Resource

Survivors of human trafficking are victims of serious crime and grave human rights abuses. Yet in the United Kingdom many survivors - particularly non-British nationals - are instead treated as offenders. Rather than receiving protection, they are frequently arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, detained under immigration powers and excluded from support because of offences that are directly linked to their trafficking and exploitation. Helen Bamber Foundation and Asylum Aid’s new report, ‘When the law changes sides’, sets out how this happens, why it keeps happening, and what needs to change.

Asylum Aid has welcomed a landmark Upper Tribunal judgment finding that the Home Office acted unlawfully by operating a secret practice for around nine years of granting recognised victims of trafficking only 12 months' Temporary Permission to Stay (Victim of Trafficking) ("VTS leave") in recovery cases where applicants could not provide evidence showing how long their medical treatment would last. The case, brought by Asylum Aid, forced the Home Office to disclose for the first time that the practice existed and had been in operation for such a long time, was communicated only through verbal instructions and was never set out in written guidance.

The Public Accounts Committee’s report lays bare what organisations like Asylum Aid have long known through our daily work with people seeking protection: the UK’s asylum system is not only inefficient and costly, it is fundamentally failing the very people it is meant to protect. The findings confirm a system characterised by poor decision-making, chronic delays, and a lack of coherent strategy for reform.