Our researcher Heather Lafferty presents a roundup of the week’s fashion and politics news headlines…

Our researcher Heather Lafferty presents a roundup of the week’s fashion and politics news headlines…

Our researcher Heather Lafferty presents a roundup of the week’s fashion and politics news headlines…

Catch up with all the key points from the APPG for Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion’s recent evidence session on Modern Slavery and Supply Chain Transparency.

June 2020 discussions in the UK Parliament have been marked by the urgency of the EU-UK negotiations and future relationship including UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement, EU Free Trade Agreement, the UK Immigration Rules, the merger of Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as well as the “Black Lives Matter” social movement, the need of continuous outstanding measures for economic recovery from Covid-19 crisis, DEFRA regulations for environmental protection against single-use plastics and a potentially new APPG on racial bias.

The Brexit Summit took place virtually on Monday, 15th of June 2020, between the UK PM Boris Johnson and EU counterparties: EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and EU Parliament President David Sassoli to run an assessment of the EU-UK future relationships and agree on the next steps.

According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), since Europe went into lockdown high street retailers have cancelled $2 billion worth of orders (which amounts to 135,516 tonnes of clothing that’s headed for landfill). Due to these cancelled orders an estimated 1 million factory workers in Bangladesh are also out of work, with no government support on offer. Powered by the app MallZee, an Edinburgh-based start up called LostStock is selling clothing boxes containing items of ‘lost stock’ to support both the garment workers and prevent these cancelled orders going to landfill. Read all about it here.

We are hurtling towards a global recession of a scale that trumps that of the 2008 financial crash, and there is an inherent need to address systematic flaws in our current economic policies. If we are to kickstart our economies, we should not do so with outdated systems that hinder our ability to achieve the terms outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

In the light of the Brexit transition period until 31 December 2020, which remains to see if extended due to Cv-19 outbreak, The House of Commons opened in the beginning of March with a discussion concerning the UK’s future generation.

The aim of this report is to propose government policy recommendations that address a lack of corporate accountability within the fashion industry which will help prevent human rights abuses within the industry’s supply chains— from Living Wage and Modern Slavery to Ecolabels and access to judicial systems.