Written evidence submitted by the APPG on Trafficking and Slavery (MSA0117)
Submission to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry on Slavery
The APPG on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, with cross-party membership of MPs and Peers, meets to provide a forum for discussion as to the nature and scale of modern slavery in the UK and a forum for NGOs and those working with victims to be heard in parliament. The Group played a major role in pushing for and shaping the Modern Slavery Act and now seeks to ensure that the Act is effectively implemented, meeting regularly, and participating in meetings with parliamentarians addressing these issues abroad, to discuss issues relating to the protection and support of victims and prosecution of their traffickers.
The Officers of the APPG are:
Anthony Steen CBE is special adviser to the APPG and the Human Trafficking Foundation provides the Secretariat to the group.
Data collection
There needs to be a much better, evidence based, picture of slavery in the UK. The APPG conducted an inquiry into Data in 2014 under the former Co- Chair Fiona Mactaggart and Baroness Butler- Sloss and found that:
Accurate data is required to see the whole picture, which is hard to do in the murky underworld of modern slavery. Agencies do not need to have conclusive statistics provided by a single source before making modern slavery a priority or taking immediate action to protect any individual from harm, but improving information and statistics will improve the prospects of tackling this crime effectively.
Our report explained the importance of collecting and managing data on outcomes for the victims of this crime and those working to combat it:
Identifying characteristics of these crimes is vital for improving case management, better co-ordination, improving outcomes for victims, improving confidence in the criminal justice system and greater accountability. Evidence highlighted the need to improve risk assessment processes and to improve how services access vulnerable people before they become victims of exploitation. To do that requires the engagement of a wider range of agencies and greater interrogation of the data that is currently collected for other purposes and to look at that data through the lens of modern slavery.
Over four years later there has been little improvement in the collection and management of data. The National Audit Office Report ‘Reducing Slavery’ (Dec 2017) found that:
Many of these concerns relate to collection, management and use of data and that need for monitoring and inspection frameworks.
Information going into the system
Many First Responders have received no training and are making referrals under conditions in which people are very unlikely to disclose particularly sensitive or traumatic abuse (detention centres, pop up reception centres). Without an improvement on data going into the system the proposed ‘digitalisation’ of the NRM will not lead to an improvement.
Outcomes for victims
There is little transparency as to what happens to people who may have been trafficked. The NCA produces information on ‘potential victims’ and the identification decisions made but we have nothing to show what happens to victims beyond this. With safe house accommodation, case work support and subsistence payments ending dramatically for the majority of victims without a care and rehabilitation plan in place there is every likelihood that they will return to exploitation. There are no figures available as to how many victims are referred for medical assistance, legal advice, employment or into education, to the police to report the crimes against them, nor how many have been awarded compensation. The last available figures available for the issuing of residence permits to victims with a positive Conclusive Grounds decision was 12% of victims with a positive decision in 2015.[1] In February 2018 the PK Ghana judgment found the guidance in place for the issuing of residence permits to victims of trafficking not to be compliant with the Council of Europe Convention for Action against Trafficking in Human Beings as it placed too high a bar on ‘personal circumstances’.
The APPG has learnt from organisations working to provide long term opportunities for victims. These include the Coop, which offers employment opportunities through its ‘Bright Future’ project, The Snowdrop Project, which offers individual needs based support and the Sophie Hayes Foundation which works with business to offer education and employment opportunities. It is clear to us that people who have been trafficked or victims of slavery have needs which vary significantly and there needs to be a range of responses. The APPG recommends the creation of standardised system in which survivors of trafficking are prioritised by both NASS and the local council for suitable accommodation in their local area; there is continuation of specialist care, support and advocacy; and that the finding of trafficking carries status such as a year’s residence permit.
Transparency
It has been difficult for the APPG to obtain basic information on fundamental aspects of victim care in spite of a numerous written questions. In October 2017, at a back bench debate sponsored by the APPG, the Minister on behalf of government, announced several reforms to the NRM. Included in these was ‘Aligning subsistence rates provided to victims of modern slavery to those received by asylum seekers’. We have been being contacted by many working to support victims about the implications of this alignment, which we understand to be a cut of almost 40% in income. It has been difficult to establish exactly what victims in government funded safe houses currently receive and will receive in the future in terms of subsistence and material support. We do not understand how, if we as parliamentarians, find it difficult to fully establish the terms of support victims will receive how victims entering the NRM are able to have sufficient understanding to give informed consent, or those running the system are able to be certain that it meets victims’ needs adequately.
Standards of victim care
The APPG welcomes the Minister’s commitment, made in October 2017, to adopt the Human Trafficking Foundation’s Trafficking Survivor Care Standards. The implementation of these standards in the next Victim Care Contract, together with clear monitoring and an independent inspection regime, is critical to ensure that victims who enter the NRM are able to access their support entitlements during the support period. We need confirmation from the Home Office that the Human Trafficking Foundation’s Slavery and Trafficking Survivor Care Standards (2018) will be implemented in full.
Sections 49 and 50, Modern Slavery Act
Section 49 of the Modern Slavery Act allows for guidance about identifying and supporting victims. Section 50 provides for Regulations about identifying and supporting victims. Three years later following the enactment of the Modern Slavery Act neither the regulations nor guidance on a matter as significant as victim support are in place.
We recommend that priority is given to ensuring that the regulations and guidance for the Act are implemented. This must be done in consultation with experts from across the sectors working to identify and provide support to victims.
Accountability
The APPG is concerned at the number of gaps for victims to fall between. We are concerned at the low number of local authorities identifying victims and referring into the NRM. According to NCA statistics for example, in 2017 London Local authorities made only 243 of the 1608 referrals received by the Metropolitan Police.[2] The system needs to be mainstreamed and fit within wider care pathways. As well as improving identification and support this would help to address the so called ‘cliff edge’ when NRM support ends.
Prosecutions
Prosecutions and convictions for modern slavery offenses remain low, the NAO Reducing Modern Slavery report (2017) found that “There have been few prosecutions and convictions for modern slavery offences.”
According to the CPS Modern Slavery Report 2017-18, while there was a slight increase in convictions in 2017-18 at 185 convictions (up from 181 in 2016-17), prosecutions fell from 295 to 284. We continue to hear of low levels of investigations. With 665 positive final stage, or ‘Conclusive Grounds’ trafficking decision during 2017 we would expect to see far higher number of prosecutions. We are concerned that this low number may be linked to the lack of support provided to victims and witnesses within the process. In one case for example a victim who was one of the few of the case’s survivors to testify in court where the trafficker was convicted, was left destitute and is believed to have been re-trafficked.[3]
The APPG recommends that efforts are made to improve care of and security for victims in order that fewer victims disappear or are too fearful to give evidence as witnesses.
Compensation
There is little information around compensation awards made to victims of slavery but it is clear that too few of those convicted of this heinous crime actually repay their victims. Even in the few cases where a claim is successful, the traffickers have been removed from this country and the administration are unable to get their hands on it. If money is secured there is no guarantee it will go directly to the victims. If they received compensation awards it would allow them to rebuild their lives. Addressing this must be a priority if we are to make trafficking a less attractive prospect for criminals and to provide those who have suffered in this way some recompense and opportunity to rebuild some of what they have lost. It may also be worth looking at the possibility of freezing orders of traffickers assets in the Civil Court before arrest so as to prevent the immediate removal of their assets from the country.
Barriers to winning compensation
- Civil Claims against Traffickers (employment tribunal): section 47 of the Modern Slavery Act allows victims of trafficking to access legal aid in order to bring claims against their traffickers to reclaim their unpaid wages for the time in which they were exploited. However, the Legal Aid Agency has allocated such compensation claims as ‘miscellaneous work’ carried out by firms with a legal aid contract, limiting them to around 15 of these cases a year. This makes it very hard for firms to specialise and build up expertise in these claims and for victims to find a specialist representative with capacity to take their claim.
- The time limit of 2 years for reclaiming unpaid wages also prevents victims who have been exploited for more than 2 years reclaiming the full amount to which they ought to be entitled. The HAC should examine the ways in which countries such as Italy succeed in seizing assets of criminals. The APPG understands that in the Netherlands the state pays the victim immediately whatever they are awarded from the trafficker and then the onus is on the state to pursue the criminal’s funds.
- Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority: These claims are not covered by legal aid. Victims have to make these claims themselves or hope their support worker will help. If there hasn’t been a criminal conviction of a trafficker for a violent crime CICA is unlikely to fit as it doesn’t cover psychological damage and control. These claims often take years and amounts awarded are very low. For example they are unlikely to compensate for loss of earnings.
- Reparation Orders: To date, no reparation orders have been made under the MSA. Before the Modern Slavery Act; between 2004 and 2014, 211 persons were found guilty of crimes of human trafficking (both for sexual and nonsexual exploitation) and slavery, servitude and forced labour. However, only 8 compensation orders were made with regard to those crimes during the same 11-year period, amounting to a total of just over £70,000.
- Lack of a tort of trafficking: the absence of this legal remedy means that survivors need to look to other areas of law in order to claim compensation, such as employment or discrimination law, which require complex legal arguments. Creating a tort of trafficking would simplify the process of claiming compensation.
Barriers to enforcement
- The case of R(Tirkey) highlights that even when survivors are awarded issues around enforcement mean that they may not receive any payment. In that case, the survivor was awarded £266,536.14 in the Employment Tribunal. However, before the decision was enforced the traffickers moved their assets. £35,702.80 was extracted from the traffickers, all of which went to repay the costs of the Legal Aid Agency and the survivor received nothing. There is no legal aid for enforcement work. This case demonstrates the urgent need for a review as to when the assets of those charged with trafficking offenses can be frozen.
Children
Whereas many concerns with regards to adults who are trafficked are around their removal from mainstream support systems professionals who support children are frequently unclear as to how a referral into the NRM is in a child’s best interest. Other than in the Child Trafficking Advocates early adopter sites there is no specialist provision or support for trafficked children. Services within councils are entirely responsible for trafficked children. There is no national coordination which means that there is no provision for children who are referred into the NRM to be moved out of areas where they may be at risk from traffickers. Professionals who support children fear that the potential risks of an NRM referral to a child may outweigh any benefits; a negative NRM decision risks damaging their credibility and may affect an immigration or asylum claim; the questioning through the NRM is likely to be traumatic and difficult to justify if there are no clear benefits to the child which will result in entering the NRM or from a positive decision. It is very important therefore that the NRM fully reflects in all its processes and procedures the child protection nature of trafficking. Local authorities children`s services need to be guided and supported to implement a system of specialist trafficking care for child victims of trafficking.
As children turn 18 they can fall between the gaps of the child and adult systems. There has been recent coverage (REF) of trafficked children being removed from the UK when they turn 18 in spite of them being still young and vulnerable, in some cases having not lived in the country to which they are being returned for many years and which they left as a victim of trafficking. Under such circumstances, without the situation which led to their exploitation having been addressed it is highly likely these young adults will be re-exploited on leaving the UK where they have begun to rebuild their lives. It is clear that there needs to be a durable solution for trafficked children beyond the age of 18 and that the system for caring for trafficked children needs to be streamlined.
County Lines
The APPG met with the mother of a survivor of county lines and two experts within the police and was concerned to learn that British children in county lines are experiencing terrible abuse and yet are often criminalised rather than safeguarded when identified. We were told the following: that the peer led dynamics of drug supply chains and evidential thresholds required for modern slavery convictions, as well as the continued necessity of bringing criminal charges, creates a latent tension. The challenge therefore for legislators, the police and the criminal justice system is in disentangling this and determining accurately who are perpetrators and who are victims. The spread of county lines across the UK poses a dilemma to statutory bodies whose responses are fragmented and in many cases disparate and this needs to be resolved – joined up working, information sharing and creating the infrastructure to do that is key. Also further investigation is necessary in respect of utilising a similar concept to doli incapax in respect of the scheduled offences under the MSA. This may have the effect of shifting the police investigation away from the child and onto perpetrators
Transparency in Supply Chains
Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act has been welcomed by some businesses, determined to lead the way in eradicating slavery from their supply chains. The concern that the legislation relies on good will remains. Companies which are not public facing and unlikely to come under consumer scrutiny have no incentive to do more than minimal compliance. There is no body enforcing or actively investigating compliance. Compliance should not rely on consumer pressure and anyway it is challenging, under the current structure, for consumers to measure the performance of companies as there is no ranking or clear structure for measuring what companies are or are not doing other than what they write in their statements.
An Act of Parliament requires effective implementation and there must be proper provision for monitoring and compliance. The APPG believes that there should be a proper centralised website to which companies are required to send their statements. We believe ALSO that Section 414C (7) iii of the Companies Act should be amended to require an annual statement on Human Rights AND MODERN SLAVERY.
Commissioner
In conclusion we recognise the determination of all to tackle this modern scourge and the progress that has been made. We strongly welcome the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry and that of others into Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking as we must be ever more effective in what we do alongside an ongoing sense of real urgency.
[1] Evidence from Sarah Newton MP to the Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry into Modern Slavery
[2] National Referral Mechanism Statistics. End of Year Summary 2017. NCA