Labour should restore protections for victims of modern slavery, which have been undermined by recent Tory immigration laws, a House of Lords committee chaired by former TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has said.
There are an estimated 130,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK, trapped in sectors including agriculture, prostitution and care.
In a report published on Wednesday, peers warn that three recent immigration acts passed by the last government deliberately restricted the support to these victims that had been offered by the groundbreaking Modern Slavery Act of 2015.
The committee points to the fact that if the Home Office deems an individual to be a “threat to public order”, or believes they have applied for support “in bad faith”, they can be denied any protection, for example, with little prospect of legal aid to defend themselves.
The evidence threshold for making an initial decision about whether someone may have been trafficked was also raised. The rules were tightened on the basis that the system was being exploited by illegal migrants, but peers say they have not found systemic evidence of abuse.
Peter Wieltschnig, senior policy officer at the charity Focus on Labour Exploitation (Flex), which gave evidence, said victims were being told they could be deported if they tried to raise concerns about their treatment.
“The wave of successive anti-migrant legislation, [the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act, the Safety of Rwanda Act] gifted traffickers with new tools to coerce people into exploitation,” he said.
O’Grady, a Labour peer since 2022, called on the new government to strengthen protections for modern slavery victims.
She said better support should sit alongside the government’s push to improve workers’ rights across the economy.
“Our report offers a salutary lesson in the consequences of cutting support for vulnerable people to look tough on immigration, giving bosses the whip hand through weak labour market regulation, and turning a tin ear to victims and those who represent them,” she said.
The report points to particular issues with exploitation in the care sector, where it says there has been “a substantial recent increase in reported victims”, who may be “charged exorbitant recruitment fees and subjected to working conditions that flout the law”.
Labour has promised to investigate the treatment of workers in the sector. The report calls for any company seeking to sponsor care visas to be inspected by the Care Quality Commission, which should be given more resources to tackle the task.
Other specific recommendations in the Lords report include separate reporting channels, so that concerns about workers’ treatment are not automatically passed on to immigration enforcement bodies.
“While flexibility and sharing information between agencies is important, there are strong arguments that introducing some form of secure reporting pathways would protect exploited workers by allowing them to come forward about abuse without fear of repercussions,” it says.
Wieltschnig, of Flex, criticised the fact that the new home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced in July that immigration raids would be carried out in nail bars and car washes, sectors he said that were well-known for a high risk of people trafficking.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Modern slavery has devastating impacts and the new government is committed to tackling this heinous crime in all its forms. We will carefully consider the recommendations in this report.
“We constantly keep our policies under review in order to best protect victims and ensure they are working efficiently and effectively.”
