Thousands of victims of modern slavery are being denied support because of Britain's crackdown on illegal migration, according to more than a dozen sources, a decade after the approval of legislation that put the country at the forefront of the global fight against human trafficking.
Britain's Modern Slavery Act of 2015 forced large businesses to tackle slavery in their supply chains and strengthened existing protections for victims.
But those protections have been eroded by rules introduced in 2023 to curb illegal migration, as the political priority switched to dealing with the tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Britain each year aboard small boats.
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