While the Modern Slavery Act consolidated and improved our modern laws on trafficking and slavery, it didn’t create any jurisdiction for the crimes of slavery or forced labour that are committed by UK nationals or companies overseas.
If a British person or company holds a person in slavery or forced labour abroad – such as on construction sites in the Gulf states or in the fishing industry – they can do so with impunity, unless their behaviour is criminalised in that state.
Yet any profits obtained from the slavery and extreme exploitation of workers can filter home to the UK company, crime-free.
Making slavery a crime everywhere
Having worked and advised extensively at a high level on the legal issues of modern-day slavery for well over a decade, I believe new legislation is required to criminalise slavery and forced labour committed overseas and impose harsh criminal penalties in the UK.
At present the only requirement on companies under the act is to write a statement showing their efforts to eradicate slavery in their supply chain and publish it on their websites.
I can imagine that business will say that is sufficient. But as consumers we need a stronger incentive for companies to confront and prevent slavery in the supply chains they receive goods and services from.
Extending our criminal law to cover cases where UK-based or UK-linked businesses intentionally or recklessly engage in slavery or forced labour in their supply chains overseas would plug the gap.
Let’s not forget that it is often in countries where there is a weak rule of law or an absence of fair worker rights that slavery, forced labour and trafficking thrive.
The law currently says if we commit a slavery crime, we will be punished. Why not then the UK companies and individuals who are engaged in supply-chain slavery overseas and profit from the labour of the enslaved?
Abolishing the slave trade
The fact that we need to change a law that only recently came into force is not unusual or unprecedented. If we look back in history we see that all of our slavery-related legislation has had an incremental approach. There were dozens of pieces of English legislation that finally enabled the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in all of its form 200 years ago. It is only through seeing the law in action that we recognise where the gaps lie. The UK criminal offence of holding a person in slavery or requiring a person to perform forced labour was only passed in 2009, when the legislation gap was exposed by one of my cases, and it soon became the most successful modern criminal legislation geared towards prosecuting and convicting those who enslave.
We already have extra-territorial jurisdiction for some very serious crimes. If we think about child sexual exploitation cases involving British people, such as in Kenya, these people can be prosecuted in the UK. The crime of torture can be prosecuted here too, wherever it took place. Corporate acts of slavery and forced labour abroad need to be treated with the same seriousness.
We also have the resources ready to investigate companies. Police forces in the UK, admittedly some better than others, have expertise in trafficking and cross-border investigations. They would be able to investigate the slavery complaints of overseas victims and track slavery and forced labour in the overseas supply chains of UK companies, if the legislation could be extended.
Letting victims seek compensation
As well as holding UK companies operating overseas accountable, we also need to extend our domestic slavery law to allow victims of slavery and trafficking in the UK to properly sue their enslavers and traffickers for civil compensation.
Victims can currently seek compensation in the UK via existing laws. But these traditional compensation laws don’t cover the full spectrum of harm done by traffickers and enslavers, including their use of subtle yet terrifying means of control, psychological abuse and damage, deception, coercion, the destruction of one’s identity, taking a child into slavery, or debt-bondage.
If victims had a clear right to civil compensation under British law for slavery, trafficking or forced labour they could bring a claim for damages against those responsible and it would also have a very serious impact on making businesses more accountable for slavery in their supply chains, as well as those individuals who enslave and traffic. The vast majority of trafficking and slavery cases don’t end up in the criminal courts after all.
In the US there is already a direct civil remedy for trafficking and forced labour in law, introduced in 2003. It was designed to give compensation to victims but also act as a deterrent. In my experience, the best compensation laws for trafficking take this two-pronged approach.
Recently, a US company Signal International was found liable and forced to pay compensation to trafficked workers it deceived, indebted and abused on its construction sites after Hurricane Katrina. After losing a court case under the trafficking compensation laws the company later filed for bankruptcy. It was a chilling warning to companies across the US that they are liable for all the trafficking-related harm done to their victims.
Civil compensation laws in the UK should be similarly clear: if you traffic or enslave people you will pay your victims for the harm you have done. We now need to modernise our Modern Slavery Act to do just that.