The National Crime Agency is preparing to pursue up to 100 lawyers it believes are helping traffickers abuse modern slavery laws to secure asylum for people entering the UK.
The investigation, which is sure to provoke anger among lawyers, pro-migrant NGOs and left-wing organisations,is being carried out by the NCA, the British equivalent of the FBI, to identify solicitors who may be breaching their professional code or committing crimes by providing services to organised crime.
Government ministers have long claimed that Albanian criminal gangs are misusing the modern slavery and asylum system at a time when record numbers of people are referred to the Home Office as potential victims of exploitation.
The NCA has already started the process of examining which lawyers may be assisting the criminal gangs, with the agency estimating that “tens” of solicitors could be involved.
Rob Richardson, the head of the NCA’s modern slavery and human trafficking unit, said the agency was in “target identification” mode.
He said: “One of the things that we’ve seen is an increase in how organised crime groups use third parties to abuse protective mechanisms. So it’s been well reported that there are concerns that particularly Albanian organised crime groups are frustrating law enforcement efforts by claiming that they are victims of trafficking or seeking asylum, and where we are particularly interested from a NCA perspective is how does the legal industry, how do lawyers, support organised crime groups to do that. So we’ve seen some examples where individuals have got scripts. They’ve been told exactly what to tell policemen to get picked up. And we have concerns about how that works.”
It comes as the Government, through the Illegal Migration Bill, is seeking to remove temporary protections from removal given to suspected victims of modern slavery or human trafficking while their case is considered.
Richardson said he was aware of the difficulty and sensitivity of the NCA’s examination of the legal profession due to the protections, known as privilege, given to communications between a lawyer and their clients.
He said the agency would work with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, among others, in an effort to discipline or strike off non-compliant lawyers where prosecutions were not possible.
The NCA has new legislative tools to use as it seeks to target solicitors it believes are working with trafficking gangs. Section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 has made it an offence to make a referral of a case of modern slavery in “bad faith”.
Modern slavery claimants have increased from 552 in 2009 to 12,727 in 2021 while the number of foreign nationals making slavery claims has grown from 2,209 in 2014 to 8,388 in 2021. The number of claimants being referred for exploitation within the UK have grown from 2.5 per cent in 2009 to 58 per cent in 2021.
People of Albanian nationality have consistently been the largest foreign national group claiming exploitation and have grown in numbers by 1,862 per cent since 2012 and 165 per cent since 2018. Since 2021 there have been more Albanian referrals than the next four largest non-UK groups combined.
According to former immigration minister Chris Philp, the threshold of proof for a successful claim has been progressively lowered as a result of campaigning by NGOs and migrant rights groups and activist lawyers. The position now is one of an initial denial of being a victim of modern slavery being disregarded should an illegal entrant subsequently change his or her mind and claim to be a victim. Due to the lowering of the threshold of proof, an absurdly high 92 per cent of modern slavery claims were signed off and 99.5 per cent of all people making such claims were eventually released from detention if they had been held at all.
That threshold of proof needs moved upwards again and an initial denial of being a victim of modern slavery that is then followed by a sudden change of that claim needs to be taken into account as being suspicious. So do applications that seem to follow the “script” that has been identified by the Home Office and National Crime Agency. These red flags should throw an application into doubt and, unless there is compelling other evidence, lead to a refusal of the claim.
Lawyers often hide behind privilege when questioned over claims and their dealings with clients but when there is ample evidence pointing towards them abusing this privilege and being involved in dubious dealings this should not hold back an investigation, and the right to invoke privilege should be removed.
In many cases, because of the difficulty and sensitivity around investigating lawyers, many cases do not go forward. But the authorities have to push forward on these investigations and aim for convictions. A lawyer found guilty of aiding this or any other type of immigration fraud should face the same penalty as members of the actual trafficking gangs, which can be a maximum of 14 years in prison.
The issue of law firms being involved in dubious practices around immigration law is larger than seems to be previously reported. A thematic review of immigration work published in November 2022 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority said that, although firms were generally providing a good level of service, there were areas of concern that needed to be addressed.
Ten of the 40 law firms that took part in the review were referred for possible disciplinary action after it found “significant shortcomings”. These law firms need to face more than “disciplinary action” from the authority: they need to be prosecuted in the criminal justice system, with not only the lawyers directly involved in the “shortcomings” prosecuted, but also those with oversight of the firms’ activities also taken to task. Firms that are found to be failing in this respect should be closed and the lawyers barred from practicing in the future.
The legal world and its associated groups of immigration advisers are one of the main roadblocks to our immigration system making progress in dealing with clearing the backlog of asylum cases, and the deportation of failed asylum seekers with their support of bogus claims and what seem like never-ending appeals clogging up the system. Until they are taken to task we cannot see any meaningful progress being made in lowering our nation’s immigration figures, which are about to hit a new high.
