Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of granting asylum seekers who are victims of modern slavery a minimum of one year of leave to remain in the UK to support their long term recovery.

The UK’s policy for confirmed victims of modern slavery is to consider granting discretionary leave to remain on a case-by-case basis, based on the individual’s circumstances. The published policy can be found on gov.uk Discretionary leave for victims of modern slavery casework guidance (publishing.service.gov.uk) and gives a number of examples in which a grant of discretionary leave is appropriate.

Confirmed victims of modern slavery who are also asylum seekers are eligible for a grant of leave under the same policy, but this usually only needs to be considered if the asylum claim is refused.

As part of the New Plan for Immigration announced on 24 March 2021, we are consulting on a proposal that confirmed victims with long-term recovery needs linked to their modern slavery exploitation can be considered for a grant of temporary leave to remain to assist their recovery. This builds on our end-to-end needs-based approach to supporting victims. We also make clear that temporary leave to remain may be available to victims who are helping the police with prosecutions and bringing their exploiters to justice.