BBC Panorama accuses Boohoo of breaking promises
Photo by J Williams on Unsplash. Black and white photo of sewing machine stitching denim.
Last night an exposé by BBC Panorama aired probing the practices of fast-fashion giant Boohoo, who last year made a reported £1.7bn worth of sales. The majority of the filming occurred in their Manchester headquarters, where journalist Emma Lowther spent 10 weeks.
The evidence garnered showed increasing pressure to cut prices in order to save money and the unscrupulous practice of amending prices after the stock had already been made. Lowther exposed a number of occasions where suppliers were left out of pocket due to discounts being applied which were not initially agreed.
During a staff meeting, the undercover investigation highlighted that new orders would not be signed off until the Executive Chairman of Boohoo, Mahmud Kamani, approved it first, only pressuring staff further.
In January last year, Boohoo opened its flagship factory in Leicester called Thurmaston Lane. This was promoted as a UK manufacturing centre of excellence in the UK and was part of their ‘Agenda for Change’ Programme. This came about after Alison Levitt KC found allegations of unsafe working conditions and workers being paid under the national minimum wage to be "substantially true".
But, while Lowther worked at Boohoo's head office, she discovered those public statements about Thurmaston Lane didn't always match what was happening. In fact, Boohoo’s lawyers stated that Thurmaston Lane only makes 1% of all Boohoo’s garments and four factories in Leicester (amongst others overseas) were actually servicing these orders.
Secret filming of Boohoo’s supplier, MM Leicester Clothing Ltd, which made more than 70,000 Boohoo garments between January and June 2023, highlighted that staff were not allowed to leave until orders were completed.
Dominique Muller, UK Policy Lead at Labour Behind the Label, told us:
“The Panorama programme exposed what suppliers and workers have been telling us for years – that poor working conditions and wage theft are not solely because of supplier exploitation, but come directly as a result of fashion brands exploitative bullying and unethical purchasing practices.
“It is clear that the fast-fashion industry model is based on the exploitation of supply-chain workers in order to extract as much profit as possible for fashion brands and their owners.
“This is not just an issue for Boohoo but is found throughout the fashion industry, in the UK and everywhere garments are manufactured.”
A Spokesperson for Boohoo said:
“Boohoo has not shied away from dealing with the problems of the past and we have invested significant time, effort and resource into driving positive change across every aspect of our business and supply chain.
“Alison Levitt KC conducted an independent review of our supply chain and made a number of recommendations to improve working conditions and transparency. With oversight from Sir Brian Leveson PC, we have implemented every one of these recommendations including improving corporate governance, strengthening the ethical and compliance obligations on those wishing to supply Boohoo, regularly publishing our full list of approved global manufacturers, responsibly exiting from relationships with suppliers where standards are found to have fallen short, supplementing audit processes with regular unannounced checks and more. The action we’ve taken has already delivered significant change and we will continue to deliver on the commitments we’ve made.”
Our action
At Fashion Roundtable, we regularly advocate for localised ways of working. Our research suggests that there is a growing body of evidence which highlights that valuing localised ways of working within the craft and textiles sector, can allow for power to be transferred back to local communities — who are most familiar with the infrastructure of their communities and its specific geographical knowledge.
This is an area which we will be exploring next week in our capacity as Secretariat of the Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion All-Party Parliamentary Group under the question, ‘Can localism support due diligence and greater transparency in the fashion sector?’
This is by invitation only, please get in touch if this is of interest: meg.pirie@fashionroundtable.co.uk