Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me to present to Parliament this interim report on the sustainability of the fashion industry, the 15th report of this Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee. I also thank the dedicated staff and Committee members who, despite the Brexit crisis, continue to work tirelessly to hold the Government to account on environmental protection, and I am delighted to see so many members in their place We launched our inquiry last June to examine the social and environmental impact of fast fashion and the garment industry and to consider what actions consumers, retailers and the Government must take. Our final report will be published next month. The subject of today’s statement is the interim report, which focuses on retailers’ responsibility to ensure they employ people fairly and reduce fashion’s footprint and to ensure that fashion does not literally cost us the earth We heard evidence that fast fashion encouraged the over-purchase, over-consumption and under-utilisation of clothes. This leads to excessive waste. In the UK, we throw 11 million items of clothing worth £140 million into the bin every year. People in this country buy more clothes than people in any other European country: 27 kilos per person a year, or two big suitcases, which is twice what the stylish Italians buy. This is spurred on by retailers selling clothes at pocket money prices—£2 T-shirts, dresses for a fiver—and encouraging consumers constantly to change their wardrobes, to stay on trend, to instagram it and to treat garments as single-use items If retailers are selling their T-shirts for £2, how much are the people making them getting paid? The answer is not enough, and they are sometimes working in terrible conditions. As Livia Firth from Eco-Age said this morning on Radio 4, we wear the stories of the people who make our clothes, and if we wear those stories, we must reflect deeply on the fact that five years ago the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,130 garment workers. It was the biggest industrial accident of the modern age. The victims were mostly young women producing clothes in inhumane conditions and being paid poverty wages to fuel fast fashion on the UK high street Our inquiry has heard that harsh working conditions are not just a problem in Asia and China. We have heard worrying evidence of illegal practices in clothes factories here in the UK, particularly in Leicester, where 10,000 textile workers produce more than 1 million items of clothing a week. One whistleblower told me they saw fire exits padlocked shut. Online retailer Missguided told us that two of its inspectors were manhandled by factory bosses. It raises the question: if that is how factory owners treat their potential customers, what are the conditions being endured by their workers? We heard that workers were working long, gruelling shifts and often earning as little as £3.50 an hour. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs told us that since 2012 more than 90 factories in the UK have been caught in breach of minimum wage regulations, illegally underpaying their workers, and have been forced to pay out £90,000 in wage arrears—an average of £900 per worker. David Metcalf, the director of Labour Market Enforcement, said in his first annual strategy that labour abuses, exploitation and modern slavery were all part of a single continuum of abuse and needed to be tackled holistically Last autumn, we wrote to the UK’s top 10 fashion retailers, four major online retailers and two supermarkets, Tesco and Asda. We asked 16 questions—for example, whether they were signed up to the Waste and Resources Action Programme’s sustainable clothing action plan to reduce their carbon, water and waste footprint or to Act, Collaboration, Transformation, an initiative by the global garment workers union IndustriALL that works towards a living wage for all garment workers through collective bargaining, and about their use of sustainable cotton and recycling. Based on their replies, we have grouped them into three categories: most engaged, moderately engaged and least engaged. Only six of the 16 retailers are signed up to that ACT global trade union initiative. We were pretty shocked to see a group of major household name retailers failing to take action to promote action to protect their workers. Let us take their responses in turn The most engaged retailers were ASOS, M&S, Tesco, Primark and Burberry. They all use organic or sustainable cotton in some of their garments and recycle their materials. They all have in-store take-back schemes or recycling banks. However, the Committee was shocked to hear that Burberry incinerated over £26 million of clothing last year. We welcome its commitment to end this completely unsustainable practice All five of these engaged retailers are members of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which aims to improve conditions for workers globally. The Committee particularly welcomes ASOS becoming the only retailer to sign a global framework agreement with IndustriALL, the global trade union, committing to the highest standards on trade union rights, health and safety, and labour relations. We would like to see many more retailers follow its lead. We believe that freedom of association is far better than company audits at driving up worker protection The moderately engaged retailers were Next, Debenhams, Arcadia Group and Asda. These retailers are the proverbial curate’s egg, taking some steps towards sustainability in the social and environmental spheres, but still falling short. For example, Next does not run take-back schemes for used clothing, saying that it would just be too expensive. Arcadia has one take-back scheme in one Oxford Street store out of its 2,500 UK shops. None was committed to reporting on climate change risk and only Next is taking action to tackle hazardous chemical discharges in its fabrics supply chain Our real concerns involve the least engaged group of retailers. JD Sports, Sports Direct, Amazon UK, TK Maxx, Boohoo and Missguided are clear industry laggards, and Kurt Geiger did not even give us the courtesy of a response. I leave hon. Members to draw their own conclusions about that. None has signed up to WRAP’s sustainable clothing action plan to reduce their carbon, water and waste footprint. Internationally, none has signed the ACT labour rights agreement Amazon was notable in its lack of engagement. It is taking none of the sustainability actions that we asked it about, nor has it signed up to ACT or the Ethical Trading Initiative. Its size, online reach and potential for growth as a fashion retailer mean it must get serious about its responsibilities We also have major concerns about the online retailer Boohoo’s approach to trade unions. When we asked its joint CEO, Carol Kane, about unionisation at its distribution depot in Blackburn, she told us that it would recognise a trade union if there was demand from workers but there was not really any sort of demand. Shortly after that, we got a letter from Mike Aylward, from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers trade union, contesting her evidence. He said that Boohoo "has, over a prolonged period of time refused even the most basic level of engagement with Usdaw and appears hostile to the very idea of recognising a trade union." We recommend that Boohoo engages with USDAW as a priority and stops blocking union recognition and collective bargaining for its UK workers and its workers overseas This interim report shows that the current business model for the UK fashion industry is unsustainable. We are disappointed that so few large retailers and supermarkets are showing leadership. If we are to tackle climate change, cut emissions and reduce fashion’s heavy footprint, these socially exploitative and environmentally damaging practices must end. Retailers must do more. By using this report, customers and consumers can make informed choices about where they choose to spend their money. We know they want to use their spending power wisely. It is time that retailers follow their lead. We will be setting out a blueprint when our full report is published. I commend this report to the House.