Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether their department plans to collect and publish data on the number of modern slavery and human trafficking police investigations, after this is no longer done by the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Unit.

The Department has been working closely with the Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Unit (MSOICU) to review the programme’s functions and agree contingency arrangements to ensure key functions are preserved following the programme’s closure. This includes the collection of modern slavery police investigation data.

The current investigations data only provides a partial and incomplete picture, as not all forces submit returns. Once in post, we will work with the new National Police Chiefs Council lead to consider the most effective approach to collecting consistent data on modern slavery investigations in the future.

As part of the wider police reforms, national strategic policing priorities will be developed to improve policing standards and performance. The Home Office will consider how modern slavery measures and data collection can be reflected within these.

We will continue to draw on data already collected by the Home Office, Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice, including data on recorded offences and criminal justice outcomes, to support our understanding of modern slavery trends and performance.