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 task force announced by the Prime Minister on 31 July 2016 to accelerate progress on tackling modern slavery.

The taskforce has met twice, 3 November 2016 and 12 January 2017 and includes representation from central Government and leading stakeholders. The taskforce aims to do more to bring perpetrators to justice and to support victims both domestically and overseas with the focus on four specific objectives:

o Bring efforts and resources targeted at modern slavery in line with resources to tackle other forms of organised crime;
o increase and improve investigations into the perpetrators of modern slavery, through further education of law enforcement officers on the nature of modern slavery offences;
o improve successful prosecution levels with further education of prosecuting authorities on modern slavery; and
o improve international cooperation to tackle modern slavery.

We are already seeing progress in gathering intelligence on perpetrators of this vile crime and are developing our international response to tackle the threat overseas and strengthen law enforcement cooperation.