Human Trafficking

House of Lords written question – answered at on 21 January 2015.

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Photo of Lord Roberts of Llandudno Lord Roberts of Llandudno Liberal Democrat

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money they allocate to tackling people trafficking each year; and how many people have been convicted of such crimes in the last year.

Photo of Lord Bates Lord Bates The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department

The Government does not set a specific budget for tackling different crime types. As the Government’s Modern Slavery Strategy sets out, there are a very wide range of Government-funded organisations with a key role to play in tackling modern slavery and human trafficking. It is not possible to identify the total investment in this activity.

Modern slavery is a hidden crime and a wide range of work is undertaken to not only tackle this crime through law enforcement organisations, but to also highlight it and raise public awareness. Bringing this complex crime into the open, will in turn help us stamp it out more effectively. In addition, the Government has introduced a new statutory role, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, responsible for improving awareness and detection by law enforcement, as well as working with partners to increase the number of successful prosecutions of the perpetrators of modern slavery. Kevin Hyland was appointed as the designate Commissioner in November 2014.

Conviction figures for 2014 have yet to be published. In 2013, there were 68 convictions on an all offence basis. These offences were: trafficking for sexual exploitation; trafficking for non-sexual exploitation; and slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. In addition, individuals will have been convicted for conspiracy for conduct relating to modern slavery and trafficking offences, but the conviction data available cannot be disaggregated in this way.

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