A 2020 Sunday Times investigation revealed that Leicester factories supplying the fast-fashion giant Boohoo paid workers as little as £3.50 an hour, less than half the legal minimum wage. The exposé wiped more than £1 billion off the company's value and triggered modern slavery investigations.
An undercover reporter spent two days working at Jaswal Fashions in Leicester, packing garments for Nasty Gal, a Boohoo-owned brand. He was paid £3.50 an hour, against a legal minimum wage of £8.72 for workers over 25 at the time. Video footage showed cramped working conditions with no social distancing or hygiene measures, even as Leicester sat under a localised Covid-19 lockdown. A foreman was recorded saying the businesses 'make profits like hell and pay us in peanuts', and warned that textile workers anywhere in Leicester earned only £3.50 to £4 an hour.
The revelations detonated Boohoo's share price, which collapsed by more than £1 billion in a matter of days, and drew the attention of the highest levels of government. Home Secretary Priti Patel asked the National Crime Agency to investigate modern slavery in Leicester's garment factories. It was not the first warning: a Channel 4 investigation in 2017 had exposed similar exploitation in the city's supply chain.
Boohoo commissioned an independent review led by Alison Levitt QC, which found the company had failed in its oversight of suppliers. The retailer pledged to cut ties with non-compliant factories and reform its supply chain, but the damage was done. A group of international investors later launched a £100 million lawsuit, handled by the law firm Fox Williams, arguing Boohoo had misled the market about labour conditions in breach of the Financial Services and Markets Act. The company vowed to defend the claim vigorously.
Across the Atlantic, Sky News reported that US Customs and Border Protection had gathered enough evidence to consider an investigation that could have banned Boohoo goods from America under laws against importing products made with forced labour. Campaigners, including the anti-slavery lawyer Duncan Jepson of Liberty Shared, said the evidence of forced labour was compelling.
The scandal also threw an unflattering light on Boohoo's owners. As workers earned pennies, co-founder Mahmud Kamani stood to collect a £50 million bonus under an executive pay scheme. Five years on, the Leicester scandal remains the defining case study of fast fashion's human cost in Britain, even as ultra-fast rivals such as Shein and Temu have pushed the industry's race to the bottom to new extremes.