Modern slavery and human trafficking statement
Organisational role, structure, and supply chains
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is a non-departmental public body established by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Our core purpose is to help practitioners and commissioners get the best care to patients fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer.
We do this by:
producing useful and usable guidance for health and care practitioners
providing rigorous, independent assessment of complex evidence for new health technologies
developing recommendations that focus on what matters most and drive innovation into the hands of health and care practitioners
encouraging the uptake of best practice to improve outcomes for everyone.
Find out more about our structure and what we do.
We fully support the government’s objective to eradicate slavery and human trafficking and acknowledge our role in combating it. We are strongly committed to making sure our supply chains and business activities are free from ethical and labour standards abuse.
We employ over 800 staff, and our pay spend accounts for 72% of our annual expenditure.
Our main areas of non-pay spend are purchasing journals and evidence services for our guidance development and for access by the NHS, information technology and digital services, professional and consultancy services, and general corporate services, such as travel, facilities, and estates.
Our procurement approach for our most common areas of spend follows the Government Commercial Agency framework which provides assurance of compliance with procurement best practice. When procuring goods and services, we additionally apply terms and conditions which require suppliers to comply with relevant legislation.
We act ethically and with the highest standards of integrity, quality, probity, openness, and accountability in all our business operations and relationships.
All procurement staff follow the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply ethical code in procurement. We also utilise Atamis (an e-commerce system used by all health family organisations) to support enhanced visibility and monitoring of modern slavery risks, ensuring that appropriate checks and controls are embedded across our supply chain.
While NICE has assessed the modern slavery risk as low due to the nature of our core business activities and purchasing, in the event we identify any modern slavery in our supply chains we would seek to address this immediately.
Organisational policies
We have employment policies and procedures in place designed to provide guidance and advice to staff and managers, and which comply with employment legislation. Our policies are reviewed at least every three years and those most relevant to modern slavery and human trafficking include:
Contract management framework and guidance.
Speak up and be heard policy.
Recruitment and selection policy.
Grievance policy.
Dignity at Work policy.
All policies and procedures are available to all staff on our intranet. They are also supported by training sessions for managers.
The speak up and be heard policy allows staff to raise concerns for further investigation.
Our equality, diversity and inclusion, grievance, and dignity at work policies and procedures give a platform for our staff to raise concerns about poor working practices. We have trained Freedom to Speak Up Guardians available as an avenue for staff to raise issues of concern in confidence. Staff also have access to an employee assistance programme and all information is confidential. On our intranet we promote the modern slavery helpline and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority as other ways to report concerns of modern slavery.
We are strongly committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and creating a non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff. We have a set of values and behaviours with which all staff are expected to comply. Job applicants are expected to demonstrate these attributes in the recruitment process.
All staff are appointed subject to references, occupational health checks, immigration checks, and identity checks. This makes sure we are confident staff have a legal right to work for us before they start. Agency staff are recruited through a Government Commercial Agency framework meaning the agency undergoes robust checks ensuring they operate ethically, responsibly and comply with the law.
By adopting national pay and terms and conditions of service, we have assurance that all staff will be treated equally and fairly, and our terms comply with the latest legislation. This includes the assurance that staff receive, at least, the National Minimum Wage.
We are in the process of developing a safeguarding policy for staff which, while not solely focused on modern slavery, will further strengthen our approach in this area.
Assessing and managing risk
We have a risk assessment in place which is monitored throughout the year and updated with the inclusion of any additional controls and mitigating actions to further minimise the risks. We work with our commercial team in identifying those contracts that are considered to be the highest risk areas.
We have senior level oversight of our risk, response and management of modern slavery and our updated modern slavery statement is submitted to the executive team and Board each year.
Due diligence in relation to modern slavery
Over the last year we undertook a range of actions and initiatives as part of our commitment to prevent modern slavery by:
Continuing to support all staff to understand what steps to take to prevent modern slavery and increasing awareness of mechanisms for raising concerns.
Raising awareness and publicising a blog to all staff of anti-slavery day which takes place every year on 18 October.
Attending an online seminar delivered by Gap Personnel and Stronger Together during Anti‑Slavery Week (13–18 October 2025), which promotes awareness of slavery, human trafficking, and exploitation as part of UK and European Anti‑Slavery Day.
Continuing to offer effective contract management support and quality assurance to contract managers, through collaborative engagement with suppliers to assess risks during selection and approvals processes.
Continuing to review and update our risk assessment to understand our exposure to modern slavery and human trafficking.
Reviewing and updating our modern slavery and human trafficking statement based on best practice.
Maintaining regular engagement with our internal payroll team, who carry out regular checks for unusual patterns and verify change forms on receipt to ensure employee and bank details align, as discrepancies may indicate coercion or control.
In 2025/26 we had no incidents of modern slavery.
Training
All staff are required to undertake mandatory training in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and we have developed a 5-year workforce EDI roadmap which details our ambitions and key actions.
We will continue to raise awareness and understanding across the organisation of the risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. To further support this, we have:
Created a modern slavery page on our staff intranet with useful information and details of how to report concerns.
Designed a guidance document to support contract managers with required actions in Atamis and incorporated key modern slavery information into contract manager training. The commercial team provides ongoing support and guidance to contract managers as needed, including responding to and advising on any concerns raised throughout the contract period.
Attended a webinar to improve awareness and understanding on the new modern slavery legislation coming into effect in May 2026 – The National Health Service (Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking) Regulations 2025 which included detail on procurement policy note PPN 009 – Guidance on tackling modern slavery in Government supply chains. The policy note provides mandatory guidance on how to address the risks of modern slavery in our procurement and supply chains.
Effectiveness
We will continue to assess and monitor potential risk areas in modern slavery and human trafficking.
Our next steps for 2026/27 are:
To review and update this statement and publish it on our website.
To monitor, review, and keep up to date our modern slavery risk assessment.
To continue our programme of sample checking, including focused and targeted reviews of any non-framework and selected contracts (such as technology suppliers), to ensure ongoing compliance with modern slavery requirements (where applicable).
To monitor training completion for contract managers involved in procurement activities.
To expand the modern slavery training slides to incorporate a clear reporting route for modern slavery concerns.
To continue to undertake an audit of payroll and bank details making sure employee details accurately correspond.
To keep abreast of any new legislation and modern slavery updated guidance to ensure we proactively keep up to date with the latest research on what is effective, alongside our response to modern slavery.
To commit to providing learning from areas of improvement should we experience any cases of modern slavery.
All planned actions will be monitored quarterly by the corporate office, and we will maintain regular engagement with our payroll and commercial teams.
Professor Jonathan Benger, chief executive
This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“the Act”) and constitutes our slavery and human trafficking Statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2026.
Modern slavery helpline on 08000 121 700 or visit the website at www.modernslaveryhelpline.org. Contact the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority on 0800 432 0804 and/or submit a report online.
Approved by the Board July 2026