I believe that, deep down, all humans are good. That is a comforting ethos, handling a portfolio of international development where you are constantly faced by cries for help. People want to help each other if they are able to and if they know how to.

I also believe that countries which have increased their standards of living have done so through trade. It is therefore important to make the point that trade is overall a good thing – the least developed countries are those which have virtually no trade at all, whereas countries like China and India are getting wealthier and seeing big falls in poverty because of trade. These two premises could and therefore should be combined.

Buying a foreign product might help encourage trade and cut poverty. Yet buying a foreign good made by a child who should have spent the day in school and not at an 18 hour-day factory will not. Similarly, in some stores, British shoppers can earn more through their club card points than the people who produce the goods they are buying – that is also unlikely to cut poverty. The practice of Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) therefore has immense potential to connect British shoppers with the hidden face of those who made the goods in the first place. We deserve to know the human cost of our choices and we are beginning to demand an opportunity to make an informed choice when buying goods.

However, while there has been significant progress in this area there is a real danger of CSR becoming window-dressing, a promotional gimmick, rather than actually doing some good in the world. The proliferation of ethical labelling schemes and own-brand fair trade products are especially threatening to the integrity of the voluntary codes of ethical trading initiatives. Shoppers are being overloaded with information – can anybody honestly decipher the myriad of different labels we find on our products? The proliferation of labels of this kind will not only lead to confusion, it will also undermine confidence in labelling in general. Moreover, with so many different labels, how can a shopper judge who is telling the truth, who is bending the truth and who only discloses part of the truth? Different standards allow unscrupulous producers to claim ethical values – and charge a premium for them – which is unfair on those companies who do actually apply ethical standards. This creates a perverse incentive to reduce standards rather than make them better.

It is clear that voluntary codes of ethical conduct have not done enough and it is time to face facts – we need to legislate to give British shoppers the chance to prove that deep down all humans are good and will want to treat others fairly and ethically.

Subsequently, I have often asked the question why there can’t be a single simple label measuring both the environmental and the human cost in producing a good. That would mean that any good would have the same type of label – be it an apple, a radio, or a jumper. The answer from people on the street has always been “yes, why can’t there be such a label?” The answer from supermarkets and companies has so far been “it’s impossible”. But it is possible. We have seen simple standards across areas such as organic food and labelling. My question now, therefore, is why do we have a European wide legal standard for the treatment of vegetables, but not for people?

This article originally appeared in House Magazine

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007