UK stores accused in child labour row over cotton clothing

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Human rights groups estimate that 450,000 pupils are taken out of school at harvest time, despite child labour being officially outlawed.

The availability of such cheap labour appears to have been a key factor in the dramatic cuts in the price of clothing seen in many British shops over the last decade.

Undercover filming shows a field full of children, some as young as nine, all hard at work. Reporters witnessed police marshalling hundreds of children on to buses heading for the fields.

One boy revealed that children would be sent to work for several months of the year.

He said he picked up to 11st of cotton a day -far more than his own weight.

Uzbekistan is the world's second largest exporter of cotton, and the trade is controlled by the government. Merchants claim that 90 per cent of its output is hand-picked.

Western traders export most of this cotton to manufacturers in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, where it is mixed with cotton from other sources.

Sir Philip Green, who owns Burton, says suppliers are supposed to follow the company's code of conduct which includes no use of child labour

An investigation by BBC2's Newsnight claimed it has traced some of this cotton picked by Uzbek children to clothes sold on Britain's high streets.

Several of the brands named in the report, including Asda and Matalan, said they were now conducting their own investigations into the source of the cotton they used.

Sir Philip Green, who owns Burton, said: "Our companies buy garments and do not usually have visibility of the source of the raw materials.

"We rely on our suppliers to source all raw materials, and to operate according to our detailed code of conduct which includes the statement that 'child labour must not be used'."