29
Examination of witnesses
Joanna West, Rebecca Wyse and Tom Surrey.
Q1 The Chair: Good morning, and welcome to this meeting of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee. My name is Frances O’Grady and I am chairing the committee. I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses: Tom Surrey, director of adult social care workforce and policy at the Department of Health and Social Care, and Joanna West and Rebecca Wyse, joint directors for tackling abuse and exploitation at the Home Office.
When it was introduced in 2015, the Modern Slavery Act was said to be world leading. I would be interested to know if you still think it is world leading, as, since the introduction of the Act, concerns have been expressed about its effectiveness. How effective do the Government consider the Modern Slavery Act to have been?
Rebecca Wyse: I will begin my answer with the world-leading bit and then move on to the effectiveness. The Modern Slavery Act was certainly world leading when it was passed, and since then we know that other countries have emulated us, Australia being one example. The Act has instigated significant progress in identifying potential victims. Since it was passed we have seen a 657% increase, from 2014 to 2023, in the number of people who have been referred to the national referral mechanism. In 2021, the US Trafficking in Persons Report stated that France had identified 331 victims, Germany had identified 581, and the UK had 12,701 referrals. So in this respect we do think that we continue to be world leading.
In terms of its effectiveness, the Act established the foundations for the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians, which had about 2,500 child referrals in 2022-23. We have introduced the statutory defence, which is an important step in encouraging people to come forward and report their crimes. We realise that that is sometimes challenging, but we are really pleased that the 2019 review felt that we had the right balance there with that defence. The UK is the first country in the world to require businesses to report on modern slavery risks. We launched the registry in March 2021, and since then 12,600 modern slavery statements have been uploaded into that registry covering 43,200 organisations.
The role of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner was established. That is valuable to us as directors for tackling exploitation and abuse, and we are delighted to be working with Eleanor Lyons in that capacity. When it was passed in 2015, the Modern Slavery Act did not cover victim protections. The Government have since introduced the Nationality and Borders Act, which places on a legislative footing some of the protections, such as the right to the recovery period and the grounds to disqualify, previously found in ECAT.
Finally, this is a crime that continues to evolve. Things have moved on since 2015 and, in particular, we are conscious of the number of children who are being referred into the national referral mechanism, which is an area where we continue to try to make progress.
The Chair: Can you identify any gaps either in the Act itself or in its implementation?
Joanna West: As this committee is well aware, modern slavery is certainly a hidden and fast-evolving crime. That is a challenge that we face with a number of crimes across the system where we are dealing with vulnerable and exploited people, so we look very closely at it across the whole criminal and justice sector.
I think you will want to talk to us about transparency and supply chains. We acknowledge up front and recognise that this is seen as a gap, and we are looking into it. We are obviously constrained by parliamentary time, and there are ministerial decisions about what goes forward for legislation, but we are looking at other options. Just to give a couple of examples, we think we can do a good piece of work reviewing the statutory guidance, engaging with the new IASC and stakeholders, and thinking about how that could be useful for businesses and law enforcement. We know that you will be hearing from law enforcement soon, and I am sure they will want to talk to you about how effective things like prevention orders are. We keep under constant review how best we can work with the police to give them the tools they need.
The Chair: Can you say a little about how you go about measuring the success of the Act and its implementation?
Rebecca Wyse: As this is a hidden crime, there are of course challenges to doing that. We have large numbers of statistics from the national referral mechanism, first responders and the registry, which give a good sense of compliance and the actions that businesses are taking. We also have good relationships with organisations like the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab and the modern slavery and human rights organisations that support us to understand a bit more about the work we are doing.
We have also commissioned formal evaluations on the child devolution pilots and the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians. We wrote to the Home Affairs Committee last week to confirm that these will be published in due course. Then we have a substantial amount of internal governance where we are gathering all that information, bringing it together and challenging ourselves as to whether we are doing enough.
Q2 Lord Hope of Craighead: Good afternoon. We have been told that you are joint directors for tackling abuse and exploitation. Do you have different functions, or do you just share everything equally between the two of you?
Joanna West: We are a job-share partnership, so we both work part-time covering a full-time job, which we share equally between us.
Lord Hope of Craighead: The words “abuse” and “exploitation” are quite loaded. Are you detecting abuse and exploitation, particularly in the case of people seeking asylum in this country?
Rebecca Wyse: I would refer you and the committee to the former Safeguarding Minister’s evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, where she gave some sense of that. The Home Office also shared some case studies with the Home Affairs Committee, and we can share those with this committee as well.
On the statistics that are published and out there—you may know these already, so forgive me—we see an increase in the number of referrals to the national referral mechanism from people in detention. In 2019, 6% of those detained for return were referred to the national referral mechanism. In 2021, that was 73%. In May 2023, 9% of people arriving on small boats were referred to the national referral mechanism on arrival, and 65% were referred once detained.
Lord Hope of Craighead: What is troublesome, at least from my perspective, is that there are various statements coming from the Home Office which suggest that asylum seekers are claiming this particular protection as a strategy to avoid removal from the United Kingdom. Does that take fair account of the fact that the referral mechanism is a body that is made up of people referring people to the system, rather than people claiming to get into it? The use of the word “claim” is rather misleading, and in a way may suggest to some people that there is something wrong going on, when in fact it is the referral mechanism that brings people into the protection that they are seeking. Is it fully appreciated, at least in your department, that it is the referral mechanism to which we should be looking, rather than the individuals?
Joanna West: That is an important part of the context, and I would like to take the opportunity to set out a bit more of the context here. The Government have identified and supported 30,000 victims through the national referral mechanism in the last two years alone. The Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract is worth £379 million over its lifetime and cost £78 million last year. I want to be clear that this is a priority for the Government in which they are investing, thinking carefully about and recruiting additional caseworkers, exactly as you have pointed to, to deal with these referrals. Equally, there is a responsibility on the Government to ensure that they are managing public money effectively and testing that the system is as robust as it should be.
Lord Hope of Craighead: I think I understand the point you are making, but we are informed that a good deal of effort has gone into training the responders who refer people into the system so that to some extent the statistics may be the product of greater effort by the referral people. That is why one may think that statistics do not tell us everything and that you need to examine what lies behind the figures to understand exactly what is going on. I wonder whether the Government would consider publishing more detailed data concerning the operation of the NRM, particularly in its interaction with immigration and asylum, to find out more precisely what is going on, with particular case studies, for example, because the figures may not tell you the entire story. Is that really understood by your department?
Joanna West: That is a live conversation that the teams and the ministerial teams are having in our department. To your point about publishing statistics, that is under regular review. We publish a lot of data and have increased the amount that we publish. We would certainly be very open to the committee’s views if there are specific data sets that you think we should be publishing but are not. We are interested in hearing your views on this, we are open to suggestions, and we review the issue very regularly.
Lord Hope of Craighead: Do you have any first-hand evidence of people abusing the system, given that it comes through the NRM and by referral to the NRM and so on? Have individuals been detected as abusing the system, or are you just simply relying on figures?
Rebecca Wyse: We have the figures that I have just shared with you. We also have case studies that we shared with the Home Affairs Committee, and we are happy to share those with this committee as well. We can help with that.
Lord Hope of Craighead: I think that would be helpful.
Rebecca Wyse: Absolutely, of course.
Lord Hope of Craighead: We are particularly interested in the case studies, because you can understand that the statistics may not tell the whole story, as I have been saying.
Joanna West: Indeed.
Lord Hope of Craighead: We would like to know exactly what the case studies tell us.
Joanna West: We will make those available to you.
Lord Hope of Craighead: Thank you very much.
Q3 Lord Whitty: While we are on the statistics, of those 30,000, and any trends therein, how many are referred to you because they are in areas that are strictly speaking illegal, like prostitution, drug running or whatever, and how many are in trades whose output is actually part of a supply chain, the care sector or whatever, so that in a sense they appear to be employed? There is a distinction. I am not sure how many of the 30,000 fall in each category and whether, over time, there are any changes in that.
Joanna West: We can give you some statistics on that. In 2023, labour exploitation and criminal exploitation were quite close in number; it was about 29% of referrals for labour exploitation and 26% for criminal exploitation. Also of note is that there are gendered patterns to this. For women, sexual exploitation is the most common. It is different for men, who make up the majority of referrals, but there are gendered patterns within those data sets. Again, we can provide you with a lot of information here if you would like more.
Lord Whitty: If you would, please.
Lord Smith of Hindhead: What were the other 45%?
Joanna West: Let me see if I can find that in my stats table.
Rebecca Wyse: I am conscious that you all have places to be, so we will follow-up with you. It is publicly available information, so we can ping it over to you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Q4 Baroness Barker: My question follows on in a sense from Lord Hope’s. Since the passage of the Modern Slavery Act there has been a greater emphasis, and certainly greater activity on the part of government, in immigration. You have already referred to the passage of the two Acts: the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023. To what extent has government—your department and all the offices of government—been changed to reflect that change in emphasis away from modern slavery towards detailed scrutiny of immigration?
Rebecca Wyse: In 2022, 75% of potential victims were foreign nationals. Given the close links between modern slavery and migration we work very closely with our immigration colleagues, as you would expect.
In terms of how we work together, obviously the Home Secretary, at the most senior level, oversees everything and we all report to him. It is fair to say that the ministerial team also work very closely together. At official level, we have close links with our immigration colleagues and we work with them to develop and deliver policy that balances the Government’s commitments both to protect the border and identify and to support victims of modern slavery. That is a continuous dialogue between the immigration team and our team.
Baroness Barker: Within that dialogue, what takes precedence?
Joanna West: I hope that the facts and statistics we have already given you about the kind of funding in the system and the number of victims we are identifying and supporting show you that modern slavery is a priority for Ministers, but you will need to ask the Ministers themselves about their relative priorities.
Q5 Baroness Barker: To what extent have departments other than the Home Office input into the Immigration Act? Also, how do the statistics that you give on modern slavery feed back into other government departments, and what actions do they take on it as a result?
Rebecca Wyse: We work with other government departments in a range of ways. We are very clear that victims of modern slavery do not see different government departments separately, so we seek to be as seamless as possible in the way in which we address their needs. We work closely with a number of government departments on this, and they are sighted through a range of forums on the work that we are doing. That may be informal through our bilateral connections with officials across government or through slightly more formal governance arrangements through the Cabinet Office or our own department. At the most senior levels it is through write-round processes and so on, ensuring that government departments are sighted on the work that we are doing.
Baroness Barker: How does that play out, for example, when you are trying to assess the impact of other pieces of legislation on the Modern Slavery Act, such as the changes in the periods of time in which people can seek support before they have to report and those sorts of things?
Rebecca Wyse: Forgive me if I am not understanding your question—tell me if I am not—but that decision is within the purview of the Home Office and the Home Secretary. With regard to other government departments, we work closely with our colleagues in immigration on that, and that goes into the ministerial team and, ultimately, on to the Home Secretary, who makes the decision. Where the priorities lie, how they are balanced and weighed up and how those decisions are made will, as Joanna said, be something you will want to pick up with the ministerial team.
Q6 Baroness Butler-Sloss: In the future, will any illegal migration go through the NRM?
Joanna West: Again, that is a question for Ministers, because we cannot tell you what the ministerial intent is here. Obviously, the Illegal Migration Act has not yet commenced, but there are provisions in it that would allow for a change in the future. It is a ministerial decision, though, and we need to refer you to their evidence session when that comes up.
Q7 Lord Watson of Invergowrie: I want to follow up on Baroness Barker’s first question. You said that you could not really comment on the effect of the two pieces of legislation that have come in since this Act, which I understand, but last week we had evidence from an organisation called Hestia, with which you will be familiar, that provides support and accommodation to survivors of modern slavery. It told us that, since the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was introduced, the timeframe had shrunk from 45 to 30 days, which often made it impossible to show that modern slavery or trafficking had taken place. Prior to the legislation, 97% of people being represented by Hestia were deemed by the Home Office to be victims, but since the Act this has now fallen to just 50%. These are quite stark figures, I think. I am not trying to drag you into political decisions, but as it is you and your colleagues who are dealing with those figures, would you like to comment on that, please?
Joanna West: Yes. I will take those questions in two parts. On the thresholds for a reasonable grounds decision, which is the first in our two-part decision-making process for potential victims of modern slavery, the guidance and the thresholds for that were altered and tightened up at ministerial direction, because, as already mentioned, they are very keen that we ensure that the system is as robust as possible. So that set of statistics is correct and we are keeping it under close review, making sure that we are balancing as well as we can victims getting the support that they need with making sure that the system is not open to any kind of misuse.
On timescales, again, we are balancing a number of things here, because we are trying to bring the timescales down for decision-making. They are too long, as we have acknowledged in previous committees, and we are doing a lot of work to try to reduce that. We hear from NGOs and others who work with victims that there is a balance to be struck between allowing people to move on with their lives and get a decision and making sure that they get the support they need.
A comprehensive package of support is provided to potential victims of modern slavery that is based on three core pillars: safehouse accommodation where needed; financial support; and access to a dedicated support worker. That is all done on a kind of consent and needs assessed basis. Potential victims of modern slavery will often be in that support for some time, and it is very much about the charities that are working with victims making assessments about when they are ready to exit that support. That is examined and assessed in a very needs-based way.
Q8 Lord Hope of Craighead: I have a question for Mr Surrey in relation to Baroness Barker’s second question about whether any other department had an input into recent changes to modern slavery policy. What about your department? Have you had any input into changes to the modern slavery policy?
Tom Surrey: I would have to check, as I do not know for certain. What I can say is that we work very closely with our colleagues in the Home Office and have a very productive and cordial relationship, which is one of the most important things that the Department of Health and Social Care set out to do in this space. I will ask my colleagues whether those changes came at a write-round. If so, we would certainly have fed them into the development of the policy and agreed them through a Cabinet write-round process, so yes.
Lord Hope of Craighead: Where do you get your information from?
Tom Surrey: We work very closely, in my instance, with the care provider sector, and I can say a bit more about that now or later in the session, if that is helpful. We also work with charities providing support to victims of modern slavery, other organisations and the enforcement bodies. I can set all that out in some detail. We feel that we have a good sense of our specific interests for the sectors that we represent in the development of Home Office policy.
Baroness Barker: Where have the statistics come from about the recent increase in incidences of people being forced to come to fulfil care contracts, which are not correct?
Tom Surrey: I am very happy to address that now, if that is helpful. Chair, is it helpful if I set out a bit of context around the care sector for the committee and then address Baroness Barker’s question?
The Chair: We will move on to it later, but yes, please do.
Tom Surrey: Obviously we have seen a significant increase in the number of overseas workers coming into the care sector since the immigration rules were changed in February 2022. The latest data I have is of around 101,000 visas being issued in the care worker and senior care worker sector. It is important to recognise that those workers have brought with them great skills, competence and experience. We are very grateful to them, as are the care providers that they work for.
We have started to see some suggestion of an increase in referrals for modern slavery from people in the care sector, and I think we will talk about this a little later. The data that I have seen suggests that the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of social care providers, made four modern slavery referrals in 2021-22 and 37 in 2022-23, and although obviously the referral process is not complete for the current financial year, that number is expected to increase.
We have also worked particularly closely with Unseen, the charity that supports victims and runs a helpline. It reports speaking to just over 700 potential victims in 2022, and around 18% of calls to its helpline in that period were from the care sector. Again, it does not have more up-to-date data at this moment, but I do know that it intends to publish some in later years.
So we have a range of sources and, as I said, we also work very closely with the enforcement agencies, such as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, although I would ask my colleagues from the Home Office to speak in more detail about them.
Q9 Baroness Shephard of Northwold: The immigration legislation has made a lot of changes—I think you referred to evolution—and we all know how complex the NRM mechanism is. Mr Surrey said that there has been an increase in referrals from the care home sector, but I would like to know how people manage the complexities that have been introduced into the use of the NRM by legislative changes. This may well be a question for a Minister, but you have just given evidence that there have been more referrals, which may just be because there is much more abuse. Are you getting feedback about the complications of the mechanism of the NRM arising from immigration legislation changes?
Tom Surrey: I have not had that feedback, but I should just clarify that the statistics I referred to were not regarding the national referral mechanism; they were referrals made by the Care Quality Commission as a regulator to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority as the enforcement agency and body. If that is the national referral mechanism, those are the numbers that I have available to me.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold: I understand that, but of course those referrals have to use the NRM. That is the point I am making.
Tom Surrey: I have not had any feedback from the regulator, no.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold: It does not matter. If you have no evidence, you have no evidence.
Lord Watts: You say that there has been a marked increase in the number of referrals. Do you have more staff to deal with those referrals, or are you dealing with them within the present complement of staff?
Tom Surrey: Referrals in which organisation, sorry?
Lord Watts: Yours.
Tom Surrey: The Care Quality Commission make referrals to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. I am not au fait with the Care Quality Commission’s current staffing levels, but I am sure they are adequate.
The Chair: Not enough. Thank you.
Q10 Baroness Hamwee: My questions follow on from others to a fair extent. First, can you tell us the size of your unit? How many staff do you have? This is relevant to the point about the importance of the emphasis given to work on modern slavery and trafficking versus immigration.
Joanna West: We have two sections. One is a modern slavery policy unit, which has 53 individuals in it at the moment, and we can say a little more about the work of that unit in a moment, if that is helpful. Then we have two competent authorities sitting in the Home Office—the Single Competent Authority and the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority—which process referrals and make decisions based on that casework. We have undertaken a really big uplift in caseworkers because of the increasing volume of referrals.
Baroness Hamwee: There is a backlog, yes.
Joanna West: Absolutely, so we are now at 1,050 workers in the competent authority overall. That is a huge increase, which exceeds our commitment to increase decision-makers by 200, and we have 53 individuals in the modern slavery unit.
Baroness Hamwee: I am not clear about how the different bits relate to one another. If you agree, Chair, that might be something that we could subsequently get in writing. It would be helpful.
Joanna West: Of course.
Baroness Hamwee: We are, of course, all aware that there are people who are trafficked into the country who are enslaved, but there are also UK citizens. Given the changes that will come in through the Illegal Migration Act, have you made an assessment of the change in caseload? There are not very many people subject to this who are going to arrive on a plane at Heathrow and claim asylum, are there? I assume they are mostly going to be British citizens after the Illegal Migration Act comes into force.
Rebecca Wyse: It is worth noting, with the Illegal Migration Act, that people will still be referred into the national referral mechanism. They will receive a reasonable grounds decision, at which point a decision will be taken as to whether to apply the public order disqualification to them.
Baroness Hamwee: But if it works, they are disqualified even from seeking asylum, and so on. Sorry, I should not have interrupted you.
Rebecca Wyse: I can speak on the modern slavery aspects of that, but you might want to ask other officials from the department, or Ministers, in relation to asylum. People will certainly still be referred to the national referral mechanism and they will receive a reasonable grounds decision.
If that reasonable grounds decision is positive, at that point we will consider whether to apply the public order disqualification to them. Through the passage of the legislation, Ministers have agreed to ensure that exceptions will be built into the public order disqualification, particularly when an individual needs to remain in the country because they are supporting the police with an inquiry. It is not a blanket disqualification: there is some discretion for the case workers to apply that accordingly.
Baroness Hamwee: I was going to ask you about the compelling circumstances in which the exceptions are given, such as a victim/witness being able to remain only as long as they are actively assisting with an investigation. What impact do you think there will be on prosecutions of traffickers and smugglers, given that a victim will assist but victims themselves are likely to be recovering, and having difficulty with that process? That being so, being present and actively able to assist the police and prosecutors is not that straightforward a position. I should not be doing all the talking. We are obviously concerned not just for victims but about prosecutions. Again, what assessments have you made about how this affects your work?
Joanna West: We are currently working through the details of how this will be operationalised, because obviously the Illegal Migration Act has not yet commenced. That is a live conversation between us and policing in particular. As I said right at the beginning, some themes and difficulties in ensuring that reporting crimes is followed through and turned into successful prosecutions are also dealt with in other elements of the criminal justice sphere. For example, in rape and serious sexual offences we have a new national operating model, Operation Soteria, and we are talking to policing about how we take the lessons from that to ensure a trauma-informed response in modern slavery also. So we are working closely with policing on this.
Q11 Baroness Shephard of Northwold: I think I am about to ask another question that should be answered by a Minister, but obviously in your work you all understand that there is tremendous public concern about both modern slavery and immigration. I come back again to your word “evolution”. It is indeed an evolving situation.
Please say if you cannot answer this, but do you think that the pre-occupation at the moment with immigration, which is certainly found among the public, is taking attention from modern slavery, which so concerned the public as short a time ago as 2015 when the Act went through? Or do you think there is a kind of balanced concern, and are you managing to keep the two sets of concerns aligned and not allowing one to overcome the other?
Rebecca Wyse: Forgive me. I think you may have a more comprehensive answer from Ministers, but I will give you mine. First, from our perspective, Joanna has set out the level of investment we are making in this system, which shows some level of commitment and priority from the Government’s perspective. Secondly, as officials in the department we are very clear that we have a responsibility to protect the border and to protect victims of modern slavery. We continue to work very closely with officials across the department and across government to achieve both those aims.
Joanna West: There is a really interesting question about the public’s understanding of modern slavery, which is such a complex crime. It is so fast-evolving, and we have told you lots of things today about just how much referrals have increased.
There is an interesting conversation for us to have about what the public think of when they think of modern slavery. What more could the Government do to explain that and what you might look out for as a sign that something is just not right? We would be interested in the views of the committee and others that we talk to across the sector about what more we can do to raise public consciousness of modern slavery, because it is complex and a crime that is harder to understand if you are not an expert or an official in the field.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold: I am most grateful for those replies. Thank you very much.
Q12 Lord Randall of Uxbridge: I should declare an interest as the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation. Which Minister do you report to? Is it Safeguarding, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, or none of them?
Rebecca Wyse: Let me set out the ministerial responsibilities in the department. First and foremost, the Home Secretary is accountable for everything; we will bank that as a given. Minister Tomlinson, who is Minister for Countering Illegal Migration, is responsible for the implementation of the Nationality and Borders Act and the Illegal Migration Act. He is also responsible for the modern slavery policy. Minister Farris is the Minister for Victims and Safeguarding who, as the job title suggests, is responsible for safeguarding and victims and witnesses, which includes victim support through the national referral mechanism. In practice, for us as officials that means that we sight both on our advice. They work together where they have mutual interests, and I would expect both of them to provide feedback on our advice particularly on the national referral mechanism.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Is it confusing to have more than one Minister to report to?
Joanna West: It is helpful. Obviously, a lot of your questions today are focused on the balance between modern slavery and immigration, so it is helpful that we and our teams are able to provide the full picture to both Ministers. I am glad that we get opportunities to brief and advise the Minister for Illegal Immigration, for example.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: But would you go to both at the same time on your write-rounds or whatever?
Rebecca Wyse: It is very common for us to be advising the Minister for Victims and Safeguarding and the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, for example, so advising two members of the ministerial team at the same time is not an unusual position for us to be in.
The Chair: The job title—illegal migration—might not be helpful, though.
Rebecca Wyse: Yes, but that is sadly out of our control.
Q13 Baroness Hamwee: Lord Watson referred to the fall in the percentage of positive reasonable grounds decisions. Have you done a dive into those to know exactly why that reduction had happened?
Rebecca Wyse: It is very early days for that change to have taken place. We are monitoring it, and we are seeking to understand it better, but it is too early right now for us to be able to bring conclusions to you.
Q14 The Lord Bishop of Bristol: I have questions about the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, and I will start with the question of independence. There is a new commissioner, at long last, and a new legislative context in which you are all working. Some reviews have suggested that the Modern Slavery Act may not encourage independence of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. What are the structures to ensure that the commissioner provides independent scrutiny?
Joanna West: It is very important to us that that role is independent, and we welcome the challenge and scrutiny that that post gives. We are delighted to have Eleanor Lyons in place. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner is a public appointment. The commissioner is not an employee of the Home Office, although, as you know, we work very closely with it. To help us ensure that independence, we have a memorandum of understanding that we agree between the Home Office and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, and that defines for us who is doing what and what the roles are. That is important. Certainly, my experience of working with the previous Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner was that that independent voice was useful and valued.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol: I am interested in the term “public office”. Speaking as a clergyperson, we have a measure of independence. Can you tell me what has been understood as a line management relationship in the Home Office?
Joanna West: Yes. There is a line management relationship between the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the Home Office. Again, that is based on a set of goals for the year that are agreed between the Home Office and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. They are not imposed; they are very much agreed together. We will be working that through with the new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol: It is early stage for that, but there is obviously a question about perception of independence, whatever the internal arrangements might be. Would it be better for line management relationships to be established elsewhere if such relationships are necessary?
Rebecca Wyse: Forgive me, but that is probably a question for Ministers. The Modern Slavery Act is clear that it is for the Home Secretary to appoint the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and manage her accordingly. Therefore, any change to that would require that change.
Joanna West: Wherever the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner was line managed—that decision is out of our control—what is important to us is that we have this constructive and collaborative working relationship. That is what we are aiming for. Ultimately, I believe that our goals are the same: we want to identify victims, to protect victims, and to bring down the levels of modern slavery. In a way, we as officials can be fairly agnostic on that. What is important to us is being able to work productively with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol: We have talked a bit about setting those goals and the internal management of that, but why does it seem that the Government have not previously responded to the commissioner’s independent reports? That seems to me to be very concerning. With a new commissioner, is there a commitment to make sure that the commissioner’s reports are publicly answered?
Joanna West: Those are decisions for Ministers and would typically, I think, be taken on a case-by-case basis. I do not want to speak for Ministers—they may say something different to you when they appear in a few weeks—but we would expect the new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner to be talking to us about her expectations also. I am certain that she will do that. We have got off to a good, constructive start, so I am sure she will set out for us what her expectations are and have that conversation with Ministers.
Lord Watts: How many staff does the commissioner have?
Joanna West: She has three at the moment, and there are other recruitments in train.
Lord Watts: And what will be the full complement when they have recruited?
Rebecca Wyse: To be determined, probably. At the moment, I am not sure we have bottomed that out fully, but she has asked that a further three people are recruited, which we have signed off without challenge.
Q15 Lord Smith of Hindhead: My question is very similar to the one you have just been asked. Before I get to that, could I ask you a very quick and simple one, which goes back to something you said right at the start of your evidence? You said that you have seen a 647% increase in referrals, and you were measuring the number of cases here compared with France and Germany. Has there been any increase in the number of prosecutions of those people who are perpetrating it?
Joanna West: Just as a clarification, the increase is 657% over the last decade.
Lord Smith of Hindhead: Even better. Or worse, depending on which way you want to measure it.
Joanna West: The prosecution numbers are not as high as we would like them to be. Again, this is a challenge that we face in this area of hidden crimes. It is something that we work closely on with the police and criminal justice sector as a whole to try to understand and improve the victim experience through this. Policing investigation numbers have gone up from the hundreds to the thousands, as you are probably aware. The prosecution rate is still very low. When you hear from law enforcement, they are likely to set out for you—if you get into this—that sometimes they choose not to go after a modern slavery prosecution because they have better evidence to go for a different kind of prosecution. That is part of it. Overall, we want this to improve and increase.
Lord Smith of Hindhead: It seems that if we have more prosecutions, there may be fewer victims. This is my assigned question, and I know that Lord Watson will come in on this as well. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner recently commented on the practical difficulties she has experienced since entering her post. I wonder whether you could enlighten us as to how the Government or the Home Office will ensure that she can perform her role effectively? You said that she has just increased her staff from two to three, or something like that, which seems pitifully low. Do you have any views on that?
Joanna West: Yes. First, we recognise that there have been some practical difficulties and that recruitment timelines have been difficult. We are working closely with the commissioner to make sure that she has the appropriate support and resourcing in place and that there are staff in post who can support her, as well as signing off those recruitments. It is important to us that she is well supported, and we have been getting involved and speaking to her about that.
Q16 Lord Watson of Invergowrie: In your introductory remarks, Ms Wyse, you said you were looking forward to working with the new anti-slavery commissioner, and you mentioned subsequently a memorandum of understanding. Is that memorandum of understanding the same now as it was for the previous two commissioners?
Rebecca Wyse: It is in development at the moment. It is agreed with the IASC, and she is still commenting on that and we are still working that through. I would not expect it to be word for word the same, but I also would not expect it to be vastly different. Forgive me, I do not have it in front of me to be able to compare.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: Okay, but when a new commissioner in any department comes in, is it normal for their memorandum of understanding to be agreed individually with them, rather than in terms of the post that they are filling?
Joanna West: Yes.
Rebecca Wyse: Absolutely, yes.
Q17 Lord Watson of Invergowrie: Thank you for that. I still have some questions on staff. When the new anti-slavery commissioner gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee quite recently, she mentioned her staffing levels and said, from memory, that she thought it would go up to about seven or eight. She contrasted that with her previous role as assistant children’s commissioner when she had over 50 staff. I am not saying that there is a comparison between the two, but it is a big difference. Do you not feel that the commissioner will be hampered, because she gave the impression that she feels she will be hampered by the number of staff that she has?
Joanna West: The commissioner also acknowledged that she was aware that that was the number of staff when she took up the post. It is broadly comparable to what previous commissioners have had in role, though she will be able to talk to us if she does have concerns about that. It is very early days with the commissioner. We are grateful to her for the very constructive and collaborative approach she has taken to working with us. If she wants to talk to us about a staffing increase, we certainly cannot commit to delivering that, but we would absolutely listen to what she was asking and seek to find solutions.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: It will be difficult to increase the number of staff, will it not, because we understand that her budget is to be reduced by 5% year on year.
Joanna West: We have a clarification on that too. The commissioner’s total budget provided by the Home Office for 2024-25 is £597,000. That comprises £497,000 of resource budget and £100,000 of capital budget. We think there was a misunderstanding in what we said to the commissioner previously. We have apologised to her for that and we are rectifying the position. It is actually £52,000 more than the Home Office budget for the previous commissioner between 2021-22, to clarify.
Rebecca Wyse: The previous commissioner also received money from devolved Administrations. That is completely separate from the money that was received from the Home Office. I cannot comment on whether the current IASC is in conversation with devolved Administrations to receive funding from them as well, but I just make that point of clarification.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: Notwithstanding the clarification you have given us over those figures, is her budget still due to decrease by 5% year on year?
Joanna West: No, because we do not have allocations yet for future spending years. We have clarified with the commissioner what her budget will be for the upcoming financial year, and future years will be dependent on the allocation given to the Home Office by the Treasury. We are not in a position to say either way on that yet.
Q18 Baroness Butler-Sloss: I should have declared that I am co-chair of the Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery APPG and vice-chairman to Lord Randall on the Human Trafficking Foundation, and I was a member of the advisory panel of both previous independent commissioners.
I have one further question on the staffing. My recollection is that the previous two commissioners had rather more staff. Can you tell us how many staff Sara Thornton had?
Joanna West: I do not have those figures in front of me. I believe that it is broadly comparable in terms of the resource allocation from the Home Office—
Baroness Butler-Sloss: She certainly was not down to three. How on earth did that happen?
Joanna West: The role has been vacant for some time, so there have not been people in that team. The new commissioner is recruiting. We have acknowledged that there have been some difficulties on timelines and we are working to try to expedite that. We are not saying that three is the total number, but we do not have the exact comparison figures in front of us, I am afraid. We can write to you with that.
The Chair: Have their fixed-term contracts been converted to permanent contracts?
Rebecca Wyse: I am afraid I do not have in front of me the details of the contracts of the staff in the office.
Lord Hope of Craighead: Am I right in thinking that she requires approval before she recruits anybody, and a particular approval if she recruits outside the Home Office itself? Why should that be? Supposing she wants to broaden the reach of her staff—within the limited resources she has—should she not have free hand to do that herself if she is really independent?
Rebecca Wyse: The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner is, like other arm’s-length entities, subject to Home Office governance in relation to recruitment. There is a good reason for that, which is that the commissioner is not a separate legal entity, so she does not have formal delegated accounting officer powers. Consequently, the permanent secretary is accounting officer, which he delegates down to the director-general, and their level of sign-off is required on the recruiting. That is a process that is true of any Home Office recruiting. The commissioner requires DG sign-off in order to ensure affordability, to be honest, within the allocated budget. To be clear, the director-general does not get involved in how IASC chooses her staff. So far, the commissioner has sought permission to recruit for three roles, and, as I said previously, all three have been approved without challenge. I hope that helps to reassure a little.
Lord Hope of Craighead: I think she said in her evidence that it causes delays. Is there a way in which one might be able to loosen up the system a little, to make it less of an impediment to her?
Rebecca Wyse: We seek to expedite that as quickly as possible, and we are happy to work very closely with her. If she brings things to our attention, for example, we have a very close working relationship with the director-general, who is our line manager. Where she seeks that approval, we can seek to ensure that that comes across the desk of the director-general as quickly as possible. But we need to provide that diligence on behalf of the taxpayer, to ensure that she is providing value for money. There is a balance between pace and the need to ensure value for money.
Lord Hope of Craighead: Of course a procedure has to be followed. It is just a question of not being too slow, particularly if she has a particular request she wants to be granted.
Rebecca Wyse: Absolutely.
Q19 Lord Kempsell: Can I continue on the role of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and bring us to the eternal question of cross-government working? One of her priorities is to work more and better with other government departments. How is the Home Office going to support her to work across government and not just with your department?
Joanna West: First, we welcome that priority. That is an important element to the role of the commissioner, and it is very helpful that she has stated that as a priority. As we have talked about at length today, the commissioner is independent. She may not need or want our facilitation. If she does, we are standing ready to work closely with her on doing that: providing briefings, connecting her to our excellent colleagues across government, such as Mr Surrey. We are ready to make those connections as she sees fit and asks us to do. Equally, I would not want us to constrain her by only suggesting our contacts.
Lord Kempsell: Do you have a map in your mind, or in the minds of your team, of the relevant lead officials in every central government department who are important for your work on modern slavery? Is there a network of some kind of senior officials who work on the same topic across departments? Informal or otherwise?
Rebecca Wyse: Yes, we do. Between us and our deputy directors, we have contacts in every government department we need to have.
Lord Kempsell: Is that formalised in any particular structure, or is it just that colleagues who work on the same topic happen to come across each other when meetings happen that have more than one department in them?
Rebecca Wyse: I do not want to say there are not immediately formalised structures. There may well be, but I am struggling to think of some as I sit at this table. We will certainly have some, yes.
Joanna West: It tends to be linked to specific projects. For example, the devolved decision-making pilot for children that we have touched on a couple of times today. There is a specific steering group for that and for the adult victim support board. Those are led by senior officials in the modern slavery unit, and they will be attended as needed by senior officials elsewhere.
Q20 Lord Kempsell: On a slightly different topic, do you have an update on any plans to update or review the modern slavery strategy?
Rebecca Wyse: Yes. In their response to the Home Affairs Committee, which was published last week, the Government committed first to publishing an annual report by the end of the year. That will set out the strategic approach to modern slavery and ensure that the work being done to tackle this crime is shared and monitored. The second commitment made in that was that the Government will be considering a new modern slavery strategy.
Lord Kempsell: With no timeline. Presumably that is for Ministers?
Joanna West: Exactly.
Rebecca Wyse: I am afraid so.
Lord Kempsell: Are there any other key milestones in policy development that are on the horizon, either in the form of documents that we expect or decisions? Obviously, the committee is aware of everything there is in public about the way in which different pieces of legislation are interacting, but is there anything we should be looking at that the Government are likely to publish in the duration of this Parliament?
Joanna West: I would encourage you to look out for two key evaluation reports: the devolved decision-making pilots for children referred to the national referral mechanism, and the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians. In the response to HASC we have committed to publish those and hope to do so shortly.
Lord Kempsell: Were those evaluations, since you mention them, carried out by an external partner to government?
Joanna West: Yes, they both were.
Lord Kempsell: Was it an academic partner? Who did the evaluation?
Joanna West: I believe one was Barnardo’s.
Rebecca Wyse: I think it was Ipsos MORI, and you will forgive me if I have to correct it, but that is off the top of my head.
Lord Kempsell: Are you planning to publish them soon?
Rebecca Wyse: Yes.
Q21 Lord Randall of Uxbridge: I would like to draw our attention to transparency and supply chains. In the 2015 Act, there was a limited amount on that. In 2019, following consultation, the Government committed to doing more on that. Are there any updates on that?
Rebecca Wyse: As you rightly said, the Government have committed to extending the reporting requirements to public bodies with budgets of £36 million, mandating the topics that those reports should cover, requiring the organisations to publish on the register, and introducing the financial penalties. As you will be aware, all those things require primary legislation. The Government set out their primary legislation priorities in the King’s Speech for the fourth Session, and this was not included.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: I spotted that.
Rebecca Wyse: Yes. It’s for Ministers to decide whether and when they will bring forward that legislation.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Did you say that there are 57 people in the modern slavery unit?
Rebecca Wyse: There are 53.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Sorry, 53. Do they have any input to push the Government, or Ministers, on that? Do they feel that would be a very significant tool to try to help stop modern slavery, or reduce it?
Joanna West: It is common in government departments that there is more legislation than parliamentary time allows for. We have put advice to Ministers on what we think the benefits of legislation would be, but we are also looking at what else we can do. It is important to stress that we are still making progress. We are looking at reviewing the statutory guidance for Section 54, which is important in lieu of primary legislation. We want to partner with an expert organisation to do that and to make it as useful as it can be. That is how we will channel the work and the efforts.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: It would be nice to have had the Department for Business and Trade, but it declined to appear. We will have further investigation later. What input or discussions have you, or your modern slavery unit, had with that department with regard to trade deals that are coming up, for example? I can see that they might have a view that we did not want to be too restrictive in making some of these deals. Would the Home Office have any input into that? Would there be any cross-working?
Joanna West: We do, yes. We work closely with the Department for Business and Trade to mitigate the risk of forced labour. Ultimately, the decision lies with the Department for Business and Trade, but certainly our teams work closely together and collaborate to ensure that modern slavery is taken account of.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Would you be able to say what advice you may have given them with regard to these trade deals, or is that sub judice?
Joanna West: I do not think we can say that, I am afraid.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: What does the Home Office do to look at transparency in its own supply chains?
Rebecca Wyse: I might set that out not just for the Home Office but for the Civil Service as a whole, if that is okay. We have quite a centralised commercial operation now that is run out of the Cabinet Office, so this will be true of all government departments. First, commercial staff across government have been trained in how to identify and address modern slavery risks in public procurement. The Procurement Act 2023 is a key part of the legislation picture here, and it provides us with the power to exclude suppliers where there is compelling evidence of modern slavery in their supply chains. I do not want to sound like I am resting on my laurels, but this is increasingly becoming business as usual for our commercial teams. We launched a modern slavery assessment tool in 2019, which helps public bodies to assess their supply base for modern slavery. That essentially asks questions of suppliers about their processes and enables people to make an informed decision.
The government contracts, when we are awarding them, will now include an assessment of the social value. That is worth 10% of the bid and includes modern slavery, so modern slavery is a material part of the decision-making when awarding public contracts now. We have the public procurement guidance, which is helping the commercial teams to manage modern slavery risks in existing contracts and new ones. Finally, we are working with some of the Five Eyes nations to share best practice and collectively increase the standards.
This stuff is hard to identify and address, and I would raise an eyebrow at any company that said it had this completely right. Therefore, although I think we are doing some good work here, government continues to push hard on this and to ensure that we are showing best practice. We are doing well, but I would not like to say that we are perfect.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Are you aware of any suppliers that have not been allowed because they did not fulfil the thing appropriately?
Rebecca Wyse: I do not have examples of that right now.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: Are you not aware?
Rebecca Wyse: I am not aware, no.
The Chair: Please follow up on that point if you do have that information.
Q22 Lord Watts: Most of my questions have been stolen by Lord Randall, but I will ask them in a different way, if I can. Why is it that our negotiators for trade deals are not involved in any way with the issues of anti-slavery or forced labour? Why are they not involved in it at all when they are negotiating trade deals?
Rebecca Wyse: Forgive me, but I suspect you would get a more detailed answer from the Department for Business and Trade, where those officials work.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge: We could if they came.
Rebecca Wyse: As I said, or as Joanna has said, we work closely with a range of cross-government partners, including the Department for Business and Trade. We seek to influence those trade deals in terms of the information that those negotiating the trade deals have, and what they are using as part of that. Another government department would be able to advise on that.
Lord Watts: Are the Government considering import laws, such as the US have, to block any trade with countries that do not abide by the international agreements?
Rebecca Wyse: Again, that will be a question for the Department for Business and Trade. I am not aware of anything in that space, but it would be able to give you a more comprehensive answer.
Baroness Butler-Sloss: Yes, but it is not here.
Lord Watts: Just so I am clear, in your discussions with other departments, you have raised the issue about trade deals and the importance of these matters being considered as part of a trade deal.
Rebecca Wyse: Yes.
Q23 Baroness Butler-Sloss: I was one of Lord Field’s review team in 2019. We are now five years on. Do you know what has been happening that the entirely voluntary aspects of Section 54 have not yet had any teeth to them?
Rebecca Wyse: They continue to be voluntary and, as I said, in order to put them on a statutory footing we would require primary legislation. As and when to do that is a call for Ministers.
Baroness Butler-Sloss: I gather that many companies comply with the annual reports, but a significant minority do not even say in an annual report that they have looked at modern slavery. Is that correct? I think it is. What, if anything, does the Home Office do to tell companies that they should at least be putting it in an annual report, or do you just leave it?
Rebecca Wyse: The registry has enabled us to identify businesses that have previously uploaded to it. We are upgrading the registry to enable us to remind businesses that they are due to upload their annual report and work with them in that way. We send out reminders, but we continue to do that on a voluntary basis.
Baroness Butler-Sloss: The register is excellent, if I may say so. I am delighted that you have done that, but you will, I hope, be pushing companies to say at the very least what they are doing, or not doing. Some companies report that they are not doing anything.
Joanna West: Yes. We try to work with the private sector, and we have the support of NGOs and academics in doing so. The other potentially interesting area is demand from consumers, and I am interested in what more we can do to raise awareness among the public. I am interested in the committee’s view on this, because there is consumer power here, and demand that transparency is available. We are working with them, but we are in lieu of primary legislation. We will look at updating the statutory guidance, which we hope to fully consult on quite widely, and will use what we have available to us before there is legislation.
Q24 Baroness Butler-Sloss: That is excellent. May I ask a different question? What work is being done with the private sector to encourage the improvement of supply chain management?
Joanna West: We engage with businesses to support best practice in supply chain management, and we encourage sectors to come together to share knowledge as experts in their field. We see some good examples of sharing best practice, which is an improvement on years ago, as competition has been set aside in order to do so. We have promoted the view of responsible business conduct.
Again, on reviewing the Section 54 guidance, we are keen that we use the right experts so that we can put the right hooks in there for the private sector. That will be an important piece of work.
Baroness Butler-Sloss: I was on the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Modern Slavery Act, and we had a lot of the big companies. My recollection is that we had Sainsbury’s and Primark, as examples. I wondered whether the Home Office had done any work with the big companies. They said they were pretty angry that other companies were not doing what they were doing, and they were very anxious to check on their supply chains to see what they could do. Are you doing any work with some of the big companies, the retail industry, or the CBI on this?
Rebecca Wyse: I would be interested in the committee’s view on what more we might be able to do in that space, because it is a very interesting and good challenge. Our approach to date has been largely to encourage a voluntary take-up of this, but also to empower consumers, human rights organisations and charities—whoever is interested—to make informed decisions and, hopefully, encourage businesses to be the best in class as a result of the decisions they are taking. We see consumers behaving in a more ethical way and taking decisions accordingly, and I am delighted to see a spotlight shone on some of these businesses.
Lord Hope of Craighead: My point has been dealt with by Baroness Butler-Sloss. Thank you.
Q25 Lord Kempsell: Is it clear which government department is the lead department for engaging with business on their compliance with the Act, or encouraging their strategic consideration of issues of modern slavery?
Joanna West: Yes. The Home Office leads in the main on transparency reporting and the requirements under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, and the Department for Business and Trade leads on overall relationship with UK businesses. If we were convening a big round table of businesses, I am certain we would do that in partnership with DBT. In other areas, it might be one or other of us having a bilateral conversation, but we would join that up and make sure that we were speaking to each other about those conversations.
Lord Kempsell: How is the plan of work within the modern slavery policy unit, which has 53 officials, allocated to engage with business if the Home Office is the lead department? How many officials speak to you? I am not asking for specifics. In general terms, what is the business engagement?
Joanna West: We have a small team that works on this who will liaise with either businesses or charities. They will also liaise closely with their counterparts in the Department for Business and Trade. We have been working up the programme in accordance with ministerial priorities, which will shift and flex, but there is a small team looking at this.
Lord Smith of Hindhead: Can you provide evidence of what they have been doing in recent months after this meeting?
Joanna West: I am sure that we can write on that.
Lord Smith of Hindhead: You are very kind, thank you.
Tom Surrey: Chair, would it be helpful for me to use the care sector as an example of how departments with a lead responsibility work with their sector partners?
The Chair: I wonder whether we could wrap that into our final question?
Q26 Lord Whitty: I will ask it then. There was some media publicity about problems of modern slavery in the care sector recently that will have shocked a number of people. It is a sector that depends heavily on immigrant labour of one sort or another, and the terms and conditions are a little difficult, particularly for those in the care sector who visit their clients at home and so on. The conditions are not clear.
Can you tell us how you, as a department, and the CQC identify problems? Of the cases taken by the CQC, did it feel that in this sector the conditions under which people are being employed were particularly exploitative for particular groups of workers, or does it suspect that there has been trafficking and that the recruitment of those workers is drawn from people who have been brought in by traffickers? Is it a bit of both? Perhaps you could give us your general view and the department’s take on it.
Tom Surrey: I would be very happy to do so. As I said earlier, we have seen a significant increase in the number of overseas workers coming into the care sector over the last year and we are very grateful for that. Part and parcel of changes to migration law have allowed those arrivals and ensured that their employers offer safe and secure employment in a legal way and do not exploit their workers.
In the Department of Health and Social Care we see our role in this space in two clear ways. First, we set policy and support the sector. It is important to recognise that there are around 18,000 independent employers in the social care sector, across profit and not-for-profit, and a small number in the public sector. We see our role as setting policy for them and supporting them to act well and legally within those roles.
Secondly, our function is to be as supportive, facilitative and good to work with for our colleagues in the Home Office as we can be. That includes our work with the enforcement agencies where we have live and ongoing arrangements on sharing intelligence and data with the department, with local government, which is the commissioner of social care, and with the enforcement agencies themselves. The primary vehicle for that—I am sure my colleagues may want to say more about it today or in other sessions—is Operation Topaz, which brings together all those enforcement agencies, local government and the department.
Across the health and social care visa route, which encompasses health roles employed in the NHS and, more recently, social care roles, we have published a code of practice for employers. We developed it closely with the Royal College of Nursing and trade unions operating in the sector, and it is intended to strengthen the guidance on issues to do with the use of repayment clauses in contracts and recruitment to be absolutely clear that the payment of recruitment fees is illegal in the sector.
Through the NHS employer’s website, we publish an ethical recruiters list of employment agencies that have agreed to operate within that code of practice. We have produced candidate guidance with our colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, alongside colleagues from the Home Office. Through this we work to disseminate through posts to embassies around the world and advise prospective employees on what they can expect before they arrive, what they should check in their contracts of employment and what their rights and expectations should be, and teach them and give them advice about how to recognise and deal with exploitation should they come across it.
Specifically within the social care sector, in this financial year we have provided £15 million of funding to local authorities to establish 15 regional hubs working with the Local Government Association and ADASS, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. They have provided webinars, advice for providers and individuals, and helplines, and have contracted with organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and Unseen to provide advice for employees who feel that they are at risk of exploitation, whether that is ultimately modern slavery or other exploitive practices in the workplace.
You will be aware that, on 4 December, the Home Secretary announced some changes to the Immigration Rules, some of which were very much intended to address what we had seen as emerging reports of poor practice in the sector. Those regulations are now in front of the House for consideration and are due to come into effect shortly. When they do, it will mean that only care providers who are registered with the Care Quality Commission will be able to apply for certificates of sponsorship and bring overseas workers in.
We have also worked closely with the UK Visas and Immigration agency in its application of what it calls the genuine vacancy test to make sure that work is truly available for people when they arrive in the UK.
That is what we are doing. As Ms Wyse and Ms West said at the very beginning of this section, we are dealing with a hidden and highly evolving crime. Therefore, we are adapting our approach at pace and working more closely with the sector. We will shortly publish a new toolkit that has been developed hand in glove with colleagues across Whitehall and in the care sector on ethical recruitment practice. This will enable care providers who wish to take advantage of access to overseas workers to do so in an ethically correct and proper way.
Hopefully, that answers some of your questions. You asked specifically about CQC, but I do not, I am afraid, have the information to hand. As I said earlier, they made four referrals in 2021-22 and 37 in 2022-23. I will ask whether we have those numbers broken down between legal employment and trafficked individuals, but I do not have that now.
Lord Whitty: It would be useful to see the basis of those charges and whether your department or local government are also taking cases, or considering taking cases, where abuse appears to have happened.
Tom Surrey: These are referrals made to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority for investigation. You need to ask it how many of those cases progressed to investigation and prosecution. Obviously, as the inspectors for the Care Quality Commission are inspecting on the basis of the quality of care being delivered in establishments, if they see instances that give them concern, they have the ability to share that intelligence and make those referrals. They also provide a whistleblowing service and an online toolkit that allow employees to report concerns directly to the CQC, which could trigger a risk-based inspection on their part.
Q27 The Chair: Thank you for describing the landscape. I am certain that lots of people are working hard. Nevertheless, we heard that 800 people in this sector were deemed to be victims of modern slavery last year. Something is going wrong. Whether it is enforcement over agencies and providers, or workers getting access to their rights, it would be helpful to have an honest assessment of where the gaps are, why workers are falling through those gaps, and what more could be done. I am conscious that unions such as Unison have asked for help in getting direct access to workers. We know there is plenty of evidence that access to unions help to stamp out exploitation, but it has not had a positive response. I just wonder what your assessment is of what is going wrong.
Tom Surrey: I do not recognise the 800 number. I am uncertain about the source of that. We saw around 700 referrals from Unseen last year. If you can provide the number, I will take it away and have a look at it.
As I mentioned, the care sector is an independent sector. There are 18,000 or so employers in that sector, and just over 15,000 are registered with the CQC as providers of personal care. The terms and conditions and salary of their employees are a matter for those employers at this stage. Unions are welcome to engage with those employers and, I know, do. We engage directly with Unison, Unite, TUC, and other unions as part of our wider engagement on workforce matters, which include a wider programme of reform. I will happily talk about that at length, but I am not certain that the committee will be that interested today. Terms and conditions of employment are a matter for those 18,000 employers.
Lord Whitty: Of those 18,000 employers, how many have explicitly recognised modern slavery obligations? My guess is very few.
Tom Surrey: That is not a number that I have to hand.
The Chair: Would it be possible to get that number?
Tom Surrey: Forgive my lack of understanding of the question, but what would recognising modern slavery look like?
Lord Whitty: We were saying earlier that several companies have recognised it in their reports and commitments. Of the 18,000 in the care sector, I suspect very few are sophisticated enough, frankly, to have recognised it formally in their own method of operation. Of those that have been referred to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, for example, has the GLAA found any indication that they recognised their obligation to check this out?
Tom Surrey: That is not data that I have available.
Lord Whitty: Does anybody have it?
Tom Surrey: I do not know whether my colleagues, through the register referred to earlier, would record whether those businesses are in the health and care sectors.
Joanna West: I was going to refer briefly to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. I believe you are seeing the chief executive of the GLAA in a week or so. It has live investigations in the care sector, and those allegations include potentially illegal contracts and threatening behaviour. This is a developing picture across government. It is something that we are monitoring closely. You will be hearing from enforcement bodies. It is worth saying that the National Crime Agency, the police and local authorities are also responding to issues. It is a developing issue that we are looking at.
The Chair: Would you have the figure on how many care providers have published a statement on modern slavery?
Rebecca Wyse: The providers would be obliged to publish that statement only if they have a turnover of £36 million or more. You will forgive me, but I am not au fait with the sector and how many would be encompassed in it, but I would be surprised if it is 18,000.
The Chair: That suggests that it might be a key vulnerability we may want to explore.
Lord Watts: You say that in the future all care homes will have to be registered, in a way they are not at present, in order to comply and be able to recruit from abroad. Will it be a requirement of that registration that they produce a document that sets out their view and their practices to comply with that register?
How many people are being prosecuted as a result of the action that is being taken by the Government? Is that an increase? Is it a flat level? Without enforcement, nothing happens. You might have policies in principle, but you must have enforcement. The consequence of enforcement is that eventually someone is caught. It seems, by the numbers we have heard, that it is still not a deterrent. There are not enough people getting caught to make it likely, so it is still in some employers’ benefit not to do the right thing because they are financially better off.
Tom Surrey: To answer your second question first, I would refer to the conversation we just had, in that the enforcement agencies will give evidence to this committee next week. It would be best to ask them about prosecution rates, et cetera.
To your first question, I would put it the other way around. It will become a requirement that you are registered in order to bring overseas workers into your employment. The requirement to be registered is a requirement of extant legislation involving the Care Quality Commission and the provision of personal care. That is not changing. We estimate that around 3,000 providers of care in its broadest definition are not registered with the Care Quality Commission. That is not because they do not wish to use overseas workers; it is because they do not provide personal care as defined by the Care Act 2014 and the CQC legislation, so they are not required to be registered. I would phrase it slightly differently: if they are currently employing overseas workers and they wish to continue, they may need to seek registration.
Lord Watts: Would that include a requirement to make it a policy?
Tom Surrey: I will happily undertake to write to you on that point. My understanding is not at this time.
Baroness Hamwee: My question has been covered adequately for the moment.
Q28 Baroness Barker: When I asked my previous question about who would uncover what was happening in the care sector, you kept saying “we”. I listened very closely all through your answer to discover who “we” was; who was becoming aware of this. It seemed that you were saying the CQC. What I am trying to dig at is who uncovers, who reports, who gains access, and how that reporting goes through.
Knowing the care sector as I do, the majority of the big providers, local authorities and so on, will all be covered by existing obligations under the law. There will be a very small number of small care providers and individual brokers and they are the people who perhaps will not. Given what you have said about responsibility for policy being in one part of the Home Office, responsibility for implementation being in another, and the Department for Business and Trade having a different set of responsibilities, how is the analysis undertaken as to who are the employers abusing the system?
It must become possible to do when cases finally work their way through. Who in government is responsible for putting that together so that the information goes back down the line to the enforcement agencies, where we begin to have a better idea in predicting where the abuse is going to happen before it does?
Tom Surrey: In the Department of Health and Social Care, we see our role in two ways. One is setting the policy for the care sector where we can and supporting employers and commissioners in local government where we can. That does not take away their statutory or legal responsibilities, and it does not mean that we are taking on their statutory responsibility or legal responsibilities.
The responsibility for enforcement sits with the enforcement agencies. It would be wrong for us to duplicate the work of those enforcement agencies. I have said that part of our second role is to make sure that we are as easy and good to work with as a department as we can be. Where we can facilitate the sharing of data or intelligence we do so, and we have a data-sharing protocol in place between us, UKVI, the CQC and local government. We also, as I mentioned earlier, have Operation Topaz, which is the formal intelligence sharing mechanism.
I do not know whether Ms Wyse or Ms West will be able to say more about formal responsibility for data, which was your point about a central reservoir for data across all sectors.
Rebecca Wyse: It is worth noting that the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the police, which I would expect to be involved in serious levels of criminality in this way, are also first responders and would refer people into the national referral mechanism where, at that point, one of the competent authorities would assess them as a potential victim of modern slavery. We get a significant amount of our data from this process, as the committee has heard today. That is probably where a lot of our information would come from, and we would then join that up across government, as Mr Surrey and others have set out in their evidence.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold: This is a quick comment, and I will leave my question until we see the gangmasters. I would just remark that the CQC, in the knowledge of many people here, is massively overstretched and has huge amounts to do. When we have the GLAA here, I will ask it whether it is up to it, not because it is not competent but because I want to know whether it has the capacity. I do not need you to answer that now, because we have the opportunity next week, but it is an issue.
The Chair: Thank you very much indeed. On behalf of the committee, can I thank all our witnesses for their contributions today? Thank you in advance for the follow-up notes kindly and very liberally offered to be sent to us.
