Today is UK Anti-slavery Day, falling within Anti-slavery Week, and I call for a Welsh Government statement on this important issue. Anti-slavery Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness of human trafficking and modern slavery, and to encourage governments, local authorities, companies, charities and individuals to do what they can to address the problem. I thank the 17 Members here who have so far signed the statement of opinion I have tabled regarding this, and I encourage other Members to add their names also.

This recognises that over 40 million people in the world today, and an estimated 136,000 people across the UK, are experiencing modern slavery. This also highlights the new British standard on modern slavery, published by the British Standards Institution—the first of its kind in the world—and encourages the Welsh Government to help raise awareness of the standard and publicise its free availability to all Welsh businesses and organisations. The standard provides organisations with guidance for addressing the risk of modern slavery, including prevention, identification, response, remediation, mitigation and reporting. Speaking at the launch of the Conwy Citizens Advice Tackling Modern Slavery in Ever Changing Times project in March last year, I stated that, sadly, modern slavery is a reality in our country and, in order to tackle this crime, we need partnerships between the statutory agencies and the third sector, protecting the vulnerable, educating all members of the community, supporting survivors, and working towards making Wales a safer place where criminals are not able to exploit others. I call for a Welsh Government statement accordingly.