Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee Report

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as a trustee of Safer London, which supports young people at risk of exploitation.

Recently, a flat in my leafy London suburb was cleared out, with large, apparently industrial items being chucked out of an upstairs window. Later, I heard it had been a cannabis farm—to respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said. This caused a small stir, but no one seemed to be curious or concerned about who had been working there. Then, a local councillor told me that she had dealt with three cases of cuckooing in rapid succession. It does happen here.

Slavery needs to be taken seriously and to be on everyone’s radar, including the radar of law enforcement and service providers. Anyone can come across it. The first issue is to recognise it, because victims, for a range of reasons, may not be able to speak. There are parallels with the response, or failure to respond, to domestic violence.

Is the Home Office, which is largely focused on law enforcement, the right department? Could it not focus more on support and recovery? Our committee and Members who have spoken today referred to the conflation of slavery and irregular migration, and the Home Office seems to be focused still on immigration numbers. Immigration trumps slavery, in practice.

The fair work agency is to be an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade. I sought a word for what the committee was, and I have written down that it was “unconvinced” that this department understands the nuances. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, has spoken very firmly and clearly on this and on other issues, and my noble friend Lady Barker issued an important challenge to the department. I hope it keeps modern slavery in mind when it negotiates trade agreements, including with the US.

Members have spoken about the confusion between trafficking and smuggling, and about assertions, which have not been shown to be more than assertions, of widespread fraudulent claims. Enforcement of the criminal law is quite inadequate—it is painfully slow, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Smith.

All this and more indicates a need to reverse the rollbacks on modern slavery protection—protection that is required by human rights law and international obligations—and to revise legislation, and more than just the border security Bill. Like the noble and learned Baroness, I emphasise that there is a need to revise guidance that reflects the culture of disbelief. The language matters; it affects public attitudes. A “threat to public order”? Victims must be identified both for their own sake and for investigation, prosecution and conviction, although it is not actually necessary for a victim to co-operate for them to be entitled to protection.

I applaud the work of individuals and organisations in the third sector who deal with victims of exploitation that is often beyond imagining. I could talk about the need for training, including in hard-pressed local authorities, to help identify it, but I will just say that I am struck by the call for co-ordinators or SPOCs—single points of contact—in each authority. Authorities have not received new burdens funding to tackle slavery or to support victims. Above all, I applaud survivors who are prepared to speak. They are experts and their evidence is invaluable.

The issues are big, wide and deep. They were too big for a time-limited committee, and I am not doing justice to the committee’s work. It benefited particularly from the clear focus of our chair, the work of the staff and our adviser, and the evidence of our witnesses, including survivors.

We are hearing a lot this week that the world has moved on. In a different context it has, with new forms of exploitation being deployed—there is another debate to be had about whether new definitions are needed—and new cohorts of people being exploited. County lines is just one example, and care workers are being treated as agricultural workers have been for far too long. The RCN reports receiving more than 100 calls a week from nurses saying they are being mistreated. It is shaming if we cannot—or do not—protect the people we recruit to care for us. The rules may also badly let down clients who need care.

Some new forms of exploitation may come to light, and some may still fail to get attention; my noble friend Lady Barker mentioned the fishing industry. Some may change, and some may not. In 2015 we did not achieve nearly enough for overseas domestic workers, and care workers are now exploited in similar ways because of the restriction on switching sponsors, just as overseas domestic workers were and are.

All exploitation is about money, so the calls for upping skills to follow the money, using financial investigation officers, are important, as is making more use of the tools available, especially civil risk and prevention orders. I believe plans were announced two or three years ago to strengthen the legislation, perhaps to apply these orders to defendants on remand, but that has not happened. We had evidence that their use is patchy, with different police forces having variable awareness of them.

On people as well as tools, what is happening with independent child trafficking guardians? Victim navigators, who have just been mentioned, have been described as game-changers, providing information about what support is available—I had not thought about criminal injuries compensation. The support, such as housing, is not always available. Housing is more than a roof—it is safety and stability. Navigators embody what is essential: respect for survivors.

There are more structural issues. A concrete point about better cross-governmental working—the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, referred to the confusing landscape —was made by the National Audit Office in its recent report on skilled worker visas. On data sharing between departments, the Home Office and HMRC are now sharing data on salaries and working hours but not enough to allow the Home Office to identify non-compliance. Robust data and independent research and evidence are essential. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, who always calls a spade a spade, talked importantly about responsibility and accountability.

Another suggestion is extending the list of non-statutory first responders for the purposes of referral to the national referral mechanism. They have a pretty good success rate with decisions, certainly better than statutory responders. It seems, though, that more training is needed for first responders in interview techniques, for instance. No one would deny that time in the NRM is, at best, time in limbo, with a real risk of retrafficking. We should not have the situation of large numbers of people identified as possible victims by statutory authorities then declining referral to the NRM; why?

Knowledge of the Section 45 statutory defence for victims who commit an offence seems inadequate. There is a lack of legal advice and expertise, which means guilty pleas when they should not have been entered. The offences within the section are limited; indeed, logically, all offences should come within it.

Inevitably, one omits so much in a debate such as this.

The Government—every Government—say in response to amendments to previous legislation, “We keep all legislation under review”. The Government say the same in their response to our report, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, in parts is really rather thin. There is no shortage of careful, well-researched thought and ideas, including from good employers, to bring us up to date in both legislation and practice.

On Wednesday I met some young people who, as children, had been trafficked. Their resilience and achievements were truly impressive. At a clinical, impersonal level, we waste people’s keenness to contribute—“contribute” is a word we often hear—and their experience of the processes is too often itself damaging. Of the process, one said, “I spent two years in my room waiting for a miracle”. Another, still waiting for a decision, said, “I am wasting years of my life”—in fact, it is almost a decade in his case—“waiting for just one decision”.