UK bishop urges collaboration to end ‘vile trade’ in human traffic
April 5, 2018 ·
Catholics should be the “eyes and ears” of their communities, alerting the authorities to the “vile trade” of human trafficking, the lead bishop for migration said this week, as newly released figures revealed the extent of modern slavery in the UK, writes Megan Cornwell.
The comments by Bishop Patrick Lynch came as the National Crime Agency (NCA) said on Monday that the number of potential victims of modern slavery had jumped by more than a third last year.
In 2017, 5,145 people were recorded by the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the government framework for identifying potential victims of slavery and exploitation. This represents a 35 percent increase from 2016, when 3,804 referrals were made.
For the first time, British citi- zens were the largest nationality recorded in the figures – up from 326 in 2016 to 819 in 2017. This is partly due to a rise in referrals of minors being exploited by gangs to sell drugs, said a statement from the NCA. The next most com- monly referred nationalities were Albanian and Vietnamese.
Bishop Lynch, who is closely involved with the Church’s work on ending slavery, called the sta- tistics “shocking, but not surprising”.
“The increase, particularly around the number of young peo- ple being exploited by criminal gangs, shows that every day in and around the UK innocent men, women and children are being sold for profit and forced to under- take activities against their will,” the bishop said.
“Whilst it is alarming that the numbers of referrals especially of children has risen, it is important to remember the reality that many more people whose cases are not brought to light are, in fact, caught in slavery. One of our tasks as the Church is to build trust with those communities that are vulnerable … so that more reporting of cases takes place.”
The report found that forced labour accounted for 2,352 cases – almost half of all referrals. As many as a third of cases involved suspected victims of sexual exploitation and 2,000 children were identified as being at risk of modern slavery.
