Modern Slavery Act 2015: 10th Anniversary

Julie Minns Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), both for securing this debate and for her legacy in this field. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, her ongoing commitment to the issue is palpable, and I look forward to working with her on it in the years ahead.

We are 10 years on from the Modern Slavery Act. While I am not in the habit of praising the Home Office under the previous Conservative Government, I am not so nakedly partisan that I cannot break that habit on this occasion. It is true that the UK’s Modern Slavery Act was world leading. Its Scottish counterpart, the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015, which is also 10 years old this year, was equally groundbreaking. While we recognise that, we must also admit that although the Act took us two steps forward, we have undoubtedly gone one step back.

The terms “modern slavery” and “human trafficking” strike fear into our hearts and capture our attention. They sound like the stuff of a TV drama, and frequently they do involve the most horrific, vivid crimes in society and the worst of humanity, but we must not let that fool us into thinking that modern slavery only happens at the extremes, or only in the big metropolitan city far from us—it happens everywhere, in every community and every constituency. As we have heard from several hon. Members today, it affects men as well as women; its victims are children as well as adults; it affects British people as much as foreign nationals, and indeed more than foreign nationals; and it is labour exploitation as much as it is sexual exploitation.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

On my hon. Friend’s point about modern slavery happening everywhere, Carlisle is the most northerly city in England. On 3 October 2018, officers from Cumbria police, the National Crime Agency, and investigators from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority freed a man who had been kept in captivity on the outskirts of Carlisle for 40 years. He was vulnerable because of his learning disability, and had variously “lived”—been kept—in a horse box and in a disused caravan. When he was found, he was in a damp, rotten garden shed with neither heating nor lighting. The window did not close, the water poured through the door, and his makeshift bed was congealed with vomit.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that someone could be kept in such a circumstance for 40 years on the outskirts of one of England’s cities should shame us all, and that we should recommit ourselves to ensuring that every single person who might still be in that circumstance is found and freed in the same way that that gentleman was?