Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, (a) what steps she is taking to tackle modern slavery offences and (b) whether she plans to increase funding to (i) Enfield and Haringey Metropolitan Police Service, (ii) Enfield Council and (iii) grassroots community organisations in Enfield North constituency to help tackle modern slavery.

The Government has given policing the biggest funding increase in a decade and funding for the Metropolitan Police will be up to £3,072.3m in 2021/22, an increase of up to £132.4m on the 2020/21 police funding settlement.

Tackling modern slavery is a key priority for this Government and we have invested £15 million since October 2016, including £1.4m this year (2021/22) to strengthen the police response through the police Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Programme.

This funding has enabled us to support the police to develop bespoke capabilities to improve forces’ understanding of modern slavery and drive forward work to increase modern slavery prosecutions, as well as building new capability for forces to respond to organised immigration crime. Through the lifetime of the Programme, we have seen an increase in the number of live police operations from 188 police operations in December 2016 to over 3,869 in October 2021.

As part of the New Plan for Immigration, the Home Office announced the creation of a Modern Slavery Prevention Fund, which closed for bids, including from local authorities and NGOs, on 8 November 2021. Over the next year, the Home Office intends to use that fund to support organisations to deliver targeted prevention interventions.

The Government is also currently reviewing its Modern Slavery Strategy and will consider whether there are further opportunities to strengthen the law enforcement response to modern slavery, building on the considerable progress we have made to date.