UK Country Report on Severe Labour Exploitation Now Available

Today the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published the country reports that constitute the background information for the earlier comparative report, Severe labour exploitation: workers moving within or into the European Union released in June 2015.

As UK Contractor HRLC  compiled the UK report, Severe forms of Labour Exploitation: Supporting victims of severe forms of labour exploitation in having access to justice in EU Member States - United Kingdom. Research findings were based on information gathered through fieldwork, which consisted of 37 individual interviews with professionals in the field and two focus groups, as well as deskbound research which detailed and reviewed the UK legal framework, including the then draft Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The UK Report notes an overlap of the various different authorities that are charged with preventing and monitoring labour exploitation and found that this overlap leads to a lack of clarity in the institutional mechanisms. 

Interviewees reported that in the UK forced labour was the most prominent form of labour exploitation, with three quarters of respondents stating that they had experienced such cases. Information gathered during the 37 interviews also showed that there were a number of common risk factors identified by professional including: language barriers, social isolation, and a lack of understanding of employment rights and immigration status.

Resulting from the fieldwork, the report identifies three main causes of why labour exploitation occurs in the UK, (i) the low risk to offenders of being prosecuted and punished, (ii) the lack of institutions effectively monitoring the situation of workers in sectors of economy where labour exploitation occurs and (iii) the low risk to offenders of having to compensate exploited migrant workers.

The report was authored by Professor David Harris, HRLC Co-Director; Dr Jackie Sheehan, former Senior Fellow China Policy Institute; Dr Alex Toft, Senior Research Assistant Coventry University and Amy Weatherburn, former HRLC Research Assistant and current PhD Candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Dr Toft and Miss Weatherburn have also produced a blog post outlining the UK specific problems regarding labour exploitation.