The latest modern slavery statistics show that the record low grant rate noted in the previous update have continued in the period April to June 2024, with positive decisions made by the immigration enforcement competent authority at around 20% for both stages of the trafficking identification process.

Background: how does the modern slavery protection process work?

Firstly, a potential modern slavery survivor has to be referred by certain designated professionals into the protection system. Immigration lawyers cannot do this themselves. The protection system is called the ‘national referral mechanism’ (NRM).

Next, one of the two competent authorities must decide whether there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to think the referred person is a victim of modern slavery. The two bodies are the misnamed ‘single competent authority’ (SCA) and the ‘immigration enforcement competent authority’ (IECA). The latter was only created in 2021. As is indicated by the name, it has more of a focus on people without secure immigration status, including people who are detained or in the asylum inadmissibility process.

If the referred person receives a positive ‘reasonable grounds’ decision then they move to the next stage and will eventually receive a final decision from the competent authority handling their case on whether there are ‘conclusive grounds’ for thinking they are a victim of modern slavery.

Referrals

There has been a 5% decrease in the number of referrals for April to June 2024 compared to the previous quarter. Year on year there has been an increase of 8% in referrals, so it is difficult to discern a trend. A recent report from the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group details the lack of non-statutory (i.e. non governmental and third sector organisations) first responders with capacity to refer cases into the national referral mechanism.

The report found that “62.5% of survey’s respondents stated that they had to give up looking for a First Responder in over 20 cases.” And:

The Salvation Army, who is the non-statutory First Responder that submits the most NRM referrals, was temporarily forced to turn away most individuals, twice over the past year, to give proper attention to the large number of new cases referred to them. The last time this occurred was in May and June 2024 when they stopped accepting new referrals for over 5 weeks.

Non governmental and third sector organisations accounted for 5% of all referrals for the period April to June 2024.

Nationalities

There were people of 193 nationalities referred into the system in April to June 2024. After British citizens, the most common nationalities were Albanian (574 people were referred, 13% of the total) and Vietnamese (558 people, 13% of the total). 95% of the Albanian and 80% of Vietnamese people referred for identification were adults.

The ‘duty to notify’ process is used where it is suspected that an adult has been trafficked but they do not consent to enter the national referral mechanism process. There was a slight increase in the use of this notification process, from 1,125 in January to March 2024, to 1,172 in April to June 2024. 17% of those where the process were used were Vietnamese, 11% were Eritrean and 9% Albanian.

Recognition rates

The immigration enforcement competent authority made a positive reasonable grounds decision in only 22% of cases for the period April to June 2024, compared with 61% of cases decided by the single competent authority. At conclusive grounds stage for the same period, 76% of decisions made by the single competent authority were positive compared with only 21% of decisions by the immigration enforcement competent authority.

Public order disqualifications

Public order requests and disqualifications increased in the period April to June 2024 when compared with the previous quarter. 97 requests were made for disqualification on public order grounds and there were 83 cases where the decision to disqualify on those grounds was confirmed. This is an increase on the period January to March 2024 when there were 62 requests for public order disqualification and eight for bad faith disqualification. There were 41 confirmed decisions on public order grounds and seven on bad faith grounds in January to March 2024.

In total, there have been eight referrals for disqualification on bad faith grounds since this was introduced under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and in all eight cases that referral has led to a confirmed disqualification. All these referrals and decisions have taken place this year.

Delays

In May 2024 the immigration enforcement competent authority took on 1,914 cases from the single competent authority that came within its remit but had been referred into the national referral mechanism before the immigration body was set up in 2021. As a result of taking over these very old cases, conclusive grounds decision making times for the immigration body increased from an average (mean) of 404 days in January to March 2024, to 784 days for the period April to June 2024.

There was also an increase in median waiting times across both competent authorities, from 491 days in January to March to 542 in April to June, which cannot be explained away by this change.

Conclusion

The Home Office summary says that:

The number of conclusive grounds decisions issued this quarter is the second-highest since the NRM began, following the increasing trend since the early months of 2021 due to the recruitment of additional decision makers by the competent authorities and significant productivity and efficiency efforts.

So they are indicating that steps have been taken to tackle these out of control delays, however there is no sign of that having any effect in the delay statistics. If there is no improvement by the next quarter then perhaps the courts may even start taking these failures seriously.