James Dobson

The Prime Minister has described modern slavery as the great human rights issue of our time and has said that her Government will lead the way in defeating it. In doing so, the Prime Minister is building on the work she did while Home Secretary when she introduced the Modern Slavery Act.

Yet, for many, modern slavery remains a difficult term to understand. The concept groups together a number of different crimes. It also difficult to understand the scale of the problem since the hidden nature of modern slavery makes it difficult to measure and monitor.

What is modern slavery?

Modern slavery is difficult to define because it takes a number of different and distinct forms. Victims of modern slavery include those that have been forced to work without pay; forced to commit criminal activities on behalf of their slave driver and against their will; sexually exploited; and those who are forced into domestic servitude.

Victims are often forced into ‘debt bondage’ where they are required to repay a sum of money owed to their trafficker. This debt bondage often exists because modern slaves are frequently trafficked into the UK and coerced and deceived into believing they will benefit from living and working in the UK. The victim of modern slavery therefore believes they have to repay the costs of being trafficked into the UK. Victims of modern slavery can, however, also be born or live in Britain before they become victims of modern slavery.

The scale of the problem

Modern slavery is a problem across the globe. Traffickers and victims often move regularly between countries which are the source of victims, countries which are used to transit victims, and the destination countries. This makes measuring modern slavery inherently difficult. However, some estimates of the total number of victims of modern slavery worldwide do exist. In 2015, the Global Slavery Index estimated there were over 45 million victims of slavery, while in 2013 the International Labour Organisation stated that victims of forced labour alone amounted to over 21 million individuals.
Estimating the number of victims of modern slavery in the UK is also difficult. Victims are almost always closely controlled and hidden from public view. Victims may also be to fearful to report the crime, and may be uncomfortable using the British legal system. Some victims of modern slavery, particularly children, may not perceive themselves to be victims. They may not really understand what is happening to them or could be obeying someone they consider to be an authority figure.

Despite these problems, there is one significant source of data on the scale and profile of modern slavery in the UK. The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) provides a mechanism for organisations to refer potential victims of modern slavery. Organisations who can refer a potential victim include: the police, the Home Office, and various charities who regularly deal with vulnerable individuals. If an individual suspects someone is the victim of modern slavery then they can raise modern slavery concerns through these organisations. The NRM collects and records data on the individuals referred. It must be noted that not all individuals referred to the NRM are found to be victims of modern slavery. For example, between 2009 and 2013, 42% of individuals referred to the NRM were found to actually be a victim of modern slavery. The below figures therefore should be interpreted with caution.

Data from NRM shows that the number of potential victims of modern slavery is increasing in the UK. In 2013, the latest year for which data is available, 1,746 potential victims were referred to the NRM – a 47% increase on the previous year. This increase could be a result of increased modern slavery, increasing awareness and subsequent reporting of modern slavery, or a combination of the both. The Home Office believes that this figure is a significant underestimate of the prevalence of modern slavery. They believe that in 2013 there were between 10,000 and 13,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK.

The forms of modern slavery

The NRM also provides useful data on the profile of modern slavery. Those referred to the NRM are predominantly female. In 2013, 64% of potential modern slavery victims were female. This figure has been stable since around 2011.

Victims of modern slavery are exploited for a number of different reasons. Sexual exploitation is the most common form of modern slavery. In 2013, 42% of potential victims of modern slavery reported experiencing sexual exploitation. Potential victims reported being forced into prostitution, escort work and pornography. Ninety-five percent of potential victims who reported sexual exploitation were female while 20% of all potential victims who reported sexual exploitation were children.

Labour exploitation is the second most common form of modern slavery in the UK. In 2013, 37% of potential victims reported this form of modern slavery. The Home Office states that victims are forced to work against their will. They frequently work for extremely long hours and receive little or no pay. Seventy two percent of potential victims who reported this form of modern slavery were male while 19% were children.

Domestic servitude makes up most of the remaining potential victims. Victims are used as household servants. They are required to carry out housework and domestic chores against their will, they receive little or no pay , and are often confined to the household.

Victims’ country of origin

In 2013, potential victims referred to the NRM came from 112 different countries. Forty seven percent of potential victims came from the five most common countries of origin. These were: Albania, Nigeria, Vietnam, Romania and the UK.

Countries tend to be associated with particular forms of modern slavery. For example, in 2013, the majority of potential victims from Albania, Nigeria and the UK referred to the NRM were women or girls who reported sexual exploitation, while the majority of potential victims from eastern and central European countries such as Romania and Poland were men reporting labour exploitation. Forty-two percent of potential victims from Vietnam were children and the majority of Vietnamese children reported labour exploitation.

Conclusion

Modern slavery is a complicated crime which is very difficult to measure. However, the evidence we do have suggests that there are a significant number of victims of modern slavery and this number is rising. The Modern Slavery Act consolidated previous offences relating to trafficking and slavery. It deals with the problem of modern slavery explicitly. The makes it the first first legislation of its kind in Europe. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister herself has argued more needs to be done to tackle this growing problem. The Prime Minister is likely to continue to pursue this problem throughout her time in office.

James Dobson is a researcher at Bright Blue

Torture and Trump
In seven days Donald Trump will be officially instilled as the President of the United States. Trump’s inauguration will take place in the context of ongoing controversy. This week the news website Buzzfeed released unverifiable documents alleging that the Russian Government holds a file containing compromising material on Trump. Whether the allegations are correct is unclear, but their salience represents a wider fear that Trump’s administration is sympathetic towards Putin’s Russia and admires the various human rights abuses it has committed.

In fact, there is concern that the Trump administration will enable the US to commit two major and notorious human rights abuses: the use torture against suspected terrorists, and the indefinite detention of terrorists suspects without trial.

Torture
During the presidential election campaign, Donald Trump made a number of different statements on the use of torture. In February 2016, for example, he said that:

“Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys—”Torture doesn’t work!”—believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form. Some people say it’s not actually torture. Let’s assume it is. But they asked me the question: What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”

Later in the year, Trump reiterated this statement, declaring that “I am a person that believes in enhanced interrogation. And by the way, it works.”

‘Enhanced interrogation’ is a euphemism for the U.S. government’s program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces that were authorised by the Bush administration. These techniques included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and withholding medical care for wounds—as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, confinement in small coffin-like boxes, and repeated slapping. The techniques were used during the ‘War on Terror’, but the evidence shows they were of dubious effectiveness.

Since his election, there have been some signs that the President-elect may be willing to reconsider his attitude to torture. Following a meeting with James Mattis – a former Commander of United States Central Command – Trump stated that he was “very impressed” by Mattis’s argument that he had never found torture particularly useful, and that he could get more information with “a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers” than with torture methods. While just yesterday, Trump’s pick to be the next CIA director, Mike Pompeo, told the United State’s Senate that he would “absolutely not” be willing to reinstate the CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ program, even if Trump personally gave the order.

Detention without trial
Closely related to torture is the issue of detention without trial. The most prominent example of this is the US’s use of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Guantanamo Bay was established in 2002, during the Bush Administration. It is used by the United States to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists without trial. The US is unable to detain suspected terrorists without trial on the US mainland due to various protections given by the American constitution.

Upon his election as President in 2008, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to close the detention camp. However, the Obama administration has failed to do this. Many cite significant Republican Party opposition in Congress to his plans as the cause of this failure. Obama did, however, succeed in reducing the number of inmates held in Guantanamo Bay. During his Presidential term, the number of inmates decreased from around 245 to 61.

Donald Trump has made a number of statements on Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention without trial. In February last year, Trump declared that:

“Guantanamo Bay we are keeping open… and we’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.”

Trump repeated these claims throughout the Presidential campaign. Since his election, Trump has not shown any desire to row-back on these statements. Two weeks ago the President-elect said that theremust be no further releases of detainees from Guantanamo Bay. He said those left were “extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield”. Trump has accused Obama of attempting to rush through more releases before Trump’s inauguration. On Wednesday, 40 Democratic legislators wrote an open-letter to Obama urging him to close the detention camp before Trump’s inauguration.

Conclusion
The President-elect has made a number of inflammatory statements regarding the use of torture and indefinite detention without trial. These statements have alarmed human rights organisations across the globe. Since his election in November, statements by Trump and those around him have suggested that he may be willing to reconsider his endorsement of the use of torture. However, it seems that Trump is not prepared to reconsider his support for the use of indefinite detention and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

James Dobson is a researcher at Bright Blue

The Government currently has an ambition to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. Yet, despite the ambition, little progress has been made. Earlier in the year the Learning and Work Institute, formerly the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), published evidence which showed that, on current trends, it would take 200 years to halve the disability employment gap.

Currently, 80% of those who are not disabled are in work, while just 47% of disabled people are in employment. This translates to a disability employment gap of 33%. Over the past six years, this Government and the previous Coalition Government introduced a number of policies aimed at reducing this gap. The Coalition introduced supported internships – which are structured study programmes based primarily at an employer for young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, Work Choice – a voluntary programme which helps disabled people with more complex issues find work and stay in a job, and the Work Capability Assessment – which attempted to end the practise of consigning people who could work to long-term disability benefits.

Despite these reforms, there has been little progress. The employment gap has increased slightly since 2012, and, even on longer-term trends, progress has been very slow. In 1998, the gap stood at 35.9%. In the 18 years which followed, it reduced by just 2.8 percentage points, to 33.1%. This painstakingly slow progress is the result of a number of significant barriers which have proved difficult to overcome.

The skills and qualifications gap
Any conversation about the disability employment gap has to include the skills and qualifications gap between people and non-disabled people. Disabled people are around three times as likely to hold no qualifications as non-disabled people, and around half as likely to hold a degree-level qualification. Nineteen percent of working-age disabled people hold no formal qualification, compared to 6.5% for equivalent non-disabled people. Just 15% of working-age disabled people hold degree-level qualifications compared to 28.1% of working-age non-disabled people.

This lack of qualifications puts disabled people at an instant disadvantage in the labour market, where those without them face significantly more difficulty finding a job.  This is demonstrated by the significant gap in employment between disabled people with and without degrees. In 2012, 71% of disabled graduates had gained employment compared to 42% of disabled non-graduates.

The skills and qualifications gap appears to be driven by a number of factors. First, disabled children are more likely to have extended periods of absence from school. This combined with other factors, such as unconscious discrimination by teachers, where teachers assume disabled children will be less successful than their non-disabled counterparts, leads to significant differences in exam performance. In addition, disabled people are much less likely to access other forms of post-16 training, such as apprenticeships.

Support in finding work
The second barrier to closing the disability employment gap is the support provided to disabled people seeking work. Because of the special needs of disabled people, they often require enhanced support when attempting to find employment. Most disabled people are reliant on the government-provided Jobcentre for this support. Yet the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which funds Jobcentre, is operating under tight budgetary constraints.

These constraints often lead to a lack of resources for disabled people. Recent evidence has found that Jobcentre provides on average only ten minutes of support a month to just one in five of those on ill-health and disability benefits. Moreover, since 2010, there has been a significant reduction in the number of specialist disability employment advisors posted in Jobcentres. Their number has fallen to around 90 – which represents a 60% decline since 2010.

This apparent lack of support means a large number of disabled people are actively seeking work, but failing to find it. The disability charity, Scope, estimates that around half of working-age disabled people are currently looking for employment.

Employer attitudes
A third barrier to closing the disability employment gap is the attitude of employers. A survey of recruiters, published earlier in the year, found that 95% of recruiters say that companies are ‘fearful’ or ‘unsure’ about hiring disabled candidates.

Employers are frequently concerned that hiring employees with disabilities will be expensive to accommodate since they might require significant physical adjustments to the office, training for colleagues or other expensive measures. In addition, employers often fear that disabled employees may take long leaves of absence due to poor health which will make them less productive than a non-disabled employee.

These fears are often misplaced. The government’s Access to Work scheme – which provides funding for disabled employees to purchase technology and colleague training to support their employment – can significantly reduce the cost of hiring a disabled employee, but is not widely-known. Meanwhile, evidence shows that disabled people take less sick leave, stay with the same employer for longer and have fewer workplace accidents on average than non-disabled people.

The good news is that when employers do hire a disabled employee, they become much more likely to hire another disabled person in the future. However, the slow progress of closing the disability employment gap means that this effect is likely to take a long time to have any significant impact.

Staying in work
The final barrier to closing the disability employment gap is keeping disabled people in work. It is estimated that over 300,000 people move from work to disability benefits each year through ill health. In many cases, these individuals want to work, but there is a lack of in-work support to keep them in employment. Many of them might stay in work if they could reduce their working hours, the ability to work from home for periods of the week and other adjustments from their employer.

Currently, government provides significantly less support for disabled people in employment than to those seeking work. It is hoped that this will change with the roll-out of Universal Credit.  This new benefit rolls together six existing means-tested benefits and tax credits, and can be claimed by people out of work and well as those in work but on low incomes. Once fully rolled out, it will affect eight million households, and stays with people when they enter work until their earnings reach a certain level or until they can support themselves. For this reason, Universal Credit will offer low-income disabled people the support of the jobcentre – such as a work coach who provides personalised support, advice and guidance to help them develop and stay in work.

Because of the relatively slow roll-out of Universal Credit, it remains to be seen whether it will be effective in reducing the number of disabled people moving from employment to disability benefits.

Conclusion
The disability employment gap has proved extremely persistent. Over the last 18 years, it has reduced by just 2.8 percentage points., and it seems highly unlikely that the Government will meet its aim of halving it by 2020. In its latest forecast, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that there will be a total of 500,000 jobs created in the UK economy over the next four years. The disability employment gap would only halve if every one of these new jobs went to disabled people.

To halve the gap the Government needs to take a more long-term approach. This must start in schools and colleges, where the skills and qualifications gap puts disabled people at an instant disadvantage in the labour market.  It must also involve increasing support for those looking for work, trying to change employer attitudes towards disabled people, and finding effective methods of preventing disabled people from leaving the labour market.

James Dobson is a researcher at Bright Blue

Following, Donald Trump’s victory against Hillary Clinton in the US Presidential Election, anti-torture campaigners have been concerned that the US may resume its use of torture. During the campaign, Trump asserted that “Torture works. OK, folks?”. More recently Trump appears to have had a road-to-Damascus-style conversion. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump revealed that General James Mattis, possibly his future Secretary of Defense, had convinced him that torture does not work. But the question remains, is torture an effective means of intelligence gathering?

It is now widely accepted that torture was used by George W. Bush’s administration during the ‘War on Terror’. That period therefore offers a useful recent case study of whether torture is an effective means of interrogation. In 2014, the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published a report which catalogued the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The report took six years to compile and cost around $50 million. The committee was allowed unprecedented access to around six million pages of internal CIA documents. The report – which is still heavily redacted – concluded that the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” was not effective. It produced no actionable intelligence that hadn’t already been collected with methods that did not involve torture.

However, the report’s findings remain disputed. Several Republican members of the committee have accused the report of displaying partisanship. The final report was approved by a vote of 9–6, with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favour of publication and six Republicans voting in opposition. Critics of the report claimed that it was overly reliant on CIA documents. It did not conduct any interviews at all. Critics alleged that it was therefore insensitive to context and emphasis.

While Republican objections to the report could be seen as an attempt to prevent criticism of Bush’s Republican administration, there are some reasons to believe that the report was not wholly impartial. The report concentrates much of its fire on former CIA director Michael Hayden, a Bush appointee who didn’t take office until the interrogation program was nearly over, while Clinton appointee George Tenet, a lifelong Democrat and former Intelligence Committee staff director who was director of the CIA when many believed that the torture program was at its most brutal, was spared criticism.

While the Senate Intelligence Committee report’s findings are disputed, there is a substantial body of evidence from other authoritative sources on the US’s use of torture during the Bush administration. One such source is the Intelligence Science Board, a body entrusted with the task of providing scientific advice to the United States’ intelligence community.

In 2009 they produced their study on ‘Educing Information’, a collection of 11 papers studying various aspects of the science and art of interrogation. The report begins by questioning the nature of the debate on the use of torture. It states that one could easily conclude from that debate that “coercive methods are not only effective, but also substantially more effective than non-coercive methods in obtaining actionable intelligence from resistant sources.” Further, it argues that even those who are opposed to the use of coercive methods have failed to challenge this argument, instead choosing to focus their arguments instead on whether torture is legal or moral.

The Board finds that “The scientific community has never established that coercive interrogation methods are an effective means of obtaining reliable intelligence information”. It states that evidence procured under the use of torture can usually be acquired using conventional methods of interrogation. Furthermore, it finds that there is a significant “noise to signal ratio” problem. That is, if evidence is produced using torture, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the veracity of that evidence. Someone being subjected to, for instance, waterboarding may reveal a substantial amount of information in order to stop the waterboarding. But, the operatives may not be able to determine which parts of the information are true and which are false.

In the UK, most experts believe that the UK did not use torture during the War on Terror. However, critics argue that the UK government was complicit in the use of such methods by the US. The campaigning group Liberty alleges that the UK may have attempted to use evidence gained under torture during legal trials and assisted or encouraged the use of torture by the CIA.

There are many moral and legal objections to torture. However, in a ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario, it is possible to imagine a situation where its use might be contemplated by otherwise ethical governments. The question of its effectiveness is therefore a crucial one. The use of torture by the CIA during the War on Terror has not been shown to produce intelligence that could not have been gained using conventional methods. In addition, the veracity of information gained through torture is difficult to confirm. Suspects may say anything to make the ordeal stop.

It is welcome news that President-elect Donald Trump appears to have been persuaded by such arguments, if not by ethical ones, and changed his mind on the future use of torture. If the United States under his Administration did resume the use of such practices, the British Government should be mindful of potential allegations that as a key ally and intelligence partner, it would be complicit in the practice.

James Dobson is a researcher at Bright Blue