Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 14 March 2023 to Question 158881 on Slavery, what the average number of days taken to make a (a) full Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority decision including the Single Competent Authority component and (b) Single Competent Authority decision for non IECA cases under the National Referral Mechanism for identifying potential victims of modern slavery.

The two competent authorities, the Single Competent Authority (SCA) and Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority (IECA), both make decisions on whether an individual is a victim of modern slavery. For conclusive grounds decisions made between January and March 2023, the average (median) number of days taken across the competent authorities was 566 days. For decisions made by just the SCA, it took an average of 654 days. For decisions made by just the IECA, it took an average of 352 days. For more information, see the quarterly published statistics (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-referral-mechanism-statistics).