Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on how many occasions the Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Modern Slavery met in (a) 2013, (b) 2014 and (c) 2015; who attended each such meeting; and in what ways that group is fulfilling the role of the national rapporteur.

The Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group (IDMG) on Modern Slavery met twice in each of the years 2013, 2014 and 2015.

In addition to these formal meetings of the IDMG group, on 17 October 2014 the Prime Minister, The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, also chaired a roundtable IDMG event as part of a programme of activity to mark the 2014 anti-slavery day.

This group fulfils the role of the UK’s national rapporteur equivalent mechanism, as set out in Article 19 of the EU directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings, by carrying out assessments of trends in trafficking, gathering statistics, measuring the results of anti-trafficking actions, and regularly reporting on the above.

IDMG reports are available on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/modern-slavery-inter-departmental-ministerial-group-publications. The most recent report was published on 21 October 2015.

Each report includes a list of all current members of the IDMG. Ministers from relevant Government departments are invited to attend meetings. Where they are unable to attend, they are asked to delegate attendance to senior officials.