It comes a decade after the approval of legislation that put the country at the forefront of the global fight against human trafficking.
Britain's Modern Slavery Act of 2015 forced large businesses to tackle slavery in their supply chains and strengthened existing protections for victims.
But those protections have been eroded by rules introduced in 2023 to curb illegal migration, as the political priority switched to dealing with the tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Britain each year aboard small boats.
Reuters interviewed more than a dozen individuals in government, law enforcement, the judiciary and charities who said the tougher laws were leaving thousands of victims trapped in modern slavery, both by denying requests for support and by stopping others from coming forward for fear of being deported.
"Modern slavery is not an immigration issue; it's a human rights issue," said Kathy Betteridge, a director at the Salvation Army, which has operated the government contract to support victims for the last 14 years.
After new legislation required victims to present greater proof of exploitation to qualify for state support, the share of rejections in slavery cases leaped to 45% in 2023, from just 11% in 2022, official data shows. In the first nine months of 2024, the figure was 46%.
In 2023, the Home Office – Britain's interior ministry - identified around 17,000 people as potential victims of modern slavery, and a further 13,587 in the first nine months of last year. The bulk of the referrals were migrants, often brought to Britain to work in nail salons, car washes, sex work and the illicit drug trade, according to police.
That may only be the tip of the iceberg. A report by a House of Lords committee, published in October, said there were an estimated 130,000 victims of modern slavery in Britain.
"When the Modern Slavery Act was passed in 2015, the UK was said to be world leading. That is no longer the case," said the report, published in October. It urged the government to amend the immigration rules.
Britain's Labour government, which came to power in July, has not altered the legislation, despite saying while in opposition that the rules were unfair.
Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government retained a Conservative ban on asylum seekers being able to claim modern slavery protections despite Starmer having said in the past it drove "a coach and horses" through protections for trafficked women.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government was working to clear the backlog of those waiting for final decisions on their claims for modern slavery support and would toughen legislation against criminal gangs responsible for exploitation.
"It is unacceptable in today's Britain that thousands of vulnerable people – mostly women and children – are being forced to work against their will, often while facing regular physical and sexual abuse," the spokesperson said.
NO PROOF SYSTEM IS MISUSED
Conservative former-prime minister Theresa May, who launched the Modern Slavery Act while interior minister, described it then as "the great human rights issue of our time".
The law strengthened the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the UK's system for identifying and protecting victims created in 2009 in accordance with an international anti-trafficking treaty.
Under the NRM, a small number of charities and public bodies - such as the Border Force, police or the Home Office - can refer someone to receive support.
After May's premiership ended in 2019, Conservative governments argued that illegal migrants were using the system to evade deportation. The rules introduced in 2023 demanded a higher threshold of proof for modern slavery.
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, a retired judge who sat on the House of Lords committee that examined the Modern Slavery Act, said the previous Conservative government was "frantic" about immigration and had failed to present proof there was widespread misuse of the system.
In May, her committee interviewed Laura Farris, who was victims and safeguarding minister at the time, and asked if the government possessed such evidence.
"Well, no. We do not," Farris answered. "The Home Office will make some decisions in the affirmative and some in the negative, but the Home Office cannot be totally sure that those decisions are always good ones."
For the first nine months of 2024, the number of people removed from the NRM process for posing as a victim, known as a bad faith disqualification, was eight, compared to the thousands of referrals into the system that year. For 2023, the figure was zero.
LACK OF INFORMATION
Reuters spoke to a suspected victim of modern slavery who was rejected last year from the NRM at the first stage of the review process.
In that stage, a suspected victim's claim is assessed by a Home Office unit to determine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe they are a victim. The second stage, which can take months or years, considers whether there are conclusive grounds.
The Filipino woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said she was employed as a housekeeper and live-in nanny for a family in Qatar. She said she was made to work from morning until night, suffering physical and sexual abuse.
Reuters was unable to reach the family for comment.
Because the father of the family was a senior police officer, she was afraid to approach authorities in Qatar. But when the family brought her on a trip to London, she escaped.
When she sought to apply for asylum, she was referred into the NRM by the Home Office, but officials rejected her claim, citing a lack of information. Part of the issue was, according to an April 2024 letter reviewed by Reuters, that officials in another Home Office department had not responded to messages asking for more information about her claim.
Data released by the Home Office in November showed that through 2020 to 2022, insufficient information accounted for just 3%-4% of first-stage rejections. But that jumped to 54% in 2023 and stood at 53% for the first nine months of 2024.
Charities say it is nearly impossible for victims in vulnerable situations to provide comprehensive evidence, especially when they are on the run from perpetrators.
FOREIGNERS TREATED MORE HARSHLY?
Data from the United Nations' International Organisation for Migration (IOM) suggests the NRM, since the regulations were tightened, may have started to treat foreign applicants more harshly.
In analysis shared with Reuters, the IOM said around 85% of British people received positive first-stage decisions in 2023 and the first nine months of 2024, versus only around 44% for foreigners, a much wider gap than in previous years.
Additionally, in the first nine months of 2024, around 68% of reconsideration requests for rejected applications were successful, raising questions about the quality of initial Home Office decision-making, IOM UK anti-trafficking specialist Patrick Burland said.
The Filipino woman, who has three children in the Philippines, overturned her first-round rejection through a reconsideration request filed with the help of a charity, according to a decision seen by Reuters.
She is now awaiting a second-stage, or conclusive grounds, decision, which if positive, would formally identify her as a victim and could entitle her to apply for permission to remain in the UK for a set period.
More than 20,000 people were waiting for a conclusive grounds decision at the end of September, official data shows.
HIDDEN CRIME
A former director of the government agency tackling labour exploitation and modern slavery, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), said the agency had warned the Home Office that the tougher rules would have a "chilling effect" on victim engagement and make it a lot harder to catch criminals.
The ex-director, who asked not to be named to talk more freely, said the agency sometimes refused to refer people into the NRM because of the tightened rules, even when their "gut instinct" told them they were a victim.
A positive initial, or reasonable grounds, decision provides a weekly financial allowance of around £75 ($NZ164) and accommodation if necessary. Many migrant victims with a positive initial decision don't have the right to work while they await a conclusive grounds decision.
The Home Office spent a total of £124.6 million ($NZ272 million) in 2023/2024 on identifying and supporting victims of modern slavery, it said in response to a Reuters freedom of information request. The figure does not include costs related to certain programs for child victims, it added.
Britain's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Eleanor Lyons told Reuters that she did not think the NRM provided enough of an incentive to motivate criminals to misuse it.
She also said other efforts to reduce migration, such as the former policy to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, had deterred potential victims from coming forward.
"We spoke to a victim. They thought that if they came forward and reported their exploitation, that that would automatically mean they were being sent to Rwanda," Lyons said.
