Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when the Home Office plans to publish an explanation of its prohibition of the use of any data which results from the Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract.

Under the Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract (MSVCC), a lot of personal and protected data is generated, stored and processed to enable delivery of key services to vulnerable victims.

The Single Competent Authority (SCA), who manage the MSVC Contract delivered by The Salvation Army (TSA), is currently reviewing how such data can be appropriately handled for research purposes.

It is imperative to get the balance right between ensuring that rich data can support insights into key operational and policy activities, and ensuring that (when such data is utilised) it is done in ways which are fully compliant with data protection rules and are transparent to the victims themselves.

Service providers are already able to engage with TSA and the SCA should they want to provide high level, non-identifying data for the purposes of research.

The SCA has been communicating with MSVCC service providers about this ongoing work, and the potential next steps in agreeing a contractual mechanism to manage any such future research.