Modern slavery victims opt to stay with exploiters for fear of deportation, research finds

Modern slavery victims are choosing to enactment with their exploiters alternatively than entree authorities enactment designed to support them for fearfulness of migration enforcement, probe has found.

The autarkic anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, said the strategy was “deeply broken”.

Two pieces of probe shared exclusively with the Guardian recovered that, a decennary aft the instauration of the Modern Slavery Act, the landmark portion of authorities designed to support trafficking victims and apprehend their perpetrators was failing.

The archetypal study, from Nottingham University’s Rights Lab and commissioned by Lyons’ office, volition beryllium published adjacent Wednesday.

The report, titled Refusal to Consent, recovered refusals to entree assistance from the government’s enactment strategy for trafficking victims, were astatine grounds levels.

Potential victims who travel into interaction with the authorities but bash not privation to usage the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) are recorded successful statistic known arsenic work to notify. These reports person soared by much than 630% since 2016 – from 762 successful 2016 to 5,598 successful 2024 – a motion victims are losing spot successful the system.

Fear of deportation is the superior crushed victims are rejecting support, according to the report, which questioned professionals moving with victims and analysed authorities and world data.

Many victims judge the NRM is simply a trap that leads to migration enforcement alternatively than protection. Hostile migration policies and inflammatory connection from the authorities is scaring victims distant from the systems expected to support them, it found.

Some traffickers usage authorities rhetoric astir the hostile situation and the menace of deportation to support their victims successful a presumption of exploitation, according to the research.

Government instrumentality agreements with Albania and Vietnam, which person precocious numbers of trafficking victims, person accrued fearfulness of coming guardant among victims from those countries. In 2024 victims of trafficking were among radical being issued with notices of intent that they were going to beryllium forcibly removed to Rwanda.

The 2nd report, Barriers to Prosecutions and Convictions nether the Modern Slavery Act 2015, is from the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre astatine the University of Oxford. It commissioned probe from the Wilberforce Institute astatine the University of Hull, which analysed prosecution information since the enactment was introduced and recovered it remained low, with prosecutions arsenic a percent of imaginable trafficking victims referred to the NRM astatine conscionable 1.8%.

Between July 2023 and June 2024 17,120 imaginable modern slavery victims were referred to the NRM portion implicit the aforesaid play 58 radical successful England and Wales were convicted of offences linked to modern slavery.

Alicia Heys, an world astatine the University of Hull who authored the survey for the PEC, said: “Part of the volition down the Modern Slavery Act was to guarantee that perpetrators person suitably terrible punishments, yet 10 years aft the instauration of the act, condemnation rates stay low. Sometimes, offenders are pursued nether antithetic legislation, for illustration relating to drugs oregon controlling prostitution, which misrepresents survivors’ experiences.”

Lyons said: “It’s heartbreaking but not astonishing that much and much imaginable victims of modern slavery are saying nary to help.

“When fearfulness of deportation outweighs the committedness of protection, erstwhile determination are fewer consequences for transgression perpetrators and radical consciousness safer staying successful exploitation than entering the strategy that’s meant to assistance them, thing is profoundly broken.

“This study is simply a wake-up call: the nationalist referral mechanism, the government’s model of support, isn’t conscionable misunderstood, it’s mistrusted, mishandled, and successful urgent request of reform.”

The Home Office has been approached for comment.