Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the support for victims of modery slavery provided by local authorities in London.

All local agencies, including local authorities, have statutory duties to safeguard children as part of their local responsibilities, regardless of their backgrounds or experiences. The revised ‘Care of unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery’ statutory guidance for local authorities (2017) sets out the steps that local authorities should take to plan for the provision of support where the child is an unaccompanied asylum seeking child and/or may have been a victim of trafficking or modern slavery.

Support for adult victims of modern slavery is provided by a central Government-funded contract, delivery by the Salvation Army. Victims receive tailored specialist support, including: accommodation, subsistence, counselling, access to mental, physical and dental health services, and signposting to legal support.

As part of reform to the National Referral Mechanism, we are working with local authorities to test pathways for transitioning confirmed victims of modern slavery out of central Government-funded support into local communities, and will evaluate the effectiveness of these pathways.