Under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, any company with a turnover of more than £36m ($47.28m) that is registered and provides goods and services in the U.K. must file an annual statement under the Act's transparency in supply chain (Tisc) clause. In the statement, they must identify risks of slavery and human trafficking in their supply chain, and outline the steps they are taking to tackle those risks.

But according to the Tisc report, a global supply chain transparency register, of the 3,939 U.K. companies who should have filed a statement, only 1,683 - less than half - have done so.

Jaya Chakrabarti, CEO of the Tisc report, said: “Non-compliance is an alarm bell as to whether companies have all their ducks in a row and are operating within the law. Some companies will be accidentally non-compliant. Others are deliberately ignoring the act. The path to illegal behaviour begins with non-compliance.”

Similar concerns were expressed in a report released last week by the Core Coalition that analysed the modern slavery statements of more than 50 consumer brands sold to customers in the U.K. The study criticised cosmetics companies including Revlon and Boots for failing to acknowledge the risk of child labour associated with the mining of mica, a mineral widely used in the production of cosmetics, in India.

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