The government’s new nationality and borders bill will significantly impact children’s rights to protection and leave them at risk of dangerous journeys, trafficking and criminalisation. The legislation does not just contain measures on immigration which fail to protect those in need of safety but also makes extensive changes to the identification, protection and support of victims of trafficking and modern slavery, which is not an immigration matter.
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The government's Nationality and Borders Bill includes measures that will impact all child victims of trafficking in the UK as well as all children and young people subject to immigration control. The bill reforms modern slavery legislation; extensively changing the system for identifying, protecting and supporting victims of trafficking. In this briefing, we analyse measures in the bill and set out our concerns about how they will affect all at risk children and child victims of trafficking.
ECPAT UK is alarmed at today’s news from the Home Office claiming there is widescale abuse of the National Referral Mechanism and announcing an overhaul of the Modern Slavery Act alongside the announcement of immigration reforms. While we are waiting to see details of the proposals this week and what it may mean for survivors of child trafficking and exploitation, we are very concerned about inaccuracies in the reporting of today’s statement.