Modern Slavery Act 2015: 10th Anniversary

Katie Lam Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

On Tuesday 8 July 2014, the then Home Secretary and later Prime Minister, and now the right honourable Baroness May of Maidenhead, stood at the Dispatch Box to present the Modern Slavery Bill, as it was then, on its Second Reading. She spoke powerfully of those

“tricked and coerced into a horrendous life of servitude and abuse: women forced into prostitution, raped repeatedly, and denied their liberty; children groomed and sexually exploited for profit; vulnerable men conned into brutal and inhumane work in fields, in factories and on fishing vessels; people forced into a life of crime;”.

She talked of sexual violence, beatings, humiliation, hunger and mental torture. As she rightly said that day, modern slavery

“is an affront not just to those it affects, but to the collective human dignity of all of us.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 166.]

The way that some people treat and exploit their fellow human beings is, sadly, nothing short of disgusting, and such behaviour has no place in Britain. Those were not just words. She acted, too, bringing forward this legislation—the first of its kind in Europe—which received Royal Assent a decade and a day ago today.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) on securing this debate today. She has a long and proud history of campaigning on this issue. Indeed, she was the Home Office Minister for preventing abuse, exploitation and crime at the time of the passage of this Bill and has done considerable work, including with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, on stamping out this revolting practice. Now, of course, she continues to put her expertise and dedication to protecting the vulnerable to excellent use as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

My right hon. Friend makes some powerful points about the need to keep this legislation world-leading, as she has done repeatedly in this House and elsewhere. She speaks, for example, of orphanage trafficking and the work that has been done in Australia to tackle it. It is horrifying that an estimated 80% of children living in the world’s orphanages have at least one living parent but have been separated from their families, sometimes forcibly, to be exploited and used to raise money for corrupt orphanage directors. I imagine the Minister, who is also known for her commitment to the victims of these appalling crimes, will want to work with her to ensure that our laws protect the vulnerable as well as they possibly can.

I would like to pay tribute to Baroness May, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands, and to former members of this House who campaigned on this issue, including, but not limited to, Anthony Steen, Baron Randall and the late Frank Field. I thank everyone who has contributed to today’s debate.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) spoke authoritatively and movingly about the deeply upsetting plight of the Uyghur people and the role that slavery shamefully plays in that. I am happy to take this opportunity to reassure him that he is neither tired nor showing his age, but his points about the need to keep our laws up to date were well made.

The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) does great credit to the proud history of his constituency in fighting the evil of slavery. He was right to speak of the complexities of the British state and the challenges that they pose in tackling modern slavery. In the same vein, the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) was right to mention the need for co-ordination across Government and the role that local authority empowerment and responsibility can play in that.

The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns)—I hope she will not mind if I take a moment to admire her jacket—asked about decision reviews and visa flexibility. She and I have somewhat different views on those subjects, but I am sure that the Minister will address her questions. The hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) spoke of the shocking role that the vile drugs trade can have in trapping our young people into cycles of vicious exploitation, and the horrors of forced prostitution—a form of institutionalised rape.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) was gracious in his acknowledgement of the hard work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands and the previous Government. He should be proud of his work to prevent human, including child, trafficking.

Finally, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) touched on several of the points that we have heard this afternoon, including the exploitation of young boys, and rightly reminded us again of our long history of kindness as a country.

As we reflect on the Modern Slavery Act and its impact, we must ensure that our national compassion and generosity is not exploited by the cynical and the sinister. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) has said, the Modern Slavery Act’s noble intentions are sometimes sadly abused by foreign criminals, who rely on suspect claims under the Act to avoid deportation. He has talked of cases that he witnessed at the Home Office of immigration lawyers submitting

“copy-and-paste claims for different clients”

with no attempts made to change the details. He has discussed how, in many instances, very little proof is needed, allowing illegal migrants and foreign criminals to offer plausible-sounding stories in lieu of real evidence. That applies even in cases where migrants have previously explicitly denied that they were victims of modern slavery.

The number of modern slavery claims has gone from around 3,000 in 2015 to over 19,000 in 2025. Three quarters of those making claims are not UK citizens. The most frequent referral route for modern slavery claims is now through the immigration system. By the end of 2022, of those migrants who arrived illegally in the UK by small boat each year and were subsequently detained for return, between half and three quarters were claiming to be victims of modern slavery. In 2023, it was reported that 1,068 Albanian convicts living in Britain were awaiting deportation, among them sexual predators, violent thugs and drug dealers. Of the group, nearly a third—345—actively claimed to be modern slaves, hoping to escape removal.

The abuse of the Modern Slavery Act, where it does happen, is not just a perversion of the Act’s noble intentions but an insult to this country’s compassion and a deplorable diversion of vital resources from real victims. We must set an appropriate threshold for supporting evidence to ensure that the system rightly prioritises the true victims, rather than struggling under the weight of claims designed to frustrate immigration proceedings. Many of the claims made under the Modern Slavery Act are genuine pleas for help from those in the most frightening and shocking situations of abuse. We must ensure that the Act is kept up to date to protect them.