07 April 2006

West country staff who work for a leading international charity plan to urge their local MP to support a campaign for tougher legislation which can safeguard poor people in the developing world from abuse by British corporations.

ActionAid staff will meet Yeovil MP David Laws at their Chard offices in Somerset on Monday (10 April) to press him to join more than 200 MPs behind moves to make bosses accountable for their firms' impact overseas. Though Annette Brooke, the Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dorset and Poole North, has signed an early day motion, Mr Laws, the party’s shadow work and pensions secretary, has yet to join her on the list.

The motion calls on the Government to put in new company law a duty for directors to identify, consider, act and report on any negative effects of their firms' operations on people and the environment in Britain or abroad.

This plea reflects one of three demands made by ActionAid in the campaign Right Corporate Wrongs, which unites two coalitions, representing more than nine million members. The others are that corporations are legally required to report on their social and environmental impacts and people overseas harmed by a UK company's activities are able to take action against the firm in a British court.

This new drive aims to strengthen the Government's company law reform bill, the biggest shake-up of corporate law for 150 years, which is now before Parliament.

More than 100,000 supporters of the CORE Coalition and the Trade Justice Movement have already written to their MPs on the bill. They are urging them to press industry minister Alun Michael to amend the proposals to make company directors legally responsible for the impacts of their businesses on people and the environment. Over the next few weeks, activists will take the campaign to their MPs with local face-to-face lobbying for changes to company law.

Nine out of ten people in the UK want the Government to bring in enforceable rules to ensure businesses minimise any harm from their operations, especially to poor communities and the environment. This message came in a a new ICM poll commissioned by the TJM and the CORE coalition. The poll also showed that 89% of people think that "multinationals should be legally obliged to publish reports on a range of issues, including how they treat their employees and how they impact on their local communities." And 64% think that company directors "should be legally obliged to minimise the effects of their business to ensure that profits do not come at the expense of the wider community."

Glyn Duke, the Chard-based head of ActionAid's supporter services, said: "Last year millions of people supported Make Poverty History with its demand that the UK Government make laws that stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment. This year, the company law reform bill is a specific opportunity for the Government to take concrete action and deliver on its promises to make poverty history and help deliver trade justice."