13 April 2025: Guardian: Trafficking victims rejecting UK government support because they fear being deported
Nearly 6,000 victims of modern slavery chose not to be referred for help last year, new data shows
Thousands of trafficking victims have rejected the government’s support, many due to fear of the authorities or of being deported, lawyers have said.
Nearly 6,000 trafficking victims rejected support from the government’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for victims of modern slavery last year, according to data based on research from the British Institute for International and Comparative Law and the Human Trafficking Foundation at the University of Oxford. Researchers found a range of reasons for this among respondents, including fear of traffickers, receiving support elsewhere, wanting to put things of being trafficked behind them and being reluctant to engage with UK authorities.
There were more than 19,000 NRM referrals last year. The number of people referred as victims to the NRM but refused at the initial stage has shot up 290% in two years, from 12% in 2022 to 47% in 2024, according to research from the organisation After Exploitation. Separate research from that group found that people in only 133 of 51,193 modern slavery cases reported to the Home Office between January 2021 and May 2024 had applied for compensation as victims.
Home Office freedom of information data obtained by the Observer revealed thousands of trafficking victims from Albania and Vietnam – two nations where many victims come from – were returned to these countries after engaging with the NRM. According to the data, the returns were a mix of voluntary and enforced.Between January 2020 and September last year, 2,427 trafficking victims were returned to these two countries, according to the FoI data. All either had positive reasonable grounds or positive conclusive grounds decisions from officials that they were trafficking victims.
Liz Williams, head of policy impact at the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre, said: “Nearly 6,000 people choosing not to be referred for statutory support is very concerning and shows a system that has long been stretched and under pressure.
“Our research shows that many of them do so on the basis of fear of the authorities or poor-quality information they receive about the system that’s meant to support them. Part of the answer is also low trust in authorities, especially after anti-immigration laws that would strip many survivors of protections.”