Scotland's Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy 2025

Trafficking and Exploitation in Scotland

Since the implementation of the 2015 Act, victims of trafficking have been identified in all 32 local authority areas in Scotland. The identification of potential victims has been increasing, from 145 referrals to the NRM in 2015 compared to 920 in 2024. Adults (aged 18 or above at point of referral) accounted for 664 referrals with 256 relating to children in 2024, with males comprising 714 referrals and females 206 referrals.

Forms of exploitation can include, but are not limited to:

• sexual exploitation – victims are deceived, coerced, or forced into sexual activity, including but not limited to prostitution, pornography or lap dancing, often under threat, manipulation, or violence.
• labour exploitation – victims are deceived, coerced or forced to work for little or no pay, often through violence, intimidation, debt, confiscation of documents, control of bank accounts or threats about their immigration status. This occurs in all sectors of industry including manufacturing, hospitality, agriculture, social care, construction, fishing, car washes, and the beauty industry.
• domestic servitude – domestic workers are exploited within private homes, and they may experience restricted movement, long working hours, and minimal pay. This form of exploitation may be particularly hard to detect as it would tend to be hidden from view.
• criminal exploitation – victims are deceived, coerced or forced into criminal activities such as drug cultivation, drug distribution, cuckooing, forced begging, pickpocketing, theft, or selling counterfeit goods and fraud, often under threat or deception.

Victims of trafficking may be unaware that they are being exploited or that they have been trafficked for the purposes of exploitation. Survivors have explained that it was often too dangerous for them or their families (sometimes outside the UK) to report or escape their exploitation. A person can be a victim of trafficking regardless of whether they have consented to any circumstance or aspect related to their exploitation. The Palermo Protocol also recognises that a child’s consent is irrelevant, ensuring children are protected from exploitation regardless of whether they appear to agree to it^[5].

As outlined in the ‘Preventing Human Trafficking and Exploitation: Evidence Review’^[6] commissioned to inform this Strategy, human trafficking and exploitation creates significant physical and mental health harms to individual victims. Physical abuse, including sexual exploitation, can result in long lasting health conditions both during victims’ trafficking experience and following removal from such a situation. Lack of medical intervention during exploitation and limited access to basic nutrition can also facilitate long-term health complications. The psychological impact experienced by victims will often create long-lasting mental health challenges. These challenges can be exacerbated by uncertainty around the future and difficulties and delays navigating criminal justice processes, immigration systems or accessing education and employment opportunities.

There are some common misconceptions that for trafficking to occur international borders or domestic boundaries must be crossed. However, movement of a victim is not required for an offence of human trafficking to be committed in Scotland. Victims can be men, women, or children of any nationality, including British citizens. The number of British nationals identified as victims of trafficking is increasing with 10% of NRM referrals relating to Scotland in 2024 being British, compared to 5% in 2021.

Often different forms of exploitation overlap with one another where a victim may be exploited in more than one way, consecutively or concurrently, for example, through labour and sexual exploitation, or criminal and labour exploitation. Activities in which victims have been identified include agriculture, fishing, construction, commercial sexual exploitation/prostitution, illegal drugs trade, the beauty industry (nail bars, beauty salons), hospitality, car washes and social care, and many others. For child victims, reporting of trafficking for criminal exploitation is increasing and involves the exploitation of an individual to engage in criminal activity for the benefit of the exploiter. Technology-facilitated human trafficking and exploitation is an area of increasing risk.

Given the large number of sectors in which trafficking and exploitation takes place in Scotland, as well as the devastating impact that experiences of trafficking and exploitation can have on victims, it is vital that national policies, strategies and practices are fully aligned to achieve the outcomes of this Strategy. A public health approach requires collaborative and interlinked actions to deliver results at both national and local levels. Aligning the new trafficking strategy within wider Scottish Government frameworks therefore ensures a more resilient and preventative approach. Annex C outlines key policy areas essential to delivering these outcomes. Strengthening coordination across local partnerships and public services will ensure that we will be able to better prevent trafficking and to respond effectively when it occurs.

Public Protection approaches to the interconnectedness of risk and harm

The term Public Protection is used to encompass the many different strategic approaches and responses to keeping children and adults safe. Child Protection, Adult Support and Protection, Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), Alcohol and Drug Partnerships, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), and Suicide Prevention are all part of the Public Protection system in Scotland. Risk is interconnected across the system and people who are vulnerable to harm often need support from several parts of the Public Protection system. For people that have been, or are at risk of being trafficked, an integrated, person-centred system where services are co-ordinated is vital.

Being exposed to certain harms and risks can make adults and children more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. The type of harm to which they may be exposed may be psychological, physical, environmental or structural. Structural and environmental factors that increase the risk of trafficking and exploitation include poverty, conflict and instability, organised crime networks, lack of opportunities, and gender inequality. Social and family factors can include domestic violence, socioeconomic conditions, parental substance use and family debt. Individual factors that increase vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation include substance misuse, homelessness, having no recourse to public funds, being in residential care, not being able to communicate using the dominant language and disability, amongst others^[7]. Some of these risk factors can also be symptoms of and ways of coping with the trauma and distress experienced by individuals who have been exploited and trafficked. Technology-facilitated enablers of exploitation, such as the use of social media, contribute to increased risk. The interrelationship of all these factors highlights the potential of a coordinated public protection approach aimed at protecting those at risk of harm.

A collection of action and co-ordination is required at local and national levels to understand the risk factors that lead to vulnerability, to try and prevent or minimise the risk factors, and to respond both upstream but also when harm occurs. Local authority Chief Officers are individually and collectively responsible for public protection, and nationally the National Public Protection Leadership Group seeks to provide national multi-agency leadership of public protection across Scotland, to support continuous improvement, and to work collaboratively with local areas. The National Public Protection Leadership Group has, as part of its remit, the need to consider public protection interests in human trafficking.

In Scotland the public protection approach is working to build on existing work and improve multi-agency collaboration, information sharing, and shared strategic ownership with a view to preventing and reducing harm across a range of these potential harm types, including trafficking and exploitation.

Public protection approaches recognise the intersection of different harms, some of these listed above, which affect victims and survivors of trafficking and seek to address these holistically in order to protect and support victims. The ‘National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland’, for example, sets out the responsibilities of everyone who works with children, young people and their families. This guidance, which was reviewed and updated in 2023, makes clear that all concerns that a child has been abused or is at risk of abuse, including trafficking and exploitation, must be reported to the police or social work. An evaluation report by the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS) published in March 2024 highlighted significant progress by local areas despite challenging fiscal and workforce circumstances, including improved alignment between local child protection processes.

The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act

Human trafficking and exploitation constitute ‘harm’ to a person that can be physical, sexual, psychological, financial, or a combination of these. The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 places a duty on local authorities to make inquiries about a person’s wellbeing, property or financial affairs if it knows or believes that the person is an adult at risk, and that it might need to intervene in order to protect the person’s wellbeing, property or financial affairs. The Act is designed to support and protect adults aged 16 and over, and who meet all three of the following criteria:

• they are unable to safeguard their own wellbeing, property, rights or other interests
• they are at risk of harm
• they are affected by disability, mental disorder, illness or physical or mental infirmity and so they are more vulnerable to being harmed than adults who are not so affected.

The Act provides a framework for intervention and support for adults at risk of harm. It provides measures to identify and to provide support and protection for those individuals who are vulnerable to being harmed whether as a result of their own or someone else’s conduct.