By Adis Sehic - 22 May 2024
The House of Lords Select Committee on the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was appointed on 24 January to consider the impact of the legislation and its effectiveness in achieving its aims. Against the backdrop of well-documented issues with the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the government’s previous promise of a new Modern Slavery Bill that has not come to fruition and international developments in the modern slavery policy space, the Committee’s work could not be more timely.
On 25 March, our Senior Policy and Research Officer Adis Sehic gave oral evidence to the committee on exploitation in the care sector, how exploitation is caused by the structure of the UK’s work sponsorship system and the effectiveness of protection afforded by the NRM. As part of the Work Rights Centre’s membership of the Labour Exploitation Advisory Group (LEAG), we have now consolidated that evidence by contributing to a joint written submission for the inquiry’s review. In this blog post, we summarise some key takeaways from the evidence and the reforms needed to bolster the protection for people with lived experience of exploitation.
The impact of recent legislation on modern slavery protections
Recent legislation has undermined the UK’s system of modern slavery protections, including via the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023. Despite ultimately being subject to legal challenge, the Nationality and Borders Act sought to change the evidential requirements at the Reasonable Grounds stage of assessment under the NRM, risking reducing the number of individuals who are able to access support. The act also cuts the recovery and reflection period from 45 days to 30 days, while also introducing public order and "bad faith" disqualifications. These disqualifications can exclude access to a recovery period on the basis of dishonest statements given in respect of being a victim of modern slavery, and individuals who are perceived to be a "threat to public order" or posing a "risk to national security". On the other hand, the Illegal Migration Act, once fully implemented, will effectively block individuals arriving to the UK via "irregular" routes from claiming asylum or benefitting from modern slavery protections.
These problematic reforms are not exhaustive and many detrimental policy decisions have been taken over the last few years. In its submission, LEAG has made clear that recent legislative changes set unrealistic expectations for victims of exploitation and will fundamentally drive individuals underground and away from the protection framework offered by the NRM. This is already being borne out in the statistics - by the end of 2023, the Home Office received 4,929 reports of adult potential victims via the Duty to Notify process, the highest figure since this practice began on 1 November 2015.
In our experience, clients are not incentivised to enter the NRM because the identification process is fraught with issues and the practical support offered is becoming increasingly limited in scope. For example, individuals have to be referred into the NRM by statutory and non-statutory First Responders, but many clients often face a "referral lottery" with no guarantee of a referral actually taking place. Non-statutory First Responders also face more administrative pressures due to their role being unfunded and there being no formal continual professional development (CPD) available, which can have an impact on the quality of support offered to individuals. Similarly, between 2020 and 2022, only 6.5% of confirmed victims of trafficking subject to immigration control were granted leave to remain under the NRM, research from the Helen Bamber Foundation has found. As time passes, the UK is at risk of making its entire modern slavery apparatus unfit for purpose.
The UK’s visa system and its role in exploitation
In recent times, there have been countless reports of migrant workers being exploited in different sectors such as agriculture, social care, fishing and more. The commonality between the experiences of these workers has been their exposure to the sponsorship system and, by extension, specific visa categories like the Overseas Domestic Worker visa and the Seasonal Worker visa which restrict workers’ mobility and practical access to justice.
Too often the discourse around modern slavery entrenches the view that the issue is primarily one of transnational crime, where individual rogue actors and groups are responsible for perpetuating the suffering of many. Less attention, unfortunately, is paid to how state-mediated structures, like the work-sponsorship system and prevalence of restrictive visa schemes, are often intersecting with individual vulnerabilities to produce injustice. In its recently published concluding observations on the UK, the UN Human Rights Committee noted its concern with the UK’s "visa policy for migrant workers, increasing their precarious situation and leaving them open to abuse and exploitation by employers, as well as about the lack of protections available to them".
Our response makes it clear that labour migration routes should have worker safeguards built into them by design. This would mean ensuring that all migrant workers can exercise employment rights in practice, with greater mobility to renew visas and the flexibility to change employers, particularly in cases where workers experience exploitation. This needs to be supplemented by a more robust system of labour market enforcement, where stamping out on labour market offences and exploitation is considered a valuable exercise in its own right, rather than being subsidiary to policies concerning immigration enforcement.
Transparency in supply chains
Despite committing to strengthening Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which concerns increasing transparency in supply chains, the government has failed to implement any of the proposals identified in the independent review of the Act completed in 2019, save for establishing a Government-run registry for modern slavery statements.
In doing so, the UK is delaying a move that would ensure both private and public sector entities have binding obligations in respect of modern slavery. However, what workers require is not just an extension of reporting requirements with a corresponding sanctions regime. As Anti-Slavery International recently identified in its oral evidence to the Committee, there needs to be a "shift in business practices" and this cannot be achieved from simply reporting on modern slavery issues alone.
Instead, and in line with international legislative developments that are moving the dial towards a global system of mandatory human rights due diligence, the UK needs to ensure that entities are taking concrete measures to prevent, mitigate and remediate forced labour and modern slavery in their supply chains, backed up with tangible penalties where there is a failure to do so. Without this change, workers will continue to be punished by the facade that "action is being taken".
Conclusion
These reflections are but a handful of topics relevant to the Committee’s work, which is due to conclude with a report by the end of November 2024. The joint evidence submission from LEAG serves as a cornerstone of analysis and a set of positive policy proposals that could have a tangible impact on those with lived experience of exploitation.
It is high time that the UK implements comprehensive reforms to its modern slavery framework to ensure that legislation that was once considered "world-leading" remains so in the current context, rather than being a distant memory of the past.
Read the full evidence submission here.
What is the Labour Exploitation Advisory Group?
The Labour Exploitation Advisory Group (LEAG) is a coalition of frontline, research and policy organisations which promotes discussion, information-sharing and collaboration among organisations working directly with people who have experienced or are at risk of labour exploitation in the UK.
We work together to ensure that responses to labour exploitation, including human trafficking and forced labour, are informed and guided by the interests, needs and experiences of affected workers and that workers have access to, and are able to enforce, their rights as workers and as victims of modern slavery offences, where appropriate.
Other members of LEAG include Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), Latin American Women’s Rights Service, Unite the Union, East European Resource Centre, British Red Cross, Kalayaan, Bail for Immigration Detainees, Kanlungan Filipino Consortium and Glass Door Homeless Charity.
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