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Forced Labour in the Uk JRF Programme Paper Forced labour FORCED LABOUR IN THE UK Alistair Geddes, Gary Craig and Sam Scott with Louise Ackers, Olivia Robinson and Dianne Scullion June 2013 This paper: considers the definition of forced labour, the legal and policy developments around it and the often overstated relationship with human trafficking; looks at the scale and scope of forced labour in the UK, how it is tackled, and the pressures on regulatory and enforcement mechanism designed to help those who are exploited; identifies the need for a unified government strategy to combat forced labour and makes recommendations for national and local government, business and trades unions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) commissioned this paper as part of its programme on forced labour, which aims to influence the development of policy and practice to reduce forced labour in the UK and support its victims. ISBN 978 1 85935 980 8 © University of Bristol 2013 Contents Page Section 1 Introduction 3 Section 2 Forced labour in the UK: A literature 7 review Section 3 Forced labour: a law and legal case review 20 Section 4 UK data sources on forced labour 35 Section 5 Understandings of forced labour from the 81 front line Section 6 Conclusions and recommendations 95 Glossary and abbreviations 105 Notes 106 References 108 Appendices 118 Acknowledgements 163 About the authors 163 2 Introduction Until recently, forced labour was widely understood to be an issue of little relevance to the United Kingdom; it was associated with slavery-like conditions in poor countries and with the actions of authoritarian states. However a growing range of studies now points to the fact that there are many work situations in the UK which are not only poor and exploitative but which can also give rise to forced labour. This study of the scope of forced labour within the UK found it to be a significant, probably growing, though often invisible, problem. The study has been wide-ranging, addressing the following questions: How should the causes of forced labour in the UK be understood? Are the legal, policy, and institutional frameworks for addressing forced labour in the UK adequate? Can the scale and extent of forced labour in the UK be estimated? What is the UK’s response to forced labour? What are levels of awareness and understanding of forced labour among key stakeholders? What is forced labour? Forced labour is a decades old concern. Article 2 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 29 (1930) defines it as: “all work or service that is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. In addition, forced labour is also an infringement of fundamental human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits holding someone in slavery or servitude and use or trade in slavery in any forms. The European Convention on Human Rights also prohibits holding someone in slavery or servitude or requiring them to perform forced or compulsory labour. The ILO definition of forced labour points to two critical dimensions, namely coercion and the lack of freedom of choice. However there remains a lack of firm understanding of how these dimensions are constituted and how they may intersect, particularly in the context of forced labour used for private economic gain. Currently the ILO estimates that of the 20.9 million persons in forced labour globally 18.7 million (90 per cent) are exploited in the private economy by individuals or enterprises (ILO, 2012a). Included in this estimate is a range of exploitative work relationships which are referred to in various ways such as debt bondage, modern slavery and trafficking in human beings. 3 While forced labour has been linked with human trafficking in particular, it is also crucial to appreciate that it can develop in other ways. In the UK context recent work has attempted to situate both forced labour and trafficking into a broader ‘exploitation continuum’ (Skrivánková, 2010). Forced labour and the UK legal and policy framework The UK has ratified the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention and is also party to the European Convention on Human Rights. As a result the UK must have legal and administrative frameworks to enforce these rights and to investigate allegations of forced labour in all its forms. The UK’s legal framework against forced labour is recognised as new and relatively strong (EHRC, 2012). The Immigration and Asylum (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004 makes trafficking of people for exploitation, including by way of forced labour, a criminal offence. The Protection of Freedoms Act expands this to cover offences committed by UK nationals abroad. In Scotland trafficking in human beings including for forced labour is covered by Section 46 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. In addition slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour are a criminal office under Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Section 47 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act in Scotland. The maximum sentence for this offence is 14 years’ imprisonment. Legal action could also be pursued through an employment tribunal. As well as the police, the UK a number of enforcement agencies set up to monitor, investigate and enforce basic rights at work. These agencies include the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), HM Revenue and Customs, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and the Health and Safety Executive. Since 2009 there has also been a Pay and Work Rights Helpline receiving calls for all of these enforcement bodies. Indicators of forced labour are incorporated into the licensing standards of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), which works in partnership with the police and other agencies. In addition the creation of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), also in 2009, has added information on labour exploitation related to human trafficking. These developments may go some way to combating forced labour in the UK, however further appraisal is necessary. It is vital that the legal framework is not simply ‘paper-based’ but can be used in practice to prosecute those who commit forced labour and to provide justice for those who have been subject to it. Furthermore, growing evidence shows that those vulnerable to forced labour include not only those trafficked, smuggled or otherwise working illegally in the UK, but also migrant workers (mainly from other EU states) with the right to work in the UK. Hence forced labour needs to be approached as an issue of worker rights and criminal justice rather than reduced to a trafficking or immigration issue. Current 4 evidence also points to exploitative work practices being used in a range of sectors, including some which are outside the remit of the GLA. It is therefore important that approaches to identifying and dealing with forced labour are consistent across the various different lines of responsibility. Scale and extent of forced labour in the UK Forced labour is difficult to detect. It is hidden by its perpetrators and workers may be reluctant or frightened to come forward. On top of this the definition and boundaries of forced labour remain contested issues, and there are differences regarding the choice of indicators with which it may be identified. For example the ILO originally proposed six key indicators for determining whether a worker was in forced labour, but in 2012 it expanded this to eleven indicators. No indicators are widely adopted and so data on which the scale or extent of forced labour in the UK may be assessed also remains limited. Most of the evidence consists of academic studies, generally relatively small-scale, such as JRF studies pointing to forced labour in sectors including cleaning, construction, care work and domestic work (e.g. Dwyer et al., 2011), catering and hospitality (Allamby et al., 2011, Kagan et al., 2011, Scott et al., 2012), as well as in food production and processing (Allamby et al., 2011, Scott et al., 2012). Other one- off investigations have included the TUC-led Commission on Vulnerable Employment (TUC, 2008) and the EHRC’s inquiry into conditions in meat and poultry processing in England and Wales (EHRC, 2010. However all of the above tend to suggest that the scale of forced labour may be significantly higher than the anticipated number of cases prosecuted as criminal offences. Data from enforcement agencies, from the National Referral Mechanism and from other sources also supports the view that there may be several thousand workers across the UK in work situations classifiable as forced labour. Research methods The research included interviews and focus groups with experts and other stakeholders, reviews of policy documents and earlier research, and close examination of a wide range of data sources. The research spanned the entire UK and the contents of this report are not strongly disaggregated for each nation. During the consultation we sought to gauge perspectives both among stakeholders at national level and among field offers and service providers operating at more local and frontline levels. As well as individual interviews we ran a series of local stakeholder meetings in Boston in Lincolnshire, Bristol and Dundee. The choice of these locations was co-ordinated with work for our food industry report (Scott et al., 2012). 5 The National Referral Mechanism, designed to identify cases of trafficking, recorded more than 370 cases of adults and children who may have been trafficked for labour exploitation in 2012, plus a further 164 in which domestic servitude was involved. As well as looking further at these figures we also looked at the data available from the four main agencies enforcing workplace rights and from other sources, including employment tribunals and other support and advice organisations.
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