Opinion: How a lack of data on modern slavery stops us scrutinising the Government and hurts victims

If there is one thing our investigation into the Modern Slavery Act 2015 has come up against time and again, it is a lack of reliable data.
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The 2015 Act brought in a range of measures to protect and support victims, alongside creating a new umbrella offence with tougher penalties for perpetrators.

This included Slavery and Trafficking Reparation Orders – compensation orders that courts must consider making whenever they convict someone of slavery offences, to redistribute the proceeds of their crimes to their victims.

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But the Ministry of Justice has failed to collect any data on their use. It rejected our freedom of information request asking how many had been issued and the values awarded, saying only individual courts have that information.

An Unbroken Chain: Modern Slavery in the UKAn Unbroken Chain: Modern Slavery in the UK
An Unbroken Chain: Modern Slavery in the UK

There is also no data collected on the use of a new statutory defence the Act created, to give victims who have been coerced into criminal activities through exploitation a defence in court.

An independent review of the Act in 2019 raised concerns that there was “limited understanding” of this defence among police and lawyers. It recommended the Government collect data on its use, alongside that of compensation orders.

This is the crux of the matter. It is all very well introducing new legislation. But if no effort is made to collect data on how it is working in practice, how can we know if it has achieved its aim?

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The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) agrees. While the 2015 Act may have been hailed as groundbreaking by the Government, the lack of data on it hampers our ability to monitor its impact and to know whether it is truly helping victims, says Stian Westlake, RSS chief executive.

He told us that proper data collection is “essential” for effective scrutiny – it is only then that we can know whether a policy is really working or not, and make necessary improvements .

A lack of good data goes beyond just the 2015 Act, however. Take the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the UK’s programme for identifying and supporting slavery victims.

Thousands of potential victims were referred into it in the first nine months of 2020 alone.

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An NRM referral opens up access to support for victims. But no data is collected on what happens to them when they leave this support.

Tamara Barnett of the Human Trafficking Foundation says people are often just as vulnerable to exploitation when they leave government support. Anecdotally, she knows many are recycled through the NRM over and over again – but the data cannot show this.

The 2019 review also raised concerns, arguing that until we have move-on data on victims, “we cannot say whether the support the Government does provide has been successful”.

As Ms Barnett points out, these are highly vulnerable people – surely from a safeguarding perspective, we should be keeping an eye on what happens to them? At the moment, thousands of potential victims just “disappear into the ether”. It’s really alarming, she says.

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This shows why a lack of data does not just impact our ability to scrutinise our Government’s efforts. It has real life implications for those who fall prey to exploiters and traffickers on our shores, preventing us from knowing how best to help them.

Surely we owe victims of this heinous crime more than this?

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