Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many identified victims of modern slavery in Sheffield were referred using the National Referral Mechanism in (a) 2023 and (b) 2024 to date.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding is provided to projects supporting victims of modern slavery in (a) Sheffield and (b) the rest of South Yorkshire.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many victims of modern slavery were identified in south Yorkshire in (a) 2023 and (b) 2024 as of 21 May 2024.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding has been allocated to Sheffield City Council to help support victims of modern slavery in the financial year 2023-24.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she has made a recent assessment of the adequacy of legal aid provision for immigration cases.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Legal aid is available for asylum cases, for immigration matters for victims of domestic abuse and modern slavery, for separated migrant children and for immigration detention cases.
Once commenced, individuals who receive a removal notice under the Illegal Migration Act (IMA) will have access to merits and means free legal advice in relation to the removal notice.
We have taken action to increase access to legal aid for immigration and asylum cases, by:
Setting fees for IMA work at 15% above the usual hourly rate;
Providing up to £1.4 million of funding in 2024 for accreditation and re-accreditation of senior caseworkers to conduct immigration and asylum legal aid work;
Allowing Detained Duty Advice Scheme (DDAS) providers to give guidance remotely, at the discretion of providers and subject to their professional judgement and their obligations towards vulnerable persons; and
Introducing payment for travel time between Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) and DDAS surgeries.
The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) monitors supply across its legal aid contracts on an ongoing basis and, where demand is greater than the available supply, takes action within its operational powers to secure additional provision to ensure the continuity of legal aid-funded services.
The LAA regularly engages with provider representative groups, including on the provision of immigration and asylum services, via forums such as the Civil Contract Consultative Group.
The ongoing Review of Civil Legal Aid is considering the broader economic context of the civil legal aid market as a whole, including for immigration cases, so that it can operate sustainably in the long-term; the Green Paper consultation is expected in July 2024.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of people who are victims of (a) controlling prostitution for gain, (b) causing or inciting prostitution for gain and (c) trafficking for sexual exploitation advertised for prostitution on adult services websites in Hull North.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Government keeps legislation under review to ensure it keeps pace with the evolving threat of crime.
Section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 is a strict liability offence. That means that, for the police to charge a case they need evidence that the suspect had paid for sexual services from an individual, and that that individual was subjected to force or control by another. They do not need to prove criminal intent. The penalty for a Section 53A offence is a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (up to £1,000). In gathering evidence of a Section 53A offence, the police will prioritise actions that may lead to charges for more serious offences, such as modern slavery or causing or inciting or controlling prostitution for gain. The penalty for modern slavery is up to life imprisonment and for the latter offence up to 7 years’ imprisonment.
The Home Office publishes police recorded crime data for the exploitation of prostitution offences (sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003) and modern slavery offences, but information about the facilitation of those crimes is not held centrally. Data is not available at the requested geographical level, however data by police force area can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables.
The Online Safety Act 2023 will place a duty on adult service websites to proactively identify and remove content linked to criminal activity and a duty to prevent illegal content relating to sexual exploitation appearing on their sites. Companies will need to adopt systems and processes to identify, assess and address sexual exploitation and human trafficking activity based on a risk assessment.
Law enforcement is also running an adult service website referral pilot where adverts are referred to the Tackling Organised Exploitation capability (housed in Regional Organised Crime Units) to gather intelligence and identify organised criminal activity.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, whether the Church of England has had discussions with the Clewer Initiative on the impact of its funding on its work; and whether the Church is taking steps to support the Clewer Initiative.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Clewer Initiative was set up as a joint programme between the Church of England and the Trustees of the Community of St John the Baptist (known as the Clewer Sisters). It was launched in October 2017 with the backing of the then Prime Minister Theresa May and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It started as an initial three-year programme working to help the Church of England's 42 dioceses support victims of modern slavery and identify signs of exploitation in their local communities. Information about its work can be found here: https://theclewerinitiative.org/
Over the past seven years the Clewer Initiative has worked with a large network of volunteers drawn from across the Church of England. Sadly, the Trustees of CSJB feel unable to continue with funding and, in the absence of an alternative funding stream, the Clewer Initiative will close this summer. The National Church Institutions are currently working to ensure that the assets of the project, especially valuable tools such as the Car Wash App, which have led to many investigations and prosecutions for Modern Day Slavery, are transferred to other charities working in this field. The Church of England remains committed to combating modern day slavery and will consider other ways to continue its work in this area.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, whether the Church of England has had discussions with the Clewer Initiative on tackling modern slavery in the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Clewer Initiative was set up as a joint programme between the Church of England and the Trustees of the Community of St John the Baptist (known as the Clewer Sisters). It was launched in October 2017 with the backing of the then Prime Minister Theresa May and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It started as an initial three-year programme working to help the Church of England's 42 dioceses support victims of modern slavery and identify signs of exploitation in their local communities. Information about its work can be found here: https://theclewerinitiative.org/
Over the past seven years the Clewer Initiative has worked with a large network of volunteers drawn from across the Church of England. Sadly, the Trustees of CSJB feel unable to continue with funding and, in the absence of an alternative funding stream, the Clewer Initiative will close this summer. The National Church Institutions are currently working to ensure that the assets of the project, especially valuable tools such as the Car Wash App, which have led to many investigations and prosecutions for Modern Day Slavery, are transferred to other charities working in this field. The Church of England remains committed to combating modern day slavery and will consider other ways to continue its work in this area.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Somerton and Frome)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of expanding the Rape Review Action Plan to include all cases of sexual violence.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The 2021 Rape Review Action Plan set public ambitions to return the volumes of adult rape cases being referred by the police, charged by the CPS, and going to court back to at least 2016 levels. We have exceeded each of these ambitions ahead of schedule.
The Rape Review intentionally focussed its efforts on the system’s response to adult rape, acknowledging its unique and complex nature to investigate and prosecute, as well as for the harm it causes to victims. That being said, improvements delivered through the Action Plan will also have wider benefit for the justice system’s response to other sexual offences.
For example, we have recruited 20,000 extra police officers and are providing specialist rape and serious sexual assault training to 2,000 officers, making sure the police have the skills to investigate these crimes. We have rolled out pre-recorded cross examination for victims of sexual and modern slavery offences nationally, sparing victims from the glare of court and helping them give their best evidence. We are also quadrupling victims funding by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/10, enabling us to increase the number of Independent Sexual Violence and Domestic Abuse Advisors to around 1,000 by 2024/25.
More widely, the Government’s 2021 Tackling Violence against Women and Girls strategy set out our plan for improving the system wide response to VAWG. We have delivered on the vast majority of the actions set out in the original Strategy and continue to make important strides, including the first successful prosecution for cyber flashing resulting in a custodial sentence (March 2024); bringing into force the provisions in the Online Safety Act (January 2024) including new intimate image abuse offences; and putting a new duty on employers to protect their employees from sexual harassment via the Worker Protection amendment of the Equality Act 2010.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the level of risk to women and girls arriving in the UK via small boats of trafficking for sexual exploitation in 2024.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Home Office publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release. Data on small boat arrivals by year, sex and age group is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’, with the latest data up to the end of December 2023.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. Future irregular migration publication release dates can be found on the research and statistics calendar.
No assessment has been made of the risk to woman and girls arriving in the UK via small boats to trafficking for sexual exploitation. However, all individuals arriving on small boats will be assessed on arrival, including assessments to identify vulnerability and safeguarding needs. Where there are indicators of modern slavery, the individual will be referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). The NRM aims to lift victims out of situations of exploitation, provide them with a short period of intensive support and specialist care, and put them in a position where they can begin to rebuild their lives with increased resilience against future exploitation. In the last two years alone almost 30,000 people have had access to the protections of the NRM.