Over the last week there have been a number of reports accusing Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer and third largest supplier of apparel, of selling clothes made by two contractors in Bangladesh who are alleged to have used illegal child labour. The claims made on a Channel 4 News report were about Harvest Rich and Evince, suppliers based in Dhaka, Bangladesh...They also supply other Western companies. Indeed, a quick look at their website reveals that Evince says it has brand name customers that include VF Asia, H&M, PF Clipper Concept, Seidensticker, Pierre Cardin, New Wave and George (an Asda, Wal-Mart brand)...The programme in question featured footage of children who are allegedly under 15...Harvest Rich and Evince told Channel 4 that they had not used child labour. Evince said that they always follow government rules and regulations and that each worker’s age is verified by a physician. Harvest Rich said that it did not employ anyone under 18 and that ages were verified by a doctor and local government representative and supported by a school certificate...Tesco has said that as soon it was alerted to the allegations it carried out “unannounced inspections” of the four sites featured in the report but found “no evidence whatsoever of under-age workers”. It added that all factories authorised to produce Tesco clothing in Bangladesh had been inspected by Tesco and independent specialists in the last year. That sounds good but also seems to indicate an over-reliance on inspections, alone, and is surprising for a company as sophisticated as Tesco and an organisation like the ETI [Ethical Trading Initiative]...The whole episode returns to an issue that we have considered again and again in the pages of this newsletter and that relates to the effectiveness of codes of conduct, audit methodologies, factory inspections and who exactly does the auditing. Either a lack of auditing or a failure of those audits seem to be to blame in this case. But the whole issue raises another question as well and that was why the factories themselves were using child labour (if indeed that was the case). Was it because children are cheaper to employ? Was their employment a result of such tight margins being forced on clothing manufacturers, that illegal labour practices are the only way to make a profit? Is that in itself a factor in Tesco selling clothes at exceptionally low prices that we have never experienced before (in real terms)? And is that, in turn the fault of the consumer who would rather buy a pair of cheap jeans made in a sweatshop, rather than a pair made where decent labour practices existed?...For me, many of the brands who profess to care about CSR are not adequately addressing these questions...