Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department plans to create a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation.

The Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 considered the definition of exploitation under the Act and found it is sufficiently flexible to meet a range of new and emerging forms of modern slavery.

The Government welcomes this finding and continues to work with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to take full advantage of powers in the Modern Slavery Act. We note that there have been recent prosecutions under the Modern Slavery Act for cases of child criminal exploitation. The Government Response to the Independent Review was published on 9 July and is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-response-to-the-independent-review-of-the-modern-slavery-act

In addition, there is an existing, published definition of child criminal exploitation in the Serious Violence Strategy. The strategy is available here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/698009/serious-violence-strategy.pdf