The UK’s approach to tackling modern slavery through the aid programme
The UK’s work to tackle modern slavery in developing countries has had limited long-term impact, did not build on existing international efforts and experience, and failed to adequately involve survivors – though the government played a prominent role in raising the profile of the issue globally.
International Development Committee
A hearing is held by Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC) or their ICAI sub-committee for most ICAI reviews.
The IDC hearing for this review is available to watch online.
ICAI follow-up
Approximately one year after we publish our reports, we follow up on the steps the government has taken in response to our recommendations. This process is a key link in the accountability chain, providing Parliament and the public with an account of how well government departments have responded to ICAI reviews.
During the follow-up review, we found initial positive steps had been taken. However, staff and budget constraints in 2021, as well as uncertainty about future budget allocations and strategic direction, meant that these steps have only had limited impact on programme delivery. The government has prioritised a strong research agenda and taken important initial steps on survivor engagement. There has also been some new evidence of country-level partnerships. However, the responses on mainstreaming, neglected areas, and private sector engagement have been disappointing. The new Modern slavery strategy, which is still under development, will be key to setting the direction and scale of future UK aid initiatives to tackle modern slavery.
With the strategy still unpublished, we score the government’s response as inadequate. We will return to this review next year to assess how the strategy addresses our recommendations, including whether it gives sufficient attention to ODA-funded international work to reduce modern slavery in origin, transit and destination countries.
Read the follow-up review online or download the full report.
Further follow-up
Our further follow-up review found that substantive progress has been made in generating evidence on modern slavery issues and in drawing on insights from survivors. However, despite some valuable work emerging, action on addressing neglected areas of modern slavery and mainstreaming a modern slavery focus into work in other sectors, as well as on developing stronger external partnerships, was judged to be inadequate. Overall, we therefore consider the government’s response to this review to be inadequate.
Third follow-up
We found that the government’s response to our outstanding recommendation continues to be inadequate, because there has still been no published statement of its international objectives and approach. ICAI will not follow up this recommendation again, however, since we see limited traction for our efforts to clarify the UK government position on using aid to tackle modern slavery in the current political context.