chains, provides an update on the activities and commitments detailed in our previous (third) Modern Slavery Statement and the steps taken during the period covered by the last statement (our financial year July 2018 – June 2019). The statement also outlines our commitments towards mitigating the risk of modern slavery in our supply chain going forward.