Is an end to detaining trafficking victims in sight?

As the Home Office is forced to review its policy relating to the detention of modern slavery victims, May Bulman asks whether we can expect real change

(Getty/iStock)

We’ve known the Home Office has been detaining victims of trafficking in removal centres for a long time. There have been numerous legal challenges over the last few years which have found the department to be acting unlawfully in doing so, and forced to pay out hefty damages in taxpayers’ cash as a result.

To take just a few examples, in October 2019, it was forced to pay out £25,000 in damages to a Polish man after the courts ruled that he was unlawfully detained and threatened with deportation. The man was held in immigration detention and told he was liable to be removed on the grounds that he had shoplifted, despite the Home Office itself having identified that he had been acting under the compulsion of his exploiters.

In February of the same year, the Home Office admitted to unlawfully detaining a Chinese woman who showed multiple indicators of trafficking for six months. She had been found in a brothel in Yorkshire during a police raid in 2016, and it later emerged that she was concerned about paying off large debts, had no passport and family or friends in the country – all trafficking indicators set out in Home Office policy. Yet she was not identified as a potential victim and was instead detained in the controversial women’s removal centre Yarl’s Wood.

Aside from the individual cases, we know that – thanks to tenacious and determined digging from data mapping project After Exploitation – there were 1,298 potential and confirmed modern slavery victims detained in removal centres between January and September 2019, an increase of more than double that in 2017, when there were 635.

Campaigners have condemned the Home Office for this, arguing that it constitutes a breach of the UK’s responsibility under European law to help modern slavery survivors recover physically, psychologically and socially. A key and growing concern has been that ministers appear to be prioritising immigration control factors over victims’ right to support.

Despite all of this, the department has done little to indicate that they will improve the situation – until now.

The latest legal case to successfully challenge the detention of a trafficking victim has gone a step further, not only leading to the release of the client and a settlement for damages, but also forcing the home secretary to review its policy in relation to the detention of such individuals.

The case is in relation to a Vietnamese woman who was trafficked to the UK in 2016 and was detained in a removal centre last year, despite having been identified as a victim of modern slavery by the government 18 months before. Last week, the Home Office conceded that her detention was unlawful, and agreed as part of the settlement to review the policy.

The woman’s lawyers say they hope the case will lead to “real change” in the department’s “criminalisation” of immigrants who have been exploited and enslaved in the UK. Charities supporting victims are hopeful too. It is certainly a significant step in the battle to bring an end to this clearly unacceptable practice.

However the outcome of this review is yet to be seen. Recent news that the home secretary will make no changes to her NHS surcharge policy, despite having said she would review it, with her excuse being that “all policies are kept under review”, won’t fill anyone with hope. But she can be sure that her department will be under sharp scrutiny on this latest pledge.