Trafficking for forced labour in the UK: Background

In 2006, Anti-Slavery International published research which identified 27 individual cases of trafficking for forced labour in the UK. These were migrant workers who had been trafficked, mainly through debt bondage, the removal of their passport or the use of intimidation and threats, and forced to work in the UK.

People identified in the research had been trafficked into industries such as agriculture, construction, food processing and packaging, nursing, hospitality and the restaurant trade. The migrants were nationals of European, African, South American and Asian countries. However, certain nationalities were concentrated in particular industries. For example, trafficking into agriculture mainly affected individuals from Central and Eastern Europe.

Legal but hidden

The research found that the majority of trafficked migrants had entered the country legally. In many cases the employer kept the migrant's documents, sometimes claiming they had sent the documents to the Home Office for official purposes, until the workers' visas ran out, when they became much easier to exploit because they no longer had a right to be in the UK.

None of the 27 cases were originally identified as involving trafficking by the agencies that initially recorded them. And in the majority of these cases there is no information as to what has happened to the trafficked people. This reflects both a real lack of awareness about trafficking for forced labour amongst individuals in the relevant agencies, and also a lack of support services for the people affected.

Progress and challenges

The UK Government introduced a law in 2004 that makes trafficking for all forms of labour exploitation a criminal offence and in 2006 it established a UK Human Trafficking Centre which has a mandate to pursue trafficking for both labour as well as sexual exploitation. On 22 January 2007, after sustained pressure from human rights groups such as Anti-Slavery International, the Government announced that it will sign the Council of Europe Convention on trafficking.

Despite these positive initiatives there has not been a single successful prosecution brought for trafficking for labour exploitation to date. Nor is there any specialised assistance available to people who are trafficked for forced labour. The UK Government now needs to take all necessary steps to ratify and impement the Council of Europe Convention on trafficking, which would ensure that people trafficked into forced labour are provided with minimum standards of protection and support. Currently more than thirty other European countries have signed the Convention.

What is trafficking?

Trafficking involves transporting people away from the communities in which they live, by the threat or use of violence, deception or coercion so they can be exploited as forced or enslaved workers. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved: simply transporting them into exploitative conditions constitutes trafficking.

Because of its hidden nature, accurate statistics on the numbers involved across the world are hard to come by. A recent United States Government report estimates that 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year.

Trafficking is the fastest growing means by which people are forced into slavery across the world.

Stories of trafficked people

Two Vietnamese men in their twenties were recruited in Vietnam to work in a hotel in the UK. They paid the agent £18,000 to arrange the job and came to the UK under the work permit scheme with a promise to receive £4.95 per hour for their work. On arrival in the UK an agent met them at the airport and took their passports away. The men worked in a major hotel chain for two months without receiving any pay. All they were given was food. They attempted to organise a strike at the hotel, but shortly after this their families in Vietnam received threats. The men were too frightened to approach the Vietnamese Embassy or the police, but eventually approached a Citizens Advice Bureau office via a Vietnamese speaking person they met on the street.

A domestic worker interviewed in the research recounted her friend's experience: "She managed to escape through a window, from the family that treated her like a slave. She was terrified and had bruises on her body. Her passport was locked in the house. The policeman at the station asked her for her documents. She of course did not have them and wanted to tell him what happened, but he insisted on her documents first and said he must first know who she was."

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