forced LABOUR IN THE UK: UK Government backs new slavery law

Following a campaign by Anti-Slavery International and Liberty, the British Government has backed new laws to crackdown on modern day slavery. Thank you to all our campaigners who took part in our recent action to criminalise forced labour and servitude in the UK.

On 28 October 2009 Ministers conceded that existing legislation fails to protect people from modern day slavery and have agreed to criminalise forced labour and servitude in the Coroners and Justice Bill. Read the press release for more.

Anti-Slavery International and Liberty had met with Ministers to explain that a change in the law was needed to protect over 1,000 people estimated to be in forced labour in the UK. 

Modern slavery continues to exist in the UK. Some of the British products we buy today and the services we receive may have involved the use of forced labour. These workers are controlled through various means including debt bondage, the removal of passports and the use of violence, intimidation and threats.

Anti-Slavery International estimates that in addition to the thousand men, women and children who are trafficked (transported away from their communities through coercion or deception) for forced labour to the UK at any one time, hundreds more people who have not been trafficked are estimated to be working in conditions of forced labour or servitude.

Anti-Slavery International’s own research has found many people, including children, in forced labour across a range of sectors, including domestic servitude, agriculture, construction, food processing and packaging, nursing, hospitality, and the restaurant trade. As an example of the dangers faced by a single community, Chinese migrant workers have been found in forced labour as DVD sellers, in factory work, in Chinese restaurants and in cockle picking.

The current legal framework

Prior to the Government’s announcement to back the new legislation, prosecutions for forced labour in the UK were limited to cases where a person had been trafficked.

The UK Government introduced the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claiments, etc.) Act in 2004 which made trafficking for all forms of labour exploitation a criminal offence. However, under this legislation the trafficking element of the case was vital to the success of the prosecution, therefore making it impossible to obtain a conviction where trafficking was difficult to prove.

Proposed legal amendments

When adopted, the proposed amendments to the Coroners and Justice Bill will create two new criminal offences: for holding someone in servitude; and for subjecting someone to forced or compulsory labour. These stand-alone offences include penalties that reflect the severity of this crime and ensure that vulnerable people are fully protected from this abuse.

public campaign

Anti-Slavery International is incredibly grateful to the Government for its recognition of the problem of forced labour in the UK and its attempts to address it. We thank our supporters for their part in lobbying the Justice Secretary, and Jack Straw, which helped exert pressure on the Government.

Stories of slavery in the UK

Zari* came from East Africa to the UK as a domestic worker with her employer. When her employer died, she was taken on by the employer’s cousin. The cousin asked for her passport to renew her visa, but her passport was never returned. Zari had to work seven days a week with no time off or breaks. She was paid £100 per week, but after deductions for food and rent (a mattress on the kitchen floor), she had barely £40 left. She was not allowed out of the house unaccompanied, she was insulted, beaten and also sexually abused by the employer’s husband. She managed to run away and tried to complain to the police but they did not pursue an investigation.

Aleksander* a worker from Poland, was forced to work picking flowers in Scotland. He received only 4p per bunch picked, earning just £24 a day for a nine hour day. Huge deductions were made without his consent from his already sub-minimum wage earnings for accommodation and transport costs. He slept in a cramped room with eight other workers in accommodation which had only four toilets between 43 workers. He received a threatening letter from his boss stating that he was not free to leave before the end of his contract unless he paid £700, and if he did not pay the money it would be recovered from his family back home.

* Their names have been changed to protect their identity

Forced labour and slavery

Forced labour is any work or service which people are made to do against their will under threat of some form of punishment.

Forced labour is a contemporary form of slavery, which has a number of key characteristics:

• forced to work, through mental or physical threat;
• controlled by an 'employer', under the threat of some form of punishment;
• dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property';
• physically constrained or has restrictions placed on their freedom of movement.