Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of National Referral Mechanism referrals receive negative Reasonable Grounds decisions for (a) people in immigration detention and (b) people outside of immigration detention.

The Home Office publishes quarterly statistics regarding the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-referral-mechanism-statistics-quarter-2-2019-april-to-june and the UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2019-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery

This information does not distinguish between 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 immigration detention is not permanent and can change. The use of immigration detention in all cases is subject to regular reviews.

Requests for reconsideration of negative reasonable grounds decisions are taken in line with the published policy which can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/828756/victims-modern-slavery-competent-auth-v8.0.pdf

Where an individual considers that a National Referral Mechanism decision has been made incorrectly, the decision can be challenged by way of Judicial Review.

It is not possible to distinguish solely from reportable database fields without a manual review of individual records the number of requests for reconsideration that were rejected because they were not in line with policy, the number of requests for reconsideration that were refused due to insufficient grounds for reconsideration. It is also not possible to distinguish solely from reportable database fields whether a reconsideration case type was the result of a reconsideration request as defined in the published policy, the result of litigation including judicial review or the result of the reconsideration of a suspended case.