Immigration and Asylum Bill

Tom Collins Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

I have been campaigning on modern slavery for over 20 years. Back when I started, most modern slavery in the UK was sexual exploitation, and let me be clear that it was of girls. I put myself in the shoes of a parent whose child was in another country, suffering unimaginable abuse and exploitation. I realised that I would pray every night for someone in that country not to rest until my child was rescued. I realised that I had to be that person in this country, and I brought that sentiment with me to Parliament.

The Government have taken some good steps to tackle modern slavery by breaking down the criminal gangs and international organised networks behind small boats, starting to open up more safe and legal routes, and clearing the operational backlog of immigration cases. That is good, but if there is diminishing consideration of cases in which people do not disclose that they were victims of modern slavery straight away, or in which the victims had carried out criminal activity, that goes against the very basic, fundamental, “modern slavery 101” principles of how to tackle modern slavery. Recognising who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, and recognising the effects of trauma, were great accomplishments of the Modern Slavery Act, but I fear that there is now a risk that we will start to see tackling illegal immigration and tackling modern slavery as being in conflict or in tension, when in fact they are entirely aligned.

The Secretary of State raised some powerful examples, but they are examples of decision making that was clearly bureaucratic, detached and lacking professional judgement. I echo the comment by the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) that disclosure does not automatically mean a referral under the national referral mechanism. We should be fixing those operational problems. We should be fixing the system, rather than hoping that changing the law will suddenly result in it making better decisions. In fact, I would say that deploying that approach—right the way down to policing and through our multi-agency response to modern slavery in local areas—is a job still to be done, even since we introduced the Modern Slavery Act.

We should not be going backwards. We should be surging and pushing forwards to eradicate modern slavery in the UK. If we were to do that, we would find that much of what concerns our communities about illegal immigration would be solved. We must tackle modern slavery head-on. We must strengthen our systems, which are failing at an operational level in their design, decision making and implementation, and we must bring in good governance. For that reason, I really welcome the further discussions with the Government following today to improve this Bill.