Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the change in the number of (a) British children and (b) Albanian adults being referred to the National Referral Mechanism in the last five years.
The Government is committed to tackling the heinous crime of modern slavery; ensuring that victims are provided with the support they need to begin rebuilding their lives and that those responsible are prosecuted. The number of National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referrals has increased every year since the NRM was introduced in 2009.
The increase in referrals is likely to be indicative of greater awareness of the NRM and improved law enforcement activity, as well as an increase in the recorded NRM referrals related to young people involved in county lines activity. The Home Office have published statistics on the nationality of NRM referrals for adults and children on a quarterly basis from Quarter 2 2019. Prior to this the NCA published this data. On 19 October we published the 2020 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery which sets out an assessment of trends in modern slavery in the UK.
Home Office statistics can be found: here:https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-referral-mechanism-statistics
Statistic published by the NCA can be found here: https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications
Modern Slavery Annual report can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2020-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery