Just five months after the Home Office announced “powerful new measures” to tackle modern slavery risks in the UK’s supply chains, it has emerged that frontline healthcare workers are using medical gloves manufactured by Malaysian firm Brightway Holdings.
The government continued to source personal protective equipment from companies facing modern slavery allegations, despite promises to crack down on suppliers accused of labour abuses, The Independent can reveal.
The company, one of the world’s largest rubber gloves manufacturers, is being investigated by Malaysia’s labour department regarding claims that hundreds of its workers were forced to live in metal shipping containers in squalid conditions.
Following a raid on the accommodation last December, the country’s human resources minister said: “This looks like modern slavery.” Photos from the sting operation have been shared with The Independent and show rows of cramped beds stacked on top of one another within the containers.
Brightway is facing 30 charges and a fine over the failure to comply with housing standards for workers. It said the workers had been housed in hostels, acknowledged there was “congestion” and said it was improving employee living conditions.
The Independent understands that a number of major countries, including within North America, are now considering banning products made by the company.
Despite the indications of labour abuse, medical gloves manufactured by Brightway have recently been supplied to a least one NHS hospital in the south of England, and there are fears these supplies have been widely circulated throughout the country.
A source at the hospital told The Independent that a large consignment was delivered at the end of February. “There’ll be thousands of Brightway gloves in circulation throughout the wards,” the source said. “There’s loads of boxes. We had a whole load.”
In one photo taken from the hospital’s storeroom, a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) contract code can be seen on a Brightway-branded box. Dating shows that the gloves were made in November last year, and it’s believed they were delivered to Britain in December or early January.
Other gloves provided by Supermax, another Malaysian supplier accused of labour abuses, are also being stocked by the same south England hospital.
Employees at the company have previously claimed to working 12 hours per day, for up to 29 days without a rest, and compared one of Supermax’s factories to “a prison.” The firm denies these allegations, saying it operates in accordance with Malaysian law.
A number of glove manufacturers in Malaysia have been linked to the illegal recruitment of impoverished migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal, with accusations they have been forced to live and work in appalling conditions.
Some have been accused of confiscating workers’ passports, leaving them vulnerable to debt bondage, where they are forced to pay off a loan that can never ultimately be repaid.
NHS insiders say that the global rush for gloves and masks at the start of the pandemic – which saw prices rise by more than 1,000 per cent in some cases – led to confusion, miscommunication and panic within the DHSC’s rapidly assembled PPE channel, with officials racing to obtain whatever supplies they could, regardless of where they came from.
With procurement and supply controlled by this centralised unit, it’s likely that the Brightway gloves have been distributed to other hospitals across England. “These supplies have come through the DHSC mechanism, so I’m sure this has happened elsewhere,” the source said. “I understand they’ve got huge warehouses stocked with this stuff.”
In response, the DHSC said it had asked all glove suppliers to undertake a modern slavery assessment, and that those companies found to be in breach of the NHS’s Labour Standards Assurance System (LSAS) – which seeks to ensure good work practices among suppliers – would be removed from the UK’s supply chain frameworks.
In September, the government said that public bodies which have a budget of £36 million or more, including local authorities in England and Wales, will be required to regularly report on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains.
Addressing how the Brightway gloves ended up in the NHS, the DHSC said they had been supplied through intermediary companies, which had obtained the PPE before selling it on to the government. The contract through which the gloves were sourced has since ended, the DHSC added.
The department refused to provide any further information on the contract, how much of the taxpayer’s money had been spent on it and which suppliers were ultimately responsible for providing the Brightway stock.
The government is required by law to publish a “contract award notice” within 30 days of granting any contract for public goods or services worth more than £120,000.
