Modern slavery isn’t an immigration problem– it’s a digital security problem
Yesterday, the King’s Speech set out the legislative plans for this new Parliament.
Among the many bills, there was one which garnered special interest: the Immigration and Asylum Bill to “restore[…] control and earn[...] public trust.” In the detail, published alongside the speech, it promises to bring into effect many of the reforms announced at the end of last year, such as increasing removals for failed asylum seekers. So why was a mention of modern slavery also squeezed in?
As part of reforms to asylum, the Government states it wishes to reform modern slavery legislation to “address potential misuse while maintaining essential protections” which includes “addressing late presentation of modern slavery experience, which can significantly increase the time taken to identify individuals and move them through the system”.
PA Media / BBC News
This statement misjudges the nature of the challenge of modern slavery. It shows that political rhetoric rather than evidence-driven policy has prevailed. Understandably so; it rests upon the previous claims by politicians that asylum seekers were abusing the system that deals with modern slavery – claims which have always proven unfounded. As a CGP report on the Modern Slavery Act showed, there is currently little evidence of asylum seekers taking advantage of modern slavery legislation. Moreover, an oft-forgotten point is that individuals do not ‘claim’ victim status, they are referred by first responders, typically officials hired by the Home Office, and thus starts the individual’s journey through the dark and winding corridors of the National Referral Mechanism to determine whether or not they are indeed a victim.
Beyond the misinterpretation of the administrative challenge that the Modern Slavery Act entails, the link to immigration and asylum also betrays ignorance of where the true challenge of tackling exploitation lies. Modern slavery should not be considered part of immigration policy, but as deeply intertwined with digital national security.
As outlined in CGP’s report on organised crime, published earlier this year, the digitalisation of criminal activity has exposed thousands of citizens and businesses in the UK. The surge in fraud is driven by online criminal activity, with the vast majority of incidents in the UK being cyber-enabled. Deepfake fraud attempts nearly doubled in the UK in 2025, and an estimated 8 million deepfakes shared globally in 2025 alone – up from just 500,000 in 2023.
Traffickers are making the most of this digitalised criminal boom. Social media has become a marketplace for recruiting victims of modern slavery. Users, especially children and young people, are being groomed and coerced into committing crimes, particularly county lines drug trafficking. A report by the Centre for Social Justice reinforced this finding, with interviews with over 80 statutory agencies, charities and experts across the UK showing that social media is a key recruitment tool for drug trafficking, financial fraud and many other forms of exploitation. It is likely behind the surge in British child victims of slavery, now accounting for 22% of all referrals to the National Referral Mechanism - almost a 20-fold increase since 2015.
But cyber-enabled crime too is on the rise, and by its very nature, is a phenomenon which connects the UK to all corners of the planet. In Myanmar, for instance, criminal syndicates are operating large-scale scam centres, often in collusion with local militias and the ruling military junta. Victims, including skilled professionals, are lured with fake job offers, such as translation or IT roles, only to be kidnapped, transported across borders and imprisoned in heavily guarded compounds. Once inside, they are stripped of their passports and subjected to violence, electrocution, and starvation to force compliance. Here, they are coerced into participating in pig butchering scams, a highly sophisticated fraud scheme that involves gradually gaining victims' trust over an extended period. It is one of the most prevalent techniques used in romance, deepfake and crypto scams.
These scam operations generate billions in illicit revenue by targeting victims worldwide through social media and online financial schemes. The human cost is severe. A recent survivor, Tony, was trafficked under the false promise of a high-paying job in Bangkok. Instead, he was forced to work 14-hour days in a scam factory, enduring constant threats and physical abuse. Attempts to escape were met with brutal retaliation, including beatings and ransom demands sent to his family.
The impact is felt right here at home: Romance scams cost UK victims £20.5 million in the first half of 2025 alone across nearly 3,000 cases, and due to the prolonged, personal nature of the scam causes psychological impacts on victims that are difficult to quantify.
As technology continues to evolve, so too do the methods of traffickers and exploiters. Yet, current responses to modern slavery have not fully adapted to these emerging threats. Despite recent amendments to the Online Safety Act, existing regulations do not go far enough in addressing social media’s role in exploitation. Any serious strategy to combat modern slavery must explicitly tackle the misuse of online platforms. To effectively combat online recruitment and the proliferation of digital criminal exploitation, policymakers must first develop a deeper understanding of how social media is being leveraged, and how it protects criminals. This should be followed by a coordinated national and international strategy, recognising that digital platforms operate beyond traditional jurisdictional boundaries. Without this, online-facilitated exploitation will continue to grow unchecked.
All these issues are raised in the King’s Speech, just in a different Bill. The National Security Bill promises to “provide law enforcement with updated powers and capabilities, so they remain effective in the digital age” through the establishment of a “Cyber Crime Risk Order to place robust controls on the behaviours of cyber criminals”. The dangers of the internet in stoking extremist views, or terrorism are well established there, but do not take into account the much broader range of criminal activity including exploitation and organised crime that are having a vastly detrimental impact to our communities and to our economy.
The National Security Bill offers an opportunity, but only if its ambitions extend to encompass the full spectrum of digital exploitation driving modern slavery. As CGP has previously recommended, the Government should develop a dedicated mechanism, analogous to a ‘Serious and Organised Problem Book'. This would enable the Government to identify innovation gaps in tackling online exploitation, co-designed with law enforcement, survivors, and the private sector. Alongside this, the Modern Slavery Strategy, last updated in 2014, is long overdue for renewal; any refresh must explicitly address the digital recruitment and scam farm ecosystems now central to how trafficking operates. The King's Speech could have signalled both. Instead, it buried modern slavery inside an immigration bill. Until legislators treat exploitation as its own challenge, deeply intertwined with digital security (and resource it accordingly), the criminals running scam farms in Myanmar and grooming children on Instagram will continue to operate well ahead of the law.
Finally, given the transnational nature of both the digital crime ecosystem and modern slavery, any serious response cannot sit with the Home Office alone - it must be folded into the international strategies of the FCDO, DBT, and other relevant departments, with the joined-up coordination that a threat of this scale requires.