A new report has issued a stark warning that the exploitation of UK nationals is on the rise, driven by escalating living costs, mounting debt, and precarious employment.
Criminals are also leveraging technological advancements to more easily recruit and control victims.
Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (IASC) Eleanor Lyons stated that the issue of modern slavery is now “greater than ever” in its scale.
This encompasses various forms, including people trafficking, forced labour, criminal exploitation, and sexual exploitation. Victims seeking support and official recognition of their plight in the UK must undergo assessment via the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).
The latest data, published earlier this year, showed the number of potential victims of modern slavery referred to the Home Office hit a new record high in 2025, having risen by more than a fifth in a year.
There were 23,411 potential victims of modern slavery referred to the Home Office in 2025 – the highest number of referrals made in any year since the NRM began in 2009.
The most common nationalities referred into the system in 2025 were UK – accounting for more than a fifth of all referrals (22% or 5,110), followed by Eritrean (13%; 3,083) and Vietnamese (9%; 1,998).
A new report commissioned by the IASC, published on Tuesday, states that without a change in approach to tackling the issue “there is a real risk that exploitation will not disappear, but instead become harder to detect, more digital, and more deeply embedded in everyday economic and social activity”.
It warns that AI (artificial intelligence) and other technologies are helping traffickers “identify, recruit and control victims at scale”, citing AI-enabled scams, deepfakes, synthetic identities, and new forms of digital labour exploitation which the report said was expanding the pool of victims and making exploitation more difficult to detect.
Examples given in relation to children include “debt bonding”, where a victim is given virtual gifts such as phone credit and video game currencies to engender a sense of obligation and so-called “remote mothering” where the perpetrator establishes themselves as a protective parental figure and manipulates a victim into enabling tracking apps to monitor and control their movements or behaviour.
Ms Lyons said offenders are “operating with greater anonymity, scale and reach” as they use the online world to recruit, groom and control victims.
Looking to the future, the report states that “technological change is expected to significantly reshape the exploitation landscape”, through AI-enabled fraud, online sexual exploitation and blackmail, and the ability to launder criminal earnings through cryptocurrency which can facilitate transactions across borders.
In the UK, tough economic pressures are “reshaping the risk”, said Ms Lyons.
She said: “Rising living costs, debt and insecure work are creating conditions in which exploitation can take hold within daily life across sectors that millions rely on every day.”
The report notes that people facing economic insecurity can be more vulnerable to coercion “particularly where survival depends on accepting unsafe, informal or exploitative work”.
Global conflict is also said to be a key driver of modern slavery with people displaced from their homes and potentially vulnerable to exploitation while en route elsewhere and when they reach their destination countries.
Immigration and visa-based exploitation is said to be an emerging risk but also listed by the report are reproductive exploitation and organ harvesting.
The report states: “Collectively, these trends indicate that exploitation is becoming more varied, less visible, and increasingly integrated across labour markets, migration systems, digital ecosystems, and transnational criminal networks.”
The future is likely to see reproductive exploitation such as forced surrogacy become a “more significant form” of modern slavery, the research predicted, amid declining birth rates and some unregulated fertility markets.
Meanwhile, it described a “globally spanning organ-trafficking market system” and said organ harvesting is likely to become a more prominent form of modern slavery and human trafficking amid rising global demand for organ transplantation, shortages and the expansion of cross‑border medical markets.
Ms Lyons called on the Government to make tackling slavery “a clear priority” by setting up a committee with an existing Cabinet minister responsible for action on the issue; increasing funding for specialist police units; and a national awareness campaign so people can recognise and report the signs of exploitation.
She also said businesses should face fines and prosecution for exploitation if abuses are found, and called for a long-term national plan to tackle modern slavery and track progress.
She said: “Slavery and the most harrowing forms of exploitation are becoming more widespread in this country and evolving faster than we can respond.
“Behind these numbers are real people being abused in ways most of us would struggle to imagine, whether it’s women forced into the sex trade, children coerced into drug gangs, or workers trapped in brutal conditions with no way out, often living in absolute fear.
“This is happening in plain sight, in homes, workplaces and online, as criminals use increasingly sophisticated methods to target and control victims without being detected.
“As exploitation becomes more complex and more hidden, driven by technology and global instability, it will spread further and become harder to stop unless we act now.”
The latest data showed the backlog of cases in the system – which the Government has pledged to clear by the end of this year – was down by two-thirds.
In October 2024, the Government made a commitment to “eradicate” the backlog of decisions on modern slavery cases by the end of 2026, announcing 200 extra staff had been hired to speed up processing.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Modern slavery is a global scourge that abuses and exploits people for profit.
“We are committed to reviewing the modern slavery system to reduce opportunities for misuse of the system, whilst also ensuring that we have the right protections for those who need it.
“We are working with brave survivors to inform policy development and improve the process of identifying victims.
“We have also taken immediate action to reduce the backlog of cases, ensuring victims get swift decisions and the support they need to rebuild their lives.”
