Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said survivors of modern slavery had not been given the attention they deserved. Photograph: UK Parliament/Andy Bailey/PA
The Home Office has recruited 200 staff to clear a backlog of 23,300 modern slavery cases left by the last government, a minister has told the Guardian.
Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said the department planned to end prolonged uncertainty and anguish for survivors by finalising the cases within two years.
It follows reports that some trafficked survivors have been waiting years to be defined as victims of modern slavery.
There are an estimated 130,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK, trapped in sectors including agriculture, prostitution and care. Most have suffered traumatic sexual, physical and economic abuse but face long delays in having their status confirmed through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).
The aim of the NRM is to protect people from further abuse once they are no longer being controlled by their traffickers by providing safe housing, counselling and other support to help them recover from their ordeal.
Phillips, who met survivors of modern slavery on Thursday at Salvation Army premises in Denmark Hill, south London, said that the government was attempting to right a wrong by issuing a final decision in the process.
“For too long, modern slavery survivors and the harrowing experiences they have lived through have not been given the attention and support they deserve,” she said.
“This is going to change. The actions I have announced today are a first step towards putting survivors first, eradicating the backlog of modern slavery cases to give victims the clarity and peace of mind they need to move on with their lives.”
Phillips, who worked closely with modern slavery victims before being elected as an MP in 2015, said the last Conservative government allowed the backlog to build up.
“In the last five years, the last government just didn’t care enough about modern slavery.
“They moved it to become the responsibility of the immigration minister and it became sideshow.
“If you are the victim of such brutal crimes, sometimes brutal rapes, it is just horrible to have to wait for a decision like this. It is morally wrong and we will put this right.”
In a report released last week, a committee of peers warned that three recent immigration acts passed by the last government had deliberately restricted the support to these victims that had been offered by the groundbreaking Modern Slavery Act of 2015.
The committee pointed to the fact that if the Home Office deems an individual to be a “threat to public order”, or believes they have applied for support “in bad faith”, they can be denied any protection, for example, with little prospect of legal aid to defend themselves.
The evidence threshold for making an initial decision about whether someone may have been trafficked was also raised. The rules were tightened on the basis that the system was being exploited by illegal migrants, but the peers, who sit on the Lords Modern Slavery Act committee, said they had not found systemic evidence of abuse.
Peter Wieltschnig, senior policy officer at the charity Focus on Labour Exploitation (Flex), which gave evidence to the committee, said victims were being told they could be deported if they tried to raise concerns about their treatment.
Referring to the three recent Tory immigration acts – the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act – he said: “The wave of successive anti-migrant legislation gifted traffickers with new tools to coerce people into exploitation.”
