Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 9 November 2022.
I thank the Member for his supplementary question, as I absolutely agree with everything he said in terms of the disgusting way in which victims are potentially being scapegoated by the UK Government now, and I share his and his constituents' concerns about the fact that we did have a safeguarding Minister and now it sits under immigration. And conflating the two, I think, is a very dangerous and distressing route to go down. And alongside that, since July, we've seen a procession of different UK Ministers holding the modern slavery brief, and that chaotic churn of Ministers is leading to delays and uncertainty in the development of the new modern slavery strategy for England and Wales. We're concerned that the post of the independent anti-slavery commissioner has remained vacant since back in April. So, I and my colleague Jane Hutt are continuing to press UK Government on this matter, but also working through the Wales anti-slavery leadership group and doing what we can do with the levers we have in Wales to make sure we are supporting people and taking a very different approach. Some people can say it's just words, but we know words have impact, and it's very dangerous and damaging rhetoric, and we're working to do what we can do along with things like our code of ethical procurement and supply chains, working to review that and strengthen it as we move forward.