Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how victims of modern slavery are monitored in respect of ongoing safeguarding after referral to the National Referral Mechanism; and how many victims of modern slavery have been reported as continuing to be trafficked in the last 12 months.

Adults who enter the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) can receive specialist and tailored support through the Victim Care Contract. This can include accommodation, financial support and assistance in accessing mental and physical health care

We ensure victims are safeguarded through robust contract management. The prime contractor for the Victim Care Contract, The Salvation Army, is responsible for ensuring that all subcontracted provision meets the needs of victims. The Salvation Army conducts regular safeguarding reviews and it has a duty to escalate to the Home Office any safeguarding concerns that it finds.

In October 2017, the Government announced an ambitious package of reforms to the NRM. As part of that package, we are introducing an inspection regime for accommodation provided through the Victim Care Contract. This will ensure that victims of modern slavery are effectively safeguarded while in the NRM. We are working with the Care and Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England, to develop this regime which will be embedded in the new Victim Care Contract

The Government is unable to provide an accurate figure for the number of confirmed victims who have been re-trafficked after leaving the National Referral Mechanism.

We are working with the National Crime Agency to improve our ability to identify potential re-trafficking cases. Our reforms to introduce a new digital referral process will also improve our ability to identify re-trafficking, as it will increase our knowledge of victims of modern slavery and enable us to capture and analyse data to better aid prevention and law enforcement activity. The digital referral form has already been launched for closed-beta testing with a group of First Responders and it will go live at the end of the summer.