Pete Pattisson's investigation into the plight of Nepalese migrant labourers in Qatar shines an unremitting light on truly appalling scenes of exploitation and abuse that amount to modern-day slavery. That workers should be so abused in preparation for the Gulf state's 2022 World Cup is sad, yet comes as no surprise. That they are dying at a rate of almost one a day – more than half of them from heart attacks, heart failure and workplace accidents – in the construction binge, in temperatures of up to 50C, is terrible. But what really shocks is the thought that the whole sordid system of debt bondage and forced labour is legal.
Under the kafala sponsorship system which requires all unskilled labourers to have a sponsor, migrant workers are unable to enter the country, leave it or change jobs without their company's permission. The Nepalese working at Lusail City are double-locked into bondage. Unable to pay the debts to the middlemen who recruited them, they are forced to work without pay. But once in Qatar, their fate is sealed by subcontractors who confiscate their passports, refuse to issue them with ID cards, and hold back their pay for months to stop them fleeing. If they do, they are reduced to the status of illegal aliens, sheltering in their embassy, demanding protection.
Qatar is not the only outpost of Dante's Inferno, try as it might to hide behind its image of a glitzy, hyper-wealthy, postmodern, liberal state. Forced labour is a recurrent issue in the world of globalised business: 21m people across the globe toil in these conditions. Where you have no rule of law, institutional discrimination and a vulnerable workforce, you have modern-day slavery. While there are UN principles – those developed by the special rapporteur John Ruggie are as good as any – there is no international law holding companies responsible for labour conditions offered by their subcontractors. The principle of extraterritorial legislation is contained in the UK's Bribery Act, but there is a hesitancy about applying to the same rules to slavery. Theresa May's promise to introduce a modern slavery bill tightening the laws on human trafficking in the current session of parliament is welcome. So is the creation of a commissioner to ensure that government and law enforcement agencies work together. But no British company working abroad that finds its supply chain polluted by forced labour will be subject to any legal sanction. The same presumably goes for our footballers.
Britain has a long history of fighting slavery, but all bets are off when it comes to a government department, aid agency or company operating abroad. Why else would the UK give Uzbekistan, which forces thousands of adults and children to pick cotton, favoured trading status?
