Modern slavery is a term that includes any form of human trafficking, slavery, servitude or forced labour, as set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Potential victims of modern slavery in the UK that come to the attention of authorised ‘First Responder’ organisations are referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

Adults (aged 18 or above) must consent to being referred to the NRM, whilst children under the age of 18 need not consent to being referred. As specified in section 52 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, public authorities in England and Wales have a statutory duty to notify the Home Office when they come across potential victims of modern slavery ('Duty to Notify' (DtN)). This duty is discharged by either referring a child or consenting adult potential victim into the NRM, or by notifying the Home Office via the DtN process if an adult victim does not consent to enter the NRM.

The Home Office publishes quarterly statistical bulletins and aggregated data breakdowns on the "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-referral-mechanism-statistics" target="_blank"> National Referral Mechanism webpage on the GOV.UK website regarding the number of potential victims referred each quarter. To allow stakeholders and first responders more flexibility in analysing this data for their own strategic and operational planning, the disaggregated, pseudonymised dataset used to create the aggregated published data is also available from the UK Data Service as 'safeguarded' data. (The UKDS data are available in SPSS, Stata, tab-delimited text and CSV formats.)

Latest edition information

For the 18th edition (November 2025), the data file was amended to include Quarter 3 2025 cases, and the Data Notes documentation file was also updated.

A range of available data from various organisations relating to modern slavery.

The United Kingdom was ranked as the country with the strongest response to modern slavery, with an index score of **** out of 100. Despite this, the UK saw a worsening of its score since 2018, among other factors, this was due to a reduction in protective measures for victims. North Korea was the country with the highest number of people in modern slavery per 1,000 inhabitants.

A range of available data from various service providers relating to child victims of modern slavery.

Modern slavery is less overt than historical state-sanctioned slavery because psychological abuse is typically used to recruit and then control victims. The recent UK Draft Modern Slavery Bill, and current UK government anti-slavery strategy relies heavily on a shared understanding and public cooperation to tackle this crime. Yet, UK research investigating public understanding of modern slavery is elusive. We report community survey data from 682 residents of the Midlands of England, where modern slavery is known to occur, concerning their understanding of nonphysical coercion and human trafficking (one particular form of modern slavery). Analysis of quantitative data and themed categorization of qualitative data revealed a mismatch between theoretical frameworks and understanding of psychological coercion, and misconceptions concerning the nature of human trafficking. Many respondents did not understand psychological coercion, believed that human trafficking did not affect them, and confused trafficking with immigration. The public are one of the most influential interest groups, but only if well informed and motivated towards positive action. Our findings suggest the need for strategically targeted public knowledge exchange concerning this crime.

In advance of fieldwork to examine what impact, if any, the relatively new Transparency in Supply Chain (TISC) requirement is having on working conditions in garment and cocoa sectors supply chains, where there are known issues around exploitation and child labour, a small sample analysis of 40 Modern Slavery Act statements produced in the UK garment and cocoa sectors was undertaken by the University of Liverpool Clothes, Chocolate and Children Project.

Percentage responses and means and SDs, in rank order for knowledge of psychologically coercive behaviours (N = 682).

Redacted interview transcripts from project

Categories (and verbal sub-categories) with exemplar quotes for understanding of psychological coercion (N = 682).

This publication can be found in the Ad Hoc Surveys section of the Department of Justice website.