Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many suspected victims of human trafficking have been held in immigration detention since 2015.

The Home Office record the number of all individuals referred to the Na-tional Referral Mechanism (NRM) and this information is published Quarter-ly by the National Crime Agency. This information does not distinguish be-tween those detained under immigration powers and those living in the community. The reason for this is two-fold, firstly because the NRM referral is not an immigration route by which individuals should regularise their stay in the United Kingdom and, secondly, because a person’s status in immi-gration detention is not permanent and can change.

The use of immigration detention in all cases is subject to regular reviews and consequently a change in circumstance may result in a different con-sideration. It is quite possible that an immigration detainee is referred to the National Referral Mechanism during a detention period and is released into the community at any point during that process.