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A cross-party group of MPs is drawing up plans to grill the boss of contentious fast-fashion chain Shein, which is considering a flotation on the London Stock Exchange.
The House of Commons business select committee is finalising plans for an inquiry into employment rights in the workplace to take place as early as January in parliament, according to its chair, Labour MP Liam Byrne.
MPs expect to call Donald Tang, executive chair of Shein, along with other retail executives to discuss the risk of Chinese products made by forced labour in the Xinjiang region ending up in garments bought in the west. The list of witnesses to be called is not yet finalised.
Byrne said the committee’s members, including himself, were keen to hear evidence from some of the big players in the fast-fashion industry. “That may include companies like Shein, it would also include Temu, and perhaps TikTok Shop,” he said.
“We would be seeking to talk to those at the top of those organisations, so in the case of Shein we would want to call Donald Tang, you’d need to have the leaders at the top of these organisations taking labour rights seriously,” he added.
Byrne said his idea was to hold hearings as the government’s employment rights bill was about to move to its report stage in parliament.
The inquiry will look at whether the new legislation will adequately protect workers in the UK and its impact on companies. But it will also examine the separate issue of how to ensure adequate protection against poor labour standards, including concerns over forced labour in international supply chains.
“The committee is anxious to ensure that if you fix labour rights in Britain you don’t run the risk of importing from places with very poor labour rights, so the committee would want to look at those issues,” said Byrne.
He added that he wanted the inquiry to hear from companies that offered both “paragons” or bad examples of labour market practice.
Shein, a Chinese-founded fast-fashion giant that was valued at $66bn during the latest funding round, has disrupted the garment industry with its model of shipping cheap clothes directly from factories in China to western shoppers.
The company launched its plan for an initial public offering at the end of last year, at first targeting New York, but shifting to London after being rebuffed by US regulators. Shein is still waiting for Chinese regulators to give approval to list overseas.
Shein declined to comment. The group previously told the Financial Times it had a “zero-tolerance policy” regarding forced labour and much of its cotton is understood to come from Australia and the US.
The fashion group partners with Oritain, a company that tests the origin of its cotton supply chains, which found in November 2023 that less than 2 per cent of Shein’s cotton tested positive for unapproved cotton — lower than the industry average.
The retailer has privately tried to reassure western politicians and regulators that it does not use cotton from Xinjiang, while shying away from saying so explicitly for fear of angering Beijing, according to people close to the company.
Other fashion labels have publicly ditched Xinjiang cotton, even though experts say that in practice it is very difficult to completely eliminate it from supply chains.
More than 45,000 people have signed a petition from a campaign group called “Say No To Shein”, which is calling on the British government to block the company’s application to list in London — pending a “thorough investigation” into its labour practices, environmental impact and tax arrangements.
But Labour frontbenchers have sounded positive about the prospect of a UK Shein IPO and have had meetings with Tang. Labour has also resisted calls to close a tax loophole used by Shein, through which companies can avoid import duties by shipping small packages directly to customers.
Kamella Hudson, a lobbyist at consultancy FGS Global, which advises Shein, recently accompanied Tang to meetings with Treasury ministers Tulip Siddiq and Poppy Gustafsson to discuss the potential listing, Bloomberg reported.
Hudson was previously seconded to Labour’s Treasury team when it was in opposition. In September, she worked closely with chancellor Rachel Reeves during the Labour party conference.