The Bishop of Chester spoke in a debate on a report on modern slavery on 4th September 2026, highlighting the importance of public awareness and the need to also consider the factor of poverty:
The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, I join others in welcoming the Minister to his seat. I hope that he will not mind my sharing that, before his introduction yesterday, we were chuckling that wandering about this place for the first time felt a bit like wandering around Hogwarts. My hope, if I may say so, is that he will fight as passionately for justice as the heroes of those stories.
I am also not alone in welcoming this report wholeheartedly. I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his colleagues for the extraordinarily good and profound work that has been done here. I am proud to be part of a nation that, 10 years ago, introduced—for the first time anywhere in the world, I believe—ground-breaking legislation. However, we have not gone far enough. This matters, morally, legally, economically and in terms of human rights. I suspect—to think of my day job—that I am preaching to choir in terms of the moral case for this. We have only to glimpse the basics of forced labour to see that this is not good enough. Although that is part of the problem: we do not glimpse it, and we do not have the public outrage that we need.
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