Modern slavery remains a major issue in the UK. Anti-slavery charity Unseen found that modern slavery cases reported to its helpline reached a record high of 3,000 in 2025, a 41 per cent increase on the previous year. Campaigners have questioned the government’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting wrongdoing following its decision to defund a specialist modern slavery taskforce. In addition, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has called for new legislation to better protect the UK market from the influx of goods produced by forced labour abroad.

In April, the government closed the Modern Slavery and Organised Crime Unit, which coordinated national police forces and facilitated intelligence and analysis sharing. According to the College of Policing, tackling modern slavery requires close collaboration between police, local authorities, the Home Office, health services, communities and victim support organisations.

Eleanor Lyons, the UK’s Anti-Slavery Commissioner, has warned that slavery in the UK is at record levels and expected to worsen over the next decade, due to factors including the rising cost of living and AI, which makes it easier for traffickers to exploit vulnerable people online. Lauren Saunders, Deputy Director of Frontline Services at Unseen, says that the closure of the unit will be likely to lead to fewer modern slavery prosecutions by the authorities. ‘Modern slavery is a really complex crime and unless adequate law enforcement resourcing is put into identifying the root causes of issues, then people will not have the evidence needed to get a prosecution or we might have victims be treated as criminals rather than police going after the criminal networks behind the scenes,’ she says.

Saunders adds that a centralised process for information sharing during investigations is essential because trafficking involves people working across different counties, or internationally, with financial investigations needed to trace illicit profits and criminal networks.

Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, said in response to concerns raised by legislators related to the defunding of the taskforce that a ‘consistent and coordinated national policing response’ to modern slavery remains a priority for the Home Office and that the department has worked closely with law enforcement to ensure ‘key functions are preserved to maintain national coordination following the programme’s closure’.

In addition to the need for adequate resourcing of law enforcement bodies, human rights organisations stress that the Modern Slavery Act 2015, urgently needs updating to better reflect modern forms of exploitation and introduce greater accountability for businesses over their international supply chains. Despite the law being world-leading at the time it was introduced, best practice has moved on, and legislators have criticised the law and its enforcement as being too soft on businesses that allow products tainted by forced labour to enter the UK market.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has made recommendations to the government to strengthen the law, including the imposition of a mandatory human rights due diligence duty on companies, which would meet the standards set by the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The IBA’s Human Rights Institute has also called for measures to improve the legislative framework including an import ban on goods produced through forced labour and financial penalties for businesses that fail to meet transparency and due diligence requirements. Markus Beham, Co-Chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute, says that the more states adopt adequate due diligence obligations for companies based in their jurisdiction, the more they can ‘raise the pressure towards compliance with ethical business standards’.

Saunders says that, in the more than decade since the Modern Slavery Act was first introduced, criminals have found new, creative ways to exploit people. The Covid-19 pandemic caused a shift to online exploitation and stricter immigration rules have discouraged victims from reporting crimes to the police out of fear that they might risk criminalisation and deportation. Other developments include a rise in cases of forced surrogacy, organ harvesting and higher numbers of people from wealthier backgrounds being targeted. ‘We’ve seen differences in how people are exploited but also who is being exploited and how they are being recruited,’ Saunders says. ‘It’s always important to keep abreast of those changes and that the legislation changes to strengthen the approach to prosecutions but also support victims.’

According to Unseen’s Annual Assessment 2025, the link between labour exploitation and the use of skilled work visas has been increasing since 2022. While the visa route has enabled UK employers to recruit from overseas, the requirement for workers to remain tied to a single employer has left individuals vulnerable to abuse over pay, conditions and freedom of movement. Migrants are often charged substantial illegal visa fees, resulting in debt bondage.

Saunders says it is vital that governments keep the distinction between immigrants and victims of modern slavery crystal clear because dialling up the threat of deportation for victims and increasing barriers to them accessing support will not reduce the number of individuals who are being trafficked into the UK. ‘We need to be looking at the root causes of that exploitation and going after the financial proceeds of the crime, going after the criminal networks behind that, and always focus on modern slavery as a crime,’ she says.

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