Campaign welcome government pledge to clear modern slavery backlog

The Santa Marta Group today has welcomed Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips's commitment to clearing the modern slavery backlog. Ms Phillips, on European and UK anti-slavery day, pledged to recruit 200 extra staff to the Home Office to address the delay that suspected victims are facing in having their cases processed.

Santa Marta Group says: "The Minister is right to state this as one of her 'top priorities', with more than 23,000 suspected victims of modern slavery currently having to wait on average over 500 days for a conclusive decision from the Home Office on their status.

"We urge that the 200 staff appointed are qualified, trained and supported to a level appropriate for the severity of the decisions being made, and the life-changing impact those decisions will have.

"As many organisations have repeatedly reported, the conflation of modern slavery with immigration in recent years has been very harmful. Policies creating a hostile environment for immigrants have in turn endangered survivors of modern slavery; those experiencing exploitation fear being treated as criminals rather than as victims of a crime, and therefore avoid reporting their abuse.

"The Illegal Migration Act (2023) would consider people who have been trafficked into the UK illegal entrants liable for detention and deportation. It is hard to imagine any other crime holding life imprisonment whose victims might be treated in such a way.

"This threat of hostility from authorities is routinely used by perpetrators to control their victims - the claim that seeking help will only result in further trouble preventing people from reaching out. It is unsurprising therefore that survivors are so often wary to report the crimes committed against them, and identification and prosecution rates remain woefully low.

"The new UK government has a long way to go in unpicking the legislation and narratives that have built a culture of fear for those people in the UK irregularly, including those who have been trafficked.

"We see this conflation of immigration and modern slavery perpetuated even in the structure of the National Referral Mechanism, where the responsibility of identifying victims lies not with the police or justice system, but with the Home Office.

"The UK's first independent anti-slavery commissioner wrote a set of recommendations to the Home Secretary on the structure of the NRM in 2017, identifying many of the same flaws we see today.

"Santa Marta Group repeats the recommendations made in 2017: that the processing of these cases should not sit with a government office, but with an NRM partnership between law enforcement and civil society. This would allow for criminal investigators and care providers to work together with a shared goal of survivor welfare, shared intelligence, and criminal prosecutions.

We are optimistic about Jess Phillips' appetite for reform of the NRM and hope this commitment will mark the start of a more progressive approach to both prevention of modern slavery and support for those affected."

For further information on Santa Marta Group see: www.santamartagroup.org