Slavery

(asked on 11th April 2019) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the research published by the Cooperative Group on 1 March that said that 18 per cent of the British public were unaware of modern slavery; and what plans they have to increase public awareness of modern slavery.


Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford Portrait
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
This question was answered on 29th April 2019

Tackling modern slavery remains a top priority for this Government. We are aware of the Cooperative Group’s research. We are committed to collabo-rating with business, civil society organisations and the public sector to im-prove the evidence about the nature and scale of modern slavery. We con-tinue to take action to raise awareness to encourage reporting and to prevent this crime from happening in the first place.

For example;
• In March 2019, the Home Office worked closely with the Cabinet Office to launch a targeted pilot communications campaign focusing on labour exploitation in the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire. We are working with frontline professionals in the banking, healthcare and job centre sectors to im-prove how they spot the signs of modern slavery and encourage greater reporting.

• In January 2018, the National Crime Agency launched the Invisible People campaign, a touring photographic exhibition which portrayed the signs of slavery and exploitation to raise awareness across the country

• In 2018, we piloted a targeted, localised communications activity in Manchester, Barking and Dagenham focused on particular types of modern slavery. We worked with communities to co-create and pilot communications activity designed to help spot the signs of domestic servitude and encourage reporting

• Following the introduction of Anti-Slavery Day (18 October), in 2018 we launched a week long social media campaign to raise awareness of modern slavery across the UK.

• Border Force continue to work with port operators across the country to encourage display of anti-modern slavery messaging. This includes communications materials visible in all UK ports, such as Heathrow airport who collaborated with A21 to produce and display the ‘can you see me’ posters at its terminals. Border Force is also working with the NGO Unseen to ensure that information about the Modern Slavery Helpline is displayed at arrival points in the UK.

• Prosecutions for Modern Slavery continue to receive extensive media coverage which is increasing public awareness of these crimes. For example, the 2018 trial of British citizen Josephine Iyamu who was the first ever convicted cross border sex-trafficker under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, receiving an 18-year sentence. This highlights that any crimes relating to modern slavery, will not be tolerated.

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