Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 76
76
Deferred
Paragraph: 225
Government lacks compelling evidence for widespread abuse of the National Referral Mechanism for asylum.
Conclusion
The Government’s evidence for individuals ‘abusing the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) system to gain asylum’ is not compelling. There may be a few examples of individuals attempting to take advantage of the NRM, but the Home Office has failed to produce sufficient evidence to support its assertions of widespread abuse. A small number of cases cannot be allowed to jeopardise effective use of the NRM, which provides invaluable support to victims of human trafficking, nor should the Government conflate victims of human trafficking with irregular migration.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government did not directly address the committee's finding that evidence for widespread NRM abuse is not compelling. Instead, it stated it is monitoring and evaluating the New Plan for Immigration and related Acts, revising the work to include the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
225
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
The Home Office regularly publishes a summary and breakdown of the number of potential victims of modern slavery referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) or via the Duty to Notify (DtN) process, including NRM referrals from Small Boats. Misuse of any system, by its very nature, is difficult to evidence. If we were able to evidence overt misuse, it would be filtered out of the system. The Government has a proactive approach to addressing and preventing misuse of the modern slavery system. There are case studies that illustrate how an NRM referral may be used to prevent removal action. Home Office ministers have provided case study evidence of examples where Competent Authority case workers were concerned about the system being misused to the Home Affairs Select Committee. The Government had published statistics on the NRM referral rate for people arriving in the UK on small boats, and from asylum and detention cohorts.3 The increase in NRM referrals from detention cohorts results in more people being released from detention and therefore removal prevented. This could be interpreted as a pull factor for those who would benefit from this release from detention.
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