Hope for Justice welcomes a new report from the House of Lords calling on the UK Government to improve its response to modern slavery. The report highlights how survivors’ rights and protections have been diminished in recent years and urges the Government to ‘make the UK world-leading in the battle against modern slavery once again’.
The report follows a review by a House of Lords Committee of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Hope for Justice’s Senior Policy and Research Advisory, Euan Fraser, was invited to give evidence to the Committee in March 2024. In doing so he shared insights from Hope for Justice’s advocacy team and our report into the impact of hostile immigration policies on efforts to tackle modern slavery.
For example, the report includes written evidence that Hope for Justice submitted about the Home Office holding responsibility for both immigration policy and modern slavery. We wrote: “There has long been a tension between the Home Office’s ownership of the response to modern slavery, which includes safeguarding survivors, and its responsibilities in relation to law enforcement and immigration policy. The safeguarding needs of survivors have consistently come second when deemed to be in conflict with immigration control.”
This is a pivotal moment in the UK’s response to modern slavery. Last week the Government announced a series of measures aimed at speeding up the process of identifying survivors of slavery and helping young people access the support they need for their recovery.
It is critical that we put those at risk of modern slavery and survivors’ needs at the heart of our response to modern slavery, and work with survivors to ensure that their rights are upheld and they get the support they need to not just survive their experience but thrive in society. In our new report on access to justice for survivors of modern slavery, Beyond Survival, we look at how survivors define justice for themselves and make recommendations for how the system can better help them achieve that sense of justice.
Our experience is that survivors often have to navigate a complex web of services and multiple barriers to getting help, which can often place them at risk of being re-exploited. Hope for Justice has seen the immense value of survivors being accompanied by an Independent Modern Slavery Advocate® (IMSA) to help them recover from their experience and reintegrate in society.
We welcome the opportunity to work with the Government to implement the Lords’ recommendations to strengthen the legislative and policy framework to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking and prioritise survivors’ sustainable recovery to avoid re-trafficking.
You can read the House of Lords Committee report here: The Modern Slavery Act 2015: becoming world-leading again.
