Baroness Doocey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Doocey on 2016-03-07.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the National Referral Mechanism applies the definition of forced labour when the victim is a child.

Lord Bates

Data on the number of child cases of forced labour or domestic servitude recorded through the National Referral Mechanism is already publically available on the National Crime Agency website and can be found here: www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/national-referral-mechanism-statistics.

The National Referral Mechanism is designed to gather evidence in order to determine whether someone is considered to be a victim of ‘slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour’ or ‘human trafficking’ in line with the offences set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Whether an individual is considered to be a victim of either of these offences in the form of domestic servitude or forced labour will be determined on the indicators present and the facts of each case. Additional consideration is given to the particular vulnerabilities of children and their inability to consent.

Information on how many cases of domestic servitude have been prosecuted where the victim was a child or how many cases of domestic servitude have been recorded which involved more than one person from the same family is not recorded centrally.