The Modern Slavery Act was hailed as a world-leading piece of legislation, promising greater protection for victims, stronger action against traffickers, and increased corporate accountability.
Though progress has been made in many ways in the past decade, modern slavery remains a grim reality, with 122,000 people stuck in situations of forced labour, sexual exploitation, and domestic servitude across the UK.
Too many businesses continue to profit from exploitation, and many survivors are denied the support they desperately need. Meanwhile, shifting political priorities and hostile immigration policies risk undoing the very protections the Act was meant to provide.
This anniversary is a moment for reflection – to acknowledge the progress made, but also to confront the glaring gaps that remain. What difference did it make? Where have we fallen short? And, most importantly, what must we do now to ensure the UK remains a global leader in the fight against modern slavery?
As we mark this milestone, senior leaders at Unseen, who played instrumental roles in the creation of the Act, share their perspectives.
Shaping legislation: Unseen’s influence on the Modern Slavery Act
Unseen has been at the forefront of the fight against modern slavery, playing a key role in shaping the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
Andrew Wallis OBE, Unseen’s founding CEO, was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the legislation. As chair of The Centre for Social Justice’s landmark report It happens here, he helped expose the true scale of modern slavery in the UK, providing the key evidence and recommendations that spurred political action. Andrew’s expertise was central to advising on the Act’s development, ensuring it provided stronger protections for victims and increased corporate accountability.
Justine Carter was another driving force behind the Act in her capacity as the lead Home Office Senior Civil Servant responsible for developing the Act’s provisions before joining Unseen as Director. Inspired by her work on the Act, she went on to establish the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline, run by Unseen, and the charity’s business services department, helping businesses transform their approach to tackling exploitation.
What progress was made through the Act?
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was a landmark piece of legislation that strengthened the UK’s ability to tackle modern slavery. For the first time, it consolidated existing slavery offences, making it easier to prosecute traffickers and increasing maximum sentences for offenders.
It also introduced Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders, giving law enforcement specific powers to restrict the activities of individuals suspected of exploitation.
Crucially, the Act introduced statutory guidance on support for survivors, ensuring they had access to assistance through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the government’s framework for identifying and supporting victims of exploitation.
One of its most significant innovations was the Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC) provision, which required large businesses to report on how they were addressing the risk of slavery in their operations. This provision was catalytic in driving greater corporate accountability, creating the momentum for legislation around the globe to tackle forced labour, and pushing businesses to take responsibility for eradicating exploitation from their supply chains.
Over the past decade, the Act has raised public awareness, empowered frontline professionals, and created a stronger legal framework to combat modern slavery in the UK.
How have we fallen behind in the fight against modern slavery?
Despite the initial progress made by the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the UK has backtracked in recent years, putting victims at greater risk. The legislation and its implementation have not kept pace with the ever-evolving crime of modern slavery.
The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 introduced damaging measures that undermine protections for trafficking survivors, making it harder for victims to access support and increasing the likelihood of re-exploitation.
By raising the evidential threshold for victim identification and restricting access to the NRM, these laws have created barriers to justice. Survivors who arrive in the UK via irregular routes now face detention and deportation rather than protection, a punitive approach that benefits traffickers rather than dismantling their networks. At the same time, prosecution rates of traffickers remain low, and sentences lenient.
The UK was once seen as a global leader in tackling modern slavery, but these regressive policies threaten to reverse hard-won progress.
Urgent reform is needed to ensure that tackling exploitation remains a national priority.
10 steps Unseen has taken in the past 10 years to tackle modern slavery
To mark the 10th anniversary of the Act, we share 10 steps Unseen has taken to combat modern slavery.
- A vital support service: the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline was launched in October 2016, providing a free and confidential service staffed by trained advisers and taking calls in more than 250 languages. Between the inception of the Helpline and the end of 2024, we received more than 70,000 calls, web forms and app submissions. Over this period, the Helpline identified more than 41,000 potential victims across over 15,000 cases of modern slavery.
- Providing safety for survivors: Unseen’s safe house for men opened in 2017 to complement our safe house provision for women.
- Supporting businesses in the fight against exploitation: Unseen’s Business Helpline Portal, providing companies with exclusive data and insights from our Helpline, began operating in 2018. This was followed by the launch of our Business Hub, providing insight, support and training for businesses.
- Building stronger partnerships: Unseen became a founding member of the Coalition to Stop Slavery in 2021, strengthening collaboration between NGOs in the fight against exploitation.
- Protecting those fleeing conflict: with the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022, Unseen led an award-winning initiative to provide online safety information to Ukrainian refugees arriving in the UK.
- Amplifying survivor voices: Unseen launched its survivor consultants group in 2022, an initiative helping us incorporate lived experience into our policy and research work.
- Highlighting urgent issues: our care sector report in 2023 received high profile coverage including on BBC’s Panorama, helping highlight the worsening problems of exploitation in the care sector.
- Recognising leadership: the inaugural Unseen Business Awards took place in 2023. These annual awards celebrate businesses and individuals leading the way in addressing modern slavery within their operations and supply chains.
- Expanding training to drive change: Unseen trained more than 1,800 people in 2024 alone, reaching an additional 33,000 people through our e-learning modules. These bespoke modern slavery training programmes empower businesses and their staff to identify and address modern slavery risks more effectively.
- Securing vital funding to expand our impact: the Helpline won £1 million in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund in 2024 to expand the fight against modern slavery.
10 next steps needed to enable the UK to stamp out exploitation for good
To help us build on the progress made in tackling modern slavery and exploitation, we call for the following 10 steps to be taken:
- Recognising modern slavery as an economic crime: modern slavery fuels illegal markets, burdens public services, and harms legitimate businesses. The government should acknowledge the true economic cost of these human rights violations and commit to a holistic, humane response.
- Holding businesses accountable: there should be a strengthening of the Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC) regulations, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the US Tariff Act legislation.
- Ensuring protection, not punishment: the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill should be amended to fully repeal all remaining modern slavery provisions in the Illegal Migration Act and Nationality and Borders Act. Trafficking survivors should receive the protection they deserve, not face further hardship.
- Removing barriers to victim support: Part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 should be scrapped. By raising the reasonable grounds threshold and requiring concrete evidence of exploitation, the law has made it harder to identify victims, increasing their risk of re-trafficking.
- A strategic approach to modern slavery: the government should commit to a comprehensive modern slavery strategy focused on prevention, survivor support, and prosecuting traffickers. A standalone Modern Slavery Bill should be introduced to incorporate ECAT (European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings) protections into UK law. Modern slavery should also return to the National Risk Register, giving it the focus needed to effectively tackle the scale and impact of the crime.
- Granting survivors the right to work: all survivors in the NRM should be given the right to work to aid their recovery, promote independence, and enable them to contribute to their communities.
- Reforming temporary stay policies: the policy on granting temporary stay (VTS leave), which allows survivors of modern slavery to remain in the UK while they recover from their exploitation, is too restrictive. It has left many survivors in a state of uncertainty and at risk of further exploitation.
- Investing in legal aid for survivors: the legal aid crisis must be addressed, with a full review of the strict eligibility criteria and bureaucratic barriers that prevent victims from accessing the legal support they are entitled to under ECAT.
- Recognising the impact of coercion: we must ensure that no Public Order Disqualifications, where victims with criminal records are disqualified from support, are made without potential victims having access to legal representation. Many victims of modern slavery are forced into criminal activity by their traffickers. Disqualifying them from support due to these offences ignores the reality that they were acting under duress.
- Increasing prosecutions of traffickers: more investment is needed in specialist police teams and victim navigators – professionals who support survivors throughout the criminal justice process – to ensure traffickers are brought to justice.
join us in the fight against modern slavery
A decade after the Act, the UK stands at a crossroads. We have seen progress, but there is still so much to do to protect victims, hold traffickers accountable, and eliminate exploitation from our communities.
Now is the time to push for stronger protections, transform business practices, and ensure that every survivor gets the support they deserve.
Change is only possible when we work together. Be part of the movement to end modern slavery by signing up for our newsletter, explore our website to learn how to get involved, and follow us on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Watch Andrew Wallis OBE’s full interview.
Watch Justine Carter’s full interview.
