Introduction

In April 2015, the UK government’s much-anticipated Modern Slavery Act received Royal Assent. This had been a key component of the Modern Slavery Strategy (HM Government, 2014). The implementation and impact of the Act was reviewed 12 months later (Haughey, 2016). The review described the evolution of understanding, responses and practices by all agencies, but also identified uncertainties and constraints on investigators and the need for strategic development and improved statutory systems. Haughey recommended that the government provided effective training for professionals in relation not only to the legislation, but to investigation and identification, recording and presentation of evidence of exploitation in modern slavery offences.

The later Independent Review of the Act (Field et al, 2019) found uncertainty and confusion among key stakeholders was still prevalent. The review made 80 recommendations and stated that: ‘the recommendations made in Caroline Haughey’s 2016 Review of the Modern Slavery Act relating to training and the need for specialist advocates in modern slavery cases should now be implemented’ (Field et al, 2019: 72). Haughey’s identification of the training issue three years before was an early warning: despite a statutory framework that included definitions of slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and trafficking, a lack of understanding of the phenomenon was hampering the application of this legislation and undermining the government’s Modern Slavery Strategy. As both a researcher and practitioner, I have found that this has been most acute in the context of criminal exploitation (CE) (Barlow, 2019), despite the stated ambition of the UK government to lead the world in the fight against modern slavery (May, 2016; Gadd and Broad, 2018).

The nature and extent of the problem of CE has emerged over the past 12 years from within the research by, for example, Anti-Slavery International (2014), ECPAT UK (2010) and the National Crime Agency (2015). Furthermore, illustrations of lived experiences of children and vulnerable people within mainstream news reports (Anti-Slavery International, 2014; Hirsch, 2015; see also Chapter 6, this volume), investigative documentaries (BBC, 2011, 2019) and films (Chapter 5, this volume) and local analyses (Knowsley Council, 2015; Dadabho, 2017) have given ample echo to the problem.