The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was designed to address barbaric evil. That was Theresa May’s description when she was Home Secretary and championed the Act, and she was right. The question now facing Parliament is whether we respond to that evil with the seriousness it demands, or whether we allow border politics to dismantle protections for some of the most vulnerable people who pass through this country.
Reports suggest the Home Secretary is planning a complete overhaul of the Modern Slavery Act, driven by frustration with what officials describe as “vexatious claims” that delay deportations. The narrative is familiar: the system is being gamed, lawyers are coaching clients, the Act has become a “get-out-of deportation card.” The proposed solution is equally familiar: restrict access, tighten tests, and remove safeguards.
I understand the political pressure. I recognise the operational frustrations. But having worked across multiple jurisdictions designing anti-trafficking responses, I know what happens when we prioritise administrative convenience over victim protection. We get it wrong. And the people who pay the price are not those manipulating the system – they will find other routes. The people who pay are trafficking survivors whose suffering we have decided is too inconvenient to acknowledge.
Every system has bad actors. That is not an argument for abandoning the system
Let me state what should be obvious: some people will make false claims under any protection framework. This is also true of asylum, refugee status, employment tribunals, and referrals under the Modern Slavery Act. It is also true of tax returns, benefit applications, and insurance claims. The existence of fraudulent claims does not invalidate the purpose of the system. It requires effective case assessment, not wholesale dismantling of protections.
The data cited to justify reform tells a more complex story. Yes, 19,000 people were referred as potential victims in 2024. Yes, 53% received positive decisions – the lowest proportion on record. But that means nearly half of the referrals were rejected after assessment. The system is functioning. It is identifying false claims and filtering them out.
The fact that 65% of small boat arrivals making Modern Slavery Act claims were found to have no reasonable grounds demonstrates that assessment processes are working, not failing. These claims were rejected. The system distinguished between credible and non-credible cases. That is what we should expect.
The question is not whether some people make cynical claims. The question is whether our response to that reality should involve making it harder for genuine victims to access protection. Because that is what will happen if we introduce time limits for disclosure, restrict legal tests, or require claims to be made “immediately” upon arrival.
Trauma does not operate on immigration timetables
Requiring victims to disclose trafficking immediately upon arrival in the UK betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how trauma affects disclosure. Survivors of trafficking and modern slavery often cannot or will not speak about their experiences immediately. This is not a strategic delay. It is a psychological reality.
Victims may be threatened with harm to family members if they speak. They may not recognise their experience as trafficking, particularly if coercion was psychological rather than physical. They may be dealing with acute trauma responses that make coherent disclosure impossible. They may distrust authorities, particularly if their trafficking involved corrupt officials or if they have been criminalised in transit countries for offences committed under duress.
Research consistently shows that disclosure is a process, not an event. It unfolds as victims begin to feel safe, access support, and develop trust in people around them. Imposing arbitrary time limits on when claims can be made does not prevent abuse of the system. It prevents traumatised people from accessing protection when they are finally able to speak.
The Home Office knows this. Its own guidance on victim identification acknowledges the complex factors that affect disclosure. If we now abandon that understanding because some claims are made tactically, we are choosing administrative efficiency over safeguarding. That is a choice with consequences.
The "overseas exploitation" problem is a feature, not a bug
Reports emphasise that, for the first time, the majority of Modern Slavery Act claims now relate to exploitation that occurred overseas rather than in the UK. This is presented as evidence of system abuse – an “absurd situation” where people make claims “that relate to their time in northern France or years ago in their home country.”
This reflects a category error. The Modern Slavery Act is not, and was never intended to be, limited to exploitation that occurred on British soil. Trafficking is, in some circumstances, a transnational crime. People are recruited in one country, transported through several others, and exploited in a destination country. The exploitation does not begin when someone crosses into UK territorial waters. It begins when they are coerced, deceived, or forced into a situation from which they cannot escape.
If a Vietnamese teenager is trafficked through China and Russia into France, held in debt bondage, and then moved to the UK, are we seriously suggesting that only the UK portion of that experience counts? If an Eritrean woman is sexually exploited in Libya while being moved toward Europe, does that suffering become irrelevant the moment she crosses the Channel?
The Modern Slavery Act applies to people within the UK jurisdiction who have experienced trafficking and modern slavery. Where that exploitation occurred is legally immaterial. What matters is whether the person meets the definition of a trafficking victim and requires protection. Restricting the Act to UK-only exploitation would render it meaningless for many trafficking cases, which are by their nature cross-border.
Yes, some lawyers and doctors enable false claims. Prosecute them
The reports cite evidence of solicitors submitting “carbon copy” applications and doctors filing questionable medical reports. More than 100 referrals have been made to the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority. This constitutes serious professional misconduct and should be thoroughly investigated.
But the solution to professional misconduct is professional accountability, not restricting victim access to legal representation or medical assessment. If lawyers are coaching clients to make false claims, refer them to the SRA, gather evidence, and pursue disciplinary action. If doctors are providing reports that misrepresent facts, refer them to the General Medical Council.
What we should not do is respond to misconduct by a minority of professionals by making it functionally impossible for genuine victims to navigate a complex legal system or obtain medical evidence that supports their claims. That is collective punishment of the vulnerable for the failures of professionals who should know better.
The act was not designed for border control. Stop trying to make it one
There is a fundamental tension at the heart of this debate. The Modern Slavery Act was designed to identify and protect victims of a serious crime. It is now being assessed primarily through the lens of immigration control and found wanting because it does not efficiently facilitate deportations.
This is not a design flaw. It is a design feature. The Act prioritises victim protection over administrative convenience because that is what effective anti-trafficking frameworks must do. The moment we reverse that priority, the moment we design the system primarily to expedite removals, we will fail in the Act’s core purpose.
I am not suggesting that immigration control is unimportant, or that the government has no legitimate interest in managing borders. I am arguing that the Modern Slavery Act is the wrong tool for that job, and attempting to repurpose it as an immigration control mechanism will damage its effectiveness as a victim protection framework.
If the government believes people are making false asylum claims, strengthen asylum case processing. If the issue is irregular Channel crossings, address the absence of safe and legal routes. If the concern is that removal processes are too slow, invest in faster decision-making systems. But do not solve an immigration policy problem by weakening modern slavery protections.
What genuine reform would look like
If the Home Secretary is serious about improving the Modern Slavery Act, rather than simply removing obstacles to deportation, there are reforms worth considering.
First, invest in specialist training for decision-makers. The quality of initial assessments directly affects the number of false positives and false negatives. Better training improves both accuracy and speed.
Second, strengthen multi-agency coordination between police, immigration enforcement, and victim support organisations. Trafficking cases are complex. Effective identification requires information-sharing and joint working that currently does not happen consistently.
Third, establish clearer pathways for victims to exit the National Referral Mechanism when their cases are resolved, whether through support for voluntary return, access to appropriate immigration status, or other outcomes. The current system leaves people in limbo, which creates incentives for prolonging claims.
Fourth, resource the system adequately. A backlog of 17,000 cases is not evidence that too many claims are being made. It is evidence that insufficient resources have been allocated to assess them. The proposed reforms do nothing to address processing capacity.
Fifth, prosecute traffickers and those who profit from exploitation. The Modern Slavery Act created new criminal offences. Enforcement of those offences remains weak. If we are serious about deterring trafficking, we should focus on the perpetrators, not on making it harder for victims to come forward.
The real test of a system is how it treats the vulnerable
Every legal protection framework will be tested by people seeking to exploit it. This is not unique to the Modern Slavery Act. It is a feature of any system that offers protection or benefit. The test of our commitment to justice is not whether we can design a system that is never manipulated – that is impossible. The test is whether we prioritise protecting genuine victims even when doing so creates administrative complexity.
The government’s growth mission emphasises stability, productivity, and long-term thinking. Trafficking and modern slavery undermine all three. They distort labour markets, depress wages, damage productivity, and entrench informality. Effective anti-trafficking frameworks support economic objectives, not despite their complexity but because of their thoroughness.
Fifty-three per cent of claims receiving positive decisions means that nearly 10,000 people were identified as trafficking victims last year. Those are not abstractions. They are people who were held in debt bondage, sexually exploited, or forced to work in conditions of violence or coercion. The fact that identifying and protecting them is administratively inconvenient does not make it less necessary.
I have seen what happens when countries prioritise immigration control over victim protection. Survivors go unidentified. Traffickers operate with impunity. Exploitation becomes normalised. The economic and social costs compound over time. We designed the Modern Slavery Act to avoid those outcomes. We should not abandon that design because implementation is difficult.
A choice about values
The proposed reforms to the Modern Slavery Act represent a choice about what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to be a country that takes trafficking seriously, even when doing so complicates other policy objectives? Or do we want to be a country that talks about trafficking when it is politically useful, but retreats from protection when it becomes inconvenient?
The existence of false claims is not evidence that the system is broken. It is evidence that the system is being tested. The question is whether we respond by strengthening assessment processes, investing in capacity, and holding bad actors accountable, or whether we respond by restricting access for everyone, knowing that genuine victims will be among those who lose protection.
If we choose the latter, we will have faster deportations. We will also have more trafficking survivors who fall through the gaps, more exploitation that goes unaddressed, and more traffickers who face no consequences because their victims cannot access protection. That is not reform. It is abandonment.
The Modern Slavery Act is not perfect. No legislation is. But it was designed for a purpose that remains urgent and necessary. Before we dismantle it to solve an immigration policy problem, we should ask whether there is a solution that does not require sacrificing the vulnerable to appease the frustrated.
I believe there is. It requires political courage, adequate resources, and a willingness to defend complexity when the easy answer is restriction. It requires recognising that some problems cannot be solved by making systems simpler – they can only be solved by making systems better.
That is the reform the Modern Slavery Act deserves. Anything less is not reform at all.