Mike Lynch's superyacht set to be brought to town where prosecutors are based

Seven people died when the Bayesian sank off Sicily on August 19 including billionaire Mr Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18.
Salvage crews spent Saturday raising the 56-metre (184ft) yacht above the water using one of Europe's most powerful sea cranes near the fishing town of Porticello.
They said that on Sunday the vessel will be taken to Termini Imerese, a town around 20km away, where prosecutors investigating the sinking are based.
Italian prosecutors previously said raising and examining the yacht for evidence would provide key information for its investigation into possible charges of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.
The vessel was originally expected to be raised last month but salvage efforts were delayed after a diver died during underwater work on May 9, prompting greater use of remote-controlled equipment.
About 70 specialist personnel had been mobilised to Porticello from across Europe to work on the recovery operation, which began last month.
Inquest proceedings in the UK are looking at the deaths of Mr Lynch and his daughter, as well as Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, 71, who were all British nationals.
Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, were rescued.
Mr Lynch and his daughter were said to have lived in the vicinity of London and the Bloomers lived in Sevenoaks, Kent.

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The Herald Scotland

2 hours ago

• The Herald Scotland

Kincora horror: MI5, Mountbatten and sex abuse of boys during Troubles

The Belfast care home for boys was the site of a notorious paedophile ring. The central figure was a loyalist paramilitary called William McGrath. He was a house master at Kincora as well as an agent for the British intelligence service MI5. Moore, an award-winning BBC investigative journalist, has just published a new book alleging that MI5 colluded in the rape of children from the Kincora home as part of a long-running intelligence operation. He has also interviewed former Kincora residents who say they were sexually abused by Lord Mountbatten, the close relative of the royal family. Moore met with The Herald on Sunday to discuss his new book 'Kincora Britain's Shame: Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover-Up'. (Image: Chris Moore, an award-winning BBC investigative journalist) One hour before the meeting, news emerged that a victim of abuse at Kincora, Garry Hoy, now aged 63, had received an undisclosed settlement after claims that paedophile house master William McGrath was protected from prosecution due to being an MI5 agent. Moore says the finding has huge significance as it is an effective admission by the government for the first time that McGrath was an agent of the British state while carrying out his crimes. At least 29 boys were abused at Kincora from the day it opened in 1958 to 1980, when McGrath and two other staff 'wardens', Raymond Semple and Joseph Mains, were jailed. McGrath received just four years. McGrath – a prominent member of the Orange Order and an evangelical preacher – was a leading far-right loyalist who had set up his own paramilitary organisation called Tara. He was also linked to powerful unionist politicians like Reverend Ian Paisley. Moore says British security sources told him that 'at the time intelligence on the Protestant community stretched to a number of cards in a shoebox'. He explains that at the start of the conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, 'the British had no real intelligence on Protestant paramilitaries. They wanted to get on top of that. They also wanted to know which unionist politicians were allied to the men with guns'. Evidence of McGrath's involvement with MI5 first emerged, according to Moore, in 1975, when a British military intelligence officer called Captain Brian Gemmell came across reference to McGrath in army files. Perversion Gemmell, who Moore interviewed, spoke to a source in Tara who suggested McGrath was working for MI5. Gemmell also uncovered claims of McGrath's 'sexual perversions'. Moore says that Gemmell became 'worried about the safety of the children at Kincora and wanted his intelligence report about the potential sexual abuse danger McGrath posed to underage boys to be given to the police'. However, MI5's chief in Northern Ireland is said to have summoned Gemmell. Moore quotes Gemmell claiming: 'He was rude to me. He told me that the kind of information that I submitted was not proper intelligence, that we had nothing.' Gemmell was told to 'drop the investigation into Tara'. (Image: Chris Moore's revelatory new book on the scandal) Although married, McGrath was homosexual. Moore says of MI5: 'If they could find a means of putting pressure on individuals who were from the unionist community, if they were homosexual, that would be a nice bit of leverage that they could use to make sure that person would comply with what MI5 wanted.' Moore says the notion that MI5 did not know that McGrath was committing sexual offences against children is 'difficult to believe'. He cites a report from the Irish desk of MI5 dated April 14, 1972, under the heading 'Extreme Protestants', in which it is stated that McGrath 'had been accused of assaulting small boys'. Tara was involved in smuggling arms from apartheid South Africa into Northern Ireland via The Netherlands. One of the Kincora victims who Moore interviewed, Richard Kerr, explained how he was raped from the age of eight. He told of being taken to bars in Belfast where he was abused by men. 'It's grim beyond belief,' Moore adds. McGrath was a sexual sadist who inflicted extreme violence on the children he abused. One victim told Moore how he was left bleeding and crying after being 'brutally raped' by McGrath. The victim has since been awarded compensation from the authorities. Kincora, Moore believes, was 'part of a much larger operation to secure information about what was going on in the loyalist community, what the connections were between unionist parties and loyalist gunmen'. In 1975, Moore explains, 'allegations by a young teenager that he was being sexually abused' eventually led detectives to start looking into Kincora. A police officer was tasked with surveillance. 'He took pictures of men going in and out. He was able to establish through car registration numbers the identity of some of the men – for example, two Justices of the Peace. 'He saw two police constables going in. These men were going in and out of Kincora at a time when they had no reason to be there. He saw businessmen going in and, most important of all, he saw two officials from the Northern Ireland Office.' It would later emerge that 'they were also MI5'. Postings at the Northern Ireland Office were used as cover for MI5 officers stationed in Northern Ireland, Moore explains. Surveillance MOORE has interviewed the police officer who carried out the surveillance. The officer was later told by his superiors to 'forget Kincora. That's what he did because he followed orders. At the same time across the city, the army intelligence officer Brian Gemmell was asking MI5 'should we not get the police to go in and investigate'. He too was told, forget about Kincora'. Had the police been instructed to do their job properly in 1975, Moore believes, 'five years of sexual horror and torture would have been removed for the boys in Kincora'. It's important to note that action on Kincora was only taken after reporters in Ireland brought the issue to public attention in 1980. (Image: Kincora abuse survivor Gary Hoy outside the former boys' home) Once the allegations emerged, McGrath and the two other 'house wardens' were charged and eventually prosecuted and jailed. Joseph Mains received six years, and Raymond Semple five – both longer terms than McGrath, who died in 1991. After the three were jailed, the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland Jim Prior began moves for a public inquiry. However, says Moore, 'MI5 was fiercely opposed to the plan'. Moore says that documentation shows that MI5's legal adviser 'was fighting a battle on two fronts… one attempting to press the government to drop its plans for a powerful judicial inquiry into Kincora, and the other justifying why MI5 officers should not be interviewed by police even if they are aware of criminality'. A note by MI5's legal adviser, dated May 9, 1983, detailing a meeting with the Home Office legal department, read: 'I explained that as a result of stupid investigations by the RUC [Northern Ireland's then police force], we now had an interest in the Kincora inquiry… An inquiry with the power to call witnesses could cause problems.' An internal MI5 memo by its legal adviser read: 'If terms of reference were too wide one might well find the Tribunal having to examine the conduct of intelligence operations in Northern Ireland… The consequences of this would not be confined to the operation of the intelligence services but might well expose operations whose purpose was to obtain intelligence about the activities of prominent Protestant politicians.' Moore adds: 'This is how MI5 went about convincing Margaret Thatcher's government to ignore Prior's plans to have a proper judicial inquiry. And it appeared to work. 'The consequence was a watered-down public inquiry in which [a retired English judge] was given very narrow terms of reference restricting him to social care matters and systemic failures in the social services. MI5 won the day and… the inquiry was kept safely away from other state issues linked to Kincora that needed to be exposed and investigated.' He adds: 'MI5 and the British government worked together to make sure the people of Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales had no idea what was going on. The British government protected MI5. But the problem with protecting MI5 is that there are enough people who know the truth and are prepared to take a risk to tell it.' Moore says that a telex sent in June 1982 by a very senior MI5 officer referred to the possibility of creating 'false files' in anticipation of lines of inquiry which police might seek to follow in subsequent investigations. Read more Neil Mackay: Gangsters are terrorising Scotland, but do our politicians care? Neil Mackay: Nazi salutes and why you should believe the evidence of your own eyes Neil Mackay: English nationalism will be the death of the union Neil Mackay: We're not an island of strangers. But I'm now a stranger in my own land Sacrificed MOORE says the revelation meant 'it's difficult to believe a single word MI5 says. This shows they were embarrassed. One has to suspect the embarrassment of the intelligence service could indicate that they knew boys were being raped and sexually abused, but chose to put national security and the integrity of the state above the integrity of young men from broken homes or who had lost parents'. He adds: 'They could be the sacrificial lambs so that we as a nation could keep up with what was going on in the loyalist community. It beggars belief.' Moore says the Northern Ireland Office destroyed files linked to Kincora. 'They said these files were related to newspaper coverage of Kincora. I don't believe that. I think there were other motives.' He notes that existing Kincora files have been 'locked away' until 2065, or even in some cases to 2085. 'I can't get over this,' says Moore. 'It's crazy. Maybe I'm being cynical but by the year 2085, nobody is going to be alive to remember. So another secret goes away.' Perhaps the most shocking claims made in connection to Kincora focus on Lord Mountbatten, a close member of the royal family circle, great-uncle to King Charles, former admiral of the fleet, and the last Viceroy of India. (Image: Lord Louis Mountbatten) In total, says Moore, allegations have been made by five men that they were sexually abused by Mountbatten as boys – three were Kincora residents. Moore has interviewed three of the alleged victims. The testimony of two appear in the book. He was contacted by a third after the book had been written, so could not include his claims in time for publication. Moore says he 'struggled to believe' the claims against Mountbatten until he met a man called Arthur Smyth, who he interviewed in Australia. As a child, Smyth's family lived in 'abject poverty', before finally collapsing in 1977. A judge told Smyth: 'I'm going to put you in care somewhere that you're going to be safe.' He was sent to Kincora, aged 11. At first, Moore says, Arthur loved the home, where he got 'three meals a day and could play in the garden. His joy came to an end the day he was brutally raped by McGrath'. Smyth had been separated from his sister and desperately wanted to see her again. McGrath told him to comply with his orders or he would never be reunited with her. 'It was particularly cruel,' says Moore. 'I hate any form of cruelty.' As the abuse continued, Smyth was later introduced to a man who McGrath called 'Dickie'. McGrath told Smyth 'to do the same for the man as you do for me'. He was ordered to undress and 'was then raped by this man Dickie, he says', Moore explains. 'This happened a second time in a week.' Smyth told Moore that he'd bottled up the truth for decades but could no longer hide what happened after his grandchildren were born. 'I tell my kids and grandkids to be honest. If something is bothering you, stand up for your rights – I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't stand up for my rights,' Smyth said. Assassination It was only when Smyth saw TV news reporting the assassination of Mountbatten by the IRA that he realised it was the same man who had raped him. Mountbatten was killed when Republican terrorists planted a bomb on his boat at his Irish estate. Moore also interviewed Richard Kerr, another survivor, who now lives in America. Kerr agreed to be 'interviewed openly on camera' for a BBC investigation. 'What he revealed was extremely significant. For the first time in public, a former Kincora resident let it be known that some boys were taken out of the hostel to provide sexual services to men.' Kerr told Moore that he was taken to a house in Belfast where he was abused by a soldier. Kerr was also abused at hotels, including at the seaside resort Portrush and at the famous Europa Hotel in Belfast, where he said he was 'plied with drinks'. (Image: Richard Kerr, who was just eight when he was first sexually assaulted) Kerr arrived at Kincora, aged 14, in 1975. He told Moore that he and another Kincora boy, Stephen Waring – who would later kill himself – were driven to Mountbatten's home called Classiebawn Castle near Mullaghmore in County Sligo in the Irish Republic. The man in charge of Kincora, warden Joe Mains, drove the boys as far as Fermanagh on the Northern Ireland side of the border. Mains was instrumental in the paedophile ring being run out of Kincora, Kerr explained to Moore. 'Joe took our pictures to show to his clients so that they could see his boys at a glance and pick out the boy they wanted. These pictures were taken when we were naked.' Richard Kerr, Moore says, claims that he and Stephen Waring 'were requested' by Mountbatten 'to attend him at his home'. Mains drove to a hotel car park in Fermanagh where two men arrived and drove them to Classiebawn. 'They were taken individually from a guest reception room to the boathouse where they were sexually assaulted and then returned,' Moore claims. Back in Belfast, it emerged that Stephen Waring knew who the assailant was while Kerr 'had no idea until he told me… I just knew he was just another high-profile 'client' like the businessmen, politicians, doctors and lawyers'. On August 9, 1977, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh travelled to Northern Ireland for a two-day visit for the Jubilee celebrations. Moore says: 'The diaries of Lord Mountbatten reveal that he and others in his party travelled north from Classiebawn on August 7 to stay for three nights.' Moore also met with the author and historian Andrew Lownie who wrote a book on Mountbatten. In 2019, the Garda [Ireland's police service] refused Lownie's request to view security logs of Northern Ireland-registered cars which travelled between Belfast and Classiebawn. Trafficking LOWNIE wanted to access the files to pursue inquiries into the trafficking of boys from Kincora to Mountbatten. Lownie revealed recently released FBI files which alleged American intelligence had information that Mountbatten was a paedophile. Lownie says he spoke to boys who had been trafficked to Mountbatten including a boy known as Sean from Kincora, and a boy called Amal who was allegedly trafficked from London to Sligo. Richard Kerr's friend Stephen Waring committed suicide shortly after he was allegedly abused by Mountbatten. He absconded from Northern Ireland, but was picked up by police and put back on a ferry to Belfast. 'Waring was reported as having jumped overboard midway. His body was never recovered,' Moore says. Richard Kerr, however, 'did not believe his friend Stephen would end his life like that, and Stephen's death and the manner of it spooked him'. In addition to Richard Kerr and Arthur Smyth, Moore interviewed a 'third man living in the Republic of Ireland' after he finished writing the book. He told Moore that he had also allegedly been 'a survivor of abuse' by Mountbatten. This man had not been in Kincora as a boy. 'His abuse took place in London by Mountbatten,' Moore adds. 'There are at least five people who claim they were sexually abused by Mountbatten,' Moore says. 'Mountbatten is dead. I cannot stand over whether he was an abuser or not, but I have to say, I've spoken to three people who claim they were sexually assaulted by Mountbatten. I think that's good enough to raise questions about his conduct.' Another victim Moore interviewed, Clint Massey, said 'he heard English voices at Kincora'. Massey is now dead. But like Massey, Arthur Smyth also claimed he heard English voices downstairs on a night he says he was drugged, tied up and abused. Moore says that Britain's secret service was established in part to 'protect the monarchy'. He asks: 'Is that still going on today? Is that what happened with Mountbatten?' (Image: Joe Mains ran Kincora from 1958 to 1980) Moore has chosen not to name many of the high-profile public figures who were identified to him as paedophiles who abused boys at Kincora as he has not yet got enough evidence on them through multiple sourcing as he has with Mountbatten. Some are dead, some are still alive. Many are known to the public. 'They were other important people in the establishment,' he says. 'However, I cannot stand over any of the claims yet. I would hate to allow someone who is a child abuser to sue me, so I've been very careful.' The key question for Moore is whether MI5 'turned a blind eye in order to maintain a flow of intelligence deemed too important to lose, despite the heinous actions of its agents'. Moore says that he had a discussion over lunch once with the former chief constable of the RUC Sir John Hermon. 'I put it to him that McGrath was an agent of MI5. He said, 'oh no, that can't be because I would have known about it.' However, a year later, Hermon met with Moore and said: 'I owe you an apology because I've checked. McGrath was working with MI5.' Paisley ANOTHEr high-ranking police officer who investigated Kincora once told Moore to 'keep going' with his investigations as he was 'annoying the right people – in London. He was talking about MI5. He told me that MI5 had obstructed his investigations'. A source for Moore in the Northern Ireland Office unexpectedly cut contact with him at one point after he started asking questions about MI5. When Moore was finally able to ask his source why he'd cut contact, the senior civil servant told him that an 'MI5 officer took him into a room and suggested that he break all contact with me and stop asking dumb questions if he wanted to keep his job and pension'. Another source in the RUC cut contact with Moore as well. The policeman's boss had told the officer he was aware he was speaking to Moore. A BBC executive, Moore claims, had given information on the contact between Moore and the policeman to a high-ranking officer. 'That horrified me,' says Moore. On another occasion, Moore learned that a BBC executive had also leaked that he was in possession of the identities of 'four under-secretaries' from the British government who were suspected of involvement in Kincora. 'Someone in the BBC was leaking to the security service,' Moore claims. Moore later discovered that an MI5 officer who had been photographed going into Kincora in the 1970s had been fined for exposing himself at a railway station in London. McGrath had links to one of the highest-profile politicians in Northern Ireland's history, Ian Paisley. McGrath, says Moore, had a 'close association' with Paisley. He also had links to James Molyneaux, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, and senior figures in the Orange Order. In 1982, as journalists began asking questions about Paisley's links to McGrath, Paisley staged a pre-emptive press conference, Moore explains. 'It was a tactic he had used successfully in the past: identify an issue with potential for causing embarrassment and stage a loud media event with theatrical bluster in order to intimidate the press.' Two Irish journalists, Moore explains, had spoken to a woman who was a missionary in Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church. She had claimed that, prior to 1980, she had alerted Paisley to 'McGrath's corrupting sexual influence on young men attending evangelical meetings'. Before the story could be published, Paisley staged a press conference at his church. 'When asked at this conference how well he knew McGrath, Paisley tried to distance himself by saying he 'knew of him when he ran a place called Faith House'… That suggested his knowledge of McGrath began and ended in the 1950s. This was simply untrue.' (Image: Reverend Ian Paisley)Lies MOORE says that McGrath's family were 'members of Paisley's Martyrs Memorial Church. Moreover, I would later discover that he had officiated at the marriages of two of McGrath's children some years earlier, something he conveniently appeared to have forgotten. Nor did he seem to recall how McGrath had once accompanied him to a meeting with Northern Ireland prime minister James Chichester-Clark'. Moore adds: 'Paisley sat in that news conference and told us lies – f*****g porkies.' Today, Kincora no longer exists. It was knocked down shortly before Moore started writing his book. Anyone who lived through the Troubles, though, knows its name. The scandal haunts memories. However, Moore worries that as time passes and the conflict becomes history, what happened at Kincora may be forgotten. 'There are young people nowadays who don't know about Kincora,' he says, 'or the significance of Kincora, the lies and obfuscation of MI5 and the British government. 'Kincora tells you that MI5 is above democracy, it is above democratic rule. They do what they want, that's clear from the secret state documents which show how they influenced the Conservative government away from allowing any investigation of MI5 and their relationship with Kincora. 'Such an inquiry would have proved that the residents of Kincora were let down time after time. It shows you the lengths to which the mother of all parliaments will go to keep itself clean from the sexual assault of children which lies at the heart of this all. 'Society failed Kincora's boys. They were poor and they were vulnerable. It's deplorable that the state, and those responsible for protecting the state, should lose all integrity and allow young boys to be raped and go through mental torture, life-changing events that will never leave them. 'In return for their squalid little intelligence operation, MI5 got to listen in to what politicians on the unionist side were doing with loyalist paramilitaries. It's disgusting.' MI5, Moore says, 'has questions to answer', not just about running McGrath as an agent, and allegations of covering up what was going on at Kincora, but also whether any of its officers offended against children. There's another strand of this story which has yet to be properly aired and which Moore is investigating: the so-called Lost Boys of Belfast. Four boys vanished in Belfast in the late 1960s and early 1970s and were 'never seen again'. The dismembered body of a fifth boy was found in the River Lagan. One man who Moore interviewed said that, in 1973, he was a child playing in the street in Belfast when McGrath tried to snatch him. 'He managed to get away,' says Moore, 'but McGrath may well have been the man who abducted some of these boys.' Moore says all he ever wanted to do over the 45 years he's spent investigating this horrific case was 'highlight the suffering of children' and attempt to get justice for them. Reporting on such terrible events took its toll on him, though. Thirty years ago, as Moore was covering another story of sexual abuse, this time an investigation into a notorious paedophile priest, he realised he needed therapy. 'I stopped covering the Kincora story for a time,' he says, 'but the need to tell the truth for the survivors just kept dragging me back.'

New Statesman​

2 hours ago

• New Statesman​

Grooming gangs, social cohesion and hard truths

Getty Images Trust in the institutions that are meant to protect us is built slowly but shattered quickly. Over the past decade, report after report has revealed the same shocking story: that thousands of vulnerable girls were groomed and abused by gangs while the institutions charged with their safety looked the other way. Baroness Casey's investigation, which prompted the PM's U-turn on a new statutory inquiry, is just the latest in a series of findings that lay bare the scale of that betrayal. She describes a 'collective failure' on the part of the British state. Victims were failed not once but repeatedly. This sustained failure by governments and authorities to confront the problem failed victims first and foremost, but the consequences have reverberated across society. Part of the responsibility for that failure must lie with a culture that chose to prioritise social cohesion and community relations over justice for victims and punishment of perpetrators. Social cohesion is something we should all care about – society cannot function without it – trust in neighbours, communities and government is the backbone of a civilised society and last summer's unrest was a stark reminder of how fragile social cohesion can be, and how quickly it can unravel. But community relations should never have been a rationale to prevent proper investigation of the gangs – and the refusal to tackle the issues that enabled grooming, with clarity and honesty, should also provide a stark warning that in fact community cohesion can only be preserved by confronting uncomfortable truths head-on, however difficult that may seem. Going back to August 2014, the Jay Report revealed not only the extent of abuse in Rotherham but also highlighted a critical missed opportunity: the failure of authorities to work openly and honestly with the communities involved. Professor Alexis Jay noted in her report that 'throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue.' Had the authorities acknowledged who was perpetrating these crimes and engaged with the communities concerned openly and frankly, the vast majority of whom were as horrified by the actions of some Pakistani men as everyone else, we might have built stronger communities rather than fracturing them. After all, what could be more corrosive to public trust than either deliberate obfuscation or wilful ignorance in tackling one of the most universally condemned crimes imaginable, an approach that was at least partly motivated by avoiding hard truths about the preponderance of offenders from a particular community. In focus groups where the gangs operated this sense of anger and mistrust is palpable. People speak with deep frustration about how vulnerable working-class girls from their communities were ignored, dismissed, or 'adultified' by those meant to protect them. For some, this confirmed the belief that their communities simply didn't matter to the authorities – and perpetrators did. And when these concerns are dismissed as politically motivated or shut down in the name of political correctness, they don't go away. Resentment doesn't fade when it's ignored. It festers. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This breakdown of trust doesn't stop there. Valid concerns, left unaddressed, feed real conspiracy theories. It allows the conversation to be dominated by those who want to use it to sow division, as Louise Casey herself says the alternative with 'the racists is giving them more ammunition'. In the long term, attempts to avoid confronting issues to prevent inflaming community tensions are toxic to the very cohesion they aim to protect. The task now for the Government is to rebuild trust. Time will tell whether the measures announced by the Home Secretary help to do this, but it is a crucial first step that the failures of the British state and the underlying factors are being discussed openly in Parliament. The Government's challenge is convincing the public that truth and justice will be fully pursued, and that nothing like this can happen again. In practice, this must also mean putting an end to a type of politics that dismisses real concerns because we don't 'trust the motives' of those raising them. Most of those campaigning on grooming gangs have done so out of genuine concern for the victims and justice; others have done so for political or prejudiced reasons – but ultimately the Government should have been guided by doing what was right for victims and their communities – regardless of whether they agreed with some of where the calls came from. The challenge for other politicians is to avoid reducing this into an opportunity for political point-scoring. For the public this isn't about one party or another – and our polling makes abundantly clear they see this as failure shared across successive governments. The truth is an end in itself, and above all, we owe it to the victims to, as Casey puts it, 'grasp this as a society.' But beyond justice for the victims, we should take from this a lesson that social trust depends on pursuing the truth, no matter how much it hurts or what we might find. Bad things grow in the dark , and sunlight is an incredibly effective disinfectant. The darker the issue, the more sunlight is needed. [See also: Keir Starmer's grooming gang cowardice] Related

The National

3 hours ago

• The National

Fears US-UK trade deal 'may open door to food made with slave labour'

Under terms reaffirmed by the UK and US governments on Tuesday, up to 13,000 metric tonnes of American beef can be imported into Britain tariff-free each year. Though the Labour Government has said this US beef will meet current UK food safety standards – so it will not be hormone-treated – it will not take an active hand in ensuring that goods produced with forced labour do not enter the UK, instead leaving it up to individual companies. However, Justine Carter, the director of strategy at the influential anti-slavery charity Unseen, said that although there were provisions in place to compel companies to comply with UK modern slavery regulations, punishments had 'never' been levied. READ MORE: Record high modern slavery referrals 'shows shocking scale' of issue in UK Last year in the US, AP published a two-year investigation which found that food produced with prison labour was "on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country' and had also been exported abroad – including to 'countries that have had products blocked from entering the US for using forced or prison labour'. According to conventions from the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO), forced labour is all work extracted under a threat of penalty and not undertaken voluntarily. While there is an exemption for labour imposed as a penalty following a court conviction, using that labour for economic benefit is prohibited. Prisoners at sites including Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary on the site of a former slave plantation, reported being beaten if they refused to work the fields, or being given toilet paper and menstrual pads in lieu of pay. AP further reported that forced-labour goods entered 'intricate, invisible webs' of supply chains which made it near-impossible to trace them back to their prison origin. The outlet had to resort to literally following trucks of cows from prisons in order to establish where their meat ended up. Beef produced with forced or prison labour was found to be widespread in the US supply chainThe lack of transparency in the US supply chain, and poor enforcement of anti-slavery regulations in the UK, raise fears that meat produced using forced labour could enter British supermarkets – as was recently found to have happened with China-produced tomatoes. Carter – who led the development of the Modern Slavery Act during her time working as a policy advisor in the Home Office – said that prison labour 'can tip into modern slavery, where inmates really have no choice around doing the work and there's no means for them to refuse to do the work without receiving some kind of penalty'. 'It's dependent on the context, on the conditions that they're working in, and really on the kind of legal framework,' she added, suggesting that such legal complexities mean it may be possible for prison-produced beef to enter the UK legally. Her charity Unseen notes that the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act places 'obligations on companies with a turnover of £36 million or more to publish what they are doing to ensure their business and supply chains are free from slavery'. However, as of July 2022, some 5551 UK companies had failed to do so without any consequence. READ MORE: Labour set to bin anti-slavery policy in GB Energy Bill Carter said that while the exact figure 'goes up and down' and was likely now closer to 4000, that is 'the sad reality'. 'The penalty is a bit convoluted,' she went on. 'The Home Secretary has to take an injunction out on a business that's failed to comply, and if they then continue to fail to comply, the court could award a fine, an unlimited fine, but that process has never been gone through. 'So although we know there are all these cases – and we've raised these with the Home Office – no action has been taken.' Carter pointed to legislation developments abroad, including in Canada, Australia, France, and the EU's 2024 Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. She said these laws were 'very much looking at financial penalties as a percentage of global turnover etc', adding: 'There's a real push for the UK to follow suit.' The Home Office has never fined a company for failing its modern slavery obligations (Image: Alamy/PA) 'At the moment, [in the UK] we've got businesses who are ticking boxes, who are putting out statements – even if they do put out a statement – and it's just been tweaked from the year before. It's not a real effort to make sure that their supply chains are free from slavery.' Sian Lea, the head of UK and European advocacy at Anti-Slavery International, urged the UK Government to bring in more robust anti-slavery regulations. 'We must all be able to purchase food without fear that they have been sourced and produced with forced labour,' she told the Sunday National. 'While the UK Government expects UK companies to do everything in their power to remove forced labour from their supply chains, there are no laws that compel them to do that. 'Through this trade deal [with the US], the UK Government has the opportunity to drive better business practices and more adequately address forced labour risks. READ MORE: Commissioner: Modern slavery no longer Home Office priority 'With import controls, the UK could ensure that products being imported from anywhere are not reliant on forced labour. And this should be complemented by a due diligence law which requires UK companies to prevent harm in their supply chains.' Carter said that a drive to push down costs could lead to forced labour entering the supply chain, and urged companies to be diligent. 'If you're pressing down on cost, time, quality, to the extent that you know it's going to have some implication down the supply chain, then you can only expect to be called out on that when forced labour is found,' she said. 'I've always talked about legislation being a bit of a blunt instrument because it does provide the framework, but the framework has to be strong, it has to be resilient, it has to be robust – and then there has to be also an enforcement of that.' READ MORE: MP hits outs at supermarkets selling products linked to slave labour 'Unfortunately, when you're in these times of austerity when people are struggling, high interest rates, high costs of food, etc, you know people cut corners, consumers are less interested in where it's come from and how it's arrived on the shelf and more interested in the price. 'This is why maybe the onus is put on businesses a bit. There's almost an expectation that as a consumer, I'm expecting that business to have done its due diligence.' A UK Government spokesperson said: 'No company in the UK should have forced labour in its supply chain and we expect UK businesses to do everything in their power to remove any instances of forced labour from their supply chains. Any evidence of businesses not doing so is highly concerning. "British farmers produce some of the best food in the world and this is a great deal as we have opened up access to a huge American market, but without any weakening of UK food standards on imports."