Today’s real slavery scandal. There are 100,000 slaves in Britain today – the tip of an international iceberg

Jul 13, 2020 by Jill

by Christian Guy, Conservative Home:

Daniel grew up in Swansea but became homeless at 16 when he fell out with his Mum. He struggled with mental health and a learning disability. Soon after, a local family of traffickers took Daniel and forced him to work on a scrap yard without pay.

He was beaten and abused so brutally by slave masters that when he was eventually rescued by police, the nurse who cared for him said he had the worst injuries she had ever seen. “He looked like somebody from a concentration camp”, she concluded.

A new report from Justice and Care and the Centre for Social Justice finds there are at least 100,000 slaves like Daniel in Britain today, based on access to new police data. Experts admit it is likely even higher. But we find very few of them: the largest estimate any UK Government had previously made was just 13,000.

When the 13,000 victims estimate was made the Government also calculated slavery’s annual social and economic cost at £3-4 billion, likely well-short of the true figure. And with British nationals the largest group of victims found, this cannot simply be dismissed as a UK Border problem.

Read here