Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the (a) adequacy and (b) consistency of (i) local authority and (ii) local authority children’s service referrals to the National Referral Mechanism in relation to the estimates of modern slavery prevalence among rough sleepers in the 15 October 2019 Hestia report Underground Lives: Homelessness and Modern Slavery in London.

Government does not currently collect information on the number of rough sleepers referred into the NRM by Local Authorities.

However, we recognise that there is a potential risk for people sleeping rough to become victims of modern slavery, and we want to ensure that local areas have the tools they need to identify modern slavery where they see it and provide the right support to victims.

The Home Office will continue to work to improve the quality data around victim identification and will continue to review the data it publishes in relation to NRM referrals and the introduction of the new digital system provides an opportunity for Government to review the data to identify patterns of exploitation.

Data on the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) continues to be published regularly by the Single Competent Authority, available via the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-referral-mechanism-statistics