UK anti-trafficking efforts need overhaul, report says
Britain's efforts to stop human trafficking are in a state of crisis and need a complete overhaul, a report from a think tank says.
The Centre for Social Justice says the problem in the UK is barely understood and is often a low priority for police.
It wants an anti-slavery commissioner established and the UK Border Agency to be stripped of powers to decide whether a person has been a trafficking victim.
The government says the current Home Office-led approach is working.
Seven government departments have some responsibility for dealing with human trafficking, but the report says this leads to confusion.
The CJS report called It Happens Here is due to be published on Monday and says there is a glaring lack of leadership on the issue and a shambolic misunderstanding of trafficking.
Researchers found from construction sites to brothels, large numbers of trafficked people were being exploited, but their fate never appeared in official statistics.
Agencies are accused of struggling to understand the scale of the problem.
In 2012, the UK Human Trafficking Centre said approximately 1,200 people were victims of human traffickers, a figure the CSJ says is virtually meaningless.
"From top to bottom, this thing is a catastrophic failure," says Christian Guy, head of the CSJ.
"Politically, I'm afraid ministers are clueless about the scale of British slavery."
Fear of violence
One man who is not is 26-year-old Mark Ovenden.
He spent nine months being enslaved by his boss, first at various locations around southern England before being taken to Sweden, where he was eventually freed by police.
"I'd been down on my luck for quite some time," he told Radio 4's The World This Weekend programme.
"I was approached in the street one day by a guy. He asked me if I was looking for any work, told me he'd be able to pay me, give me somewhere to live, to feed me. So I agreed there and then to go with him."
During a two-month stay at one site, he worked 18 hours per day, six days per week, doing heavy manual labour. He was not paid a penny.
"No-one ever spoke about money" on the site he says, and the constant threat of violence made him fearful.
A sense of isolation and a growing dependence on his boss for shelter and a daily meal reduced his desire to escape.
"When you are deprived of money for a job, you become dependent on them for your food, your transport, for everything," says Mark.
"A lot of the guys… were calling men half their age 'daddy' almost as though they'd been degraded over a period of years."
He says he was unwilling to go to the police in the UK to report his plight as he did not think they would treat him sympathetically.
He may well be right, according to the CSJ report.
The report said there were some "impressive examples" of work by local police forces on trafficking, but said in many areas officers were "unaware of the issue, or treat it as a low strategic priority".
Its researchers say they found "unacceptable levels of ignorance" among police, social services and the UK Border Agency.
One serving officer is quoted in the report as saying "there is more incentive to investigate a shed burglar… than there is a human trafficker" as there is so little pressure on the police to deal with the issue.
The report also says the UK Border Agency should have its role in investigating allegations of human trafficking drastically reduced as it often treats people as potential illegal immigrants rather than victims of crime.
"There is an immigration aspect to the whole issue, but it is not the key thing," says Andrew Wallis, head of the anti-trafficking charity Unseen UK who chaired the group that investigated the issue.
"For us, the key thing is there is a crime that has taken place, we have a victim of crime so let's respond accordingly."
Most victims of trafficking in the UK come from abroad, with Eastern Europeans, Nigerians and Vietnamese figuring prominently.
Those who are rescued or free themselves often end up in safe houses run by the Salvation Army on behalf of the government.
The CSJ report highlights in particular the plight of British children.
In 2011, it says, almost half of UK citizens who were trafficked were girls trafficked for sexual exploitation.
It highlights the case of a school girl who, under the control of a group of young men, was raped by 90 men over the course of a single weekend.
The report's authors say the scale of the problem and the lack of understanding of the issue means that major changes are needed.
They are calling for creation of an anti-slavery commissioner, similar to the children's commissioner, to oversee and co-ordinate the country's response and the passing of a modern slavery act to tighten current disparate legislation.
The Home Office, which is responsible for co-ordinating the work of seven different government departments on human trafficking, has defended the current system.
"The overall system we've set up is good," says the Immigration Minister Mark Harper.
"We'll continue to improve over time. This is a crime that tends to be hidden and we want to be sure people are more aware of it and that people are more effective in dealing with the victims of it and more effective in locking up the people engaged in this abhorrent crime."