Tackling Modern Slavery

The government is launching a nationwide campaign aimed at raising awareness of modern slavery in the UK. The aim is to encourage the public to identify signs of slavery and report them to a new national helpline.

The Human Trafficking Foundation charity estimates 20,000 people are working in what amounts to slavery in the UK, and says that number is rising.

The Home Office hopes Parliament will pass an anti-slavery bill before the general election.

It is spending £2.3m on the TV, online and poster awareness campaign, which will run until October.

The TV advert shows three of the most common types of modern slavery:

  • agricultural labour
  • sexual exploitation in a brothel
  • domestic servitude in a home.

It concludes with the caption, "Slavery is closer than you think".

The national helpline, which is supported by children's charity the NSPCC, will offer information and advice to child and adult victims of slavery, as well as to professionals and members of the public.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the campaign aimed to "bring this hidden crime out into the open".

"It is difficult to accept that modern Britain is home to slavery, but this appalling crime is taking place here - often out of sight - in shops, fields, building sites and behind the curtains of houses on ordinary streets," she said.

One trafficking victim told the BBC Asian Network how she was assured that she would be working as a babysitter when she was brought to the UK at the age of 16 from Eastern Europe.

She was taken to what appeared to be a massage parlour, where she was forced into prostitution.

"I came here and they made me sleep with men - basically I was treated like a slave," she said.

"All the girls had to come out of a room and stand up in a line, and one man chose me, and I went up in the bedroom and there he told me to take my clothes off."

Though the police found her, the traffickers, who raped and abused her, were not arrested.

"I can very easily again be a victim of the traffickers," she said. "I'm afraid when I sleep at night, when I'm walking on the street."

The Modern Slavery Bill, featured in the last Queen's Speech, would grant courts in England and Wales new powers to protect people trafficked into the UK, held against their will and forced to work.

It would ensure compensation was paid to victims and change the maximum jail sentence for those convicted of slavery-related offences from 14 years to life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more