Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many child victims of modern slavery offences involving child criminal exploitation have been flagged on the police national computer in each of the last three years.

Statistics on referrals to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the UK’s system for support and identification of victims of modern slavery, are published on a quarterly basis. The latest statistics which cover Quarter 3, July – September 2021 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/modern-slavery-national-referral-mechanism-and-duty-to-notify-statistics-uk-quarter-3-2021-july-to-september

Previous reports published by the Home Office, including the end of year summary reports, can be found here National Referral Mechanism statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Table 3 in each of the published Data Tables sets out the number of NRM referrals by age group at exploitation, country of responsible police force, exploitation type and gender. It is important to note that criminal exploitation has only been reported as a separate category from 1 October 2019 when improvements were made to how NRM data is collected and on how exploitation types are recorded. Prior to this, criminal exploitation was recorded as labour exploitation.