Scottish Government announces new human trafficking measures

The Scottish Government has announced that it is to introduce a statutory human trafficking criminal aggravation. This will mean that existing criminal offences will be able to be ‘aggravated’ in future if it can be proved that the underlying offence was committed in connection with human trafficking.

The move is one of a series of measures agreed at a recent summit on human trafficking, hosted  by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

The summit, which took place on European anti-slavery day, brought together senior representatives of organisations that have a clear role in tackling trafficking and supporting victims of trafficking, including representatives from the UK Government and Northern Ireland Executive.

The summit coincides with the publication of the Inter-departmental Ministerial Group Report on Trafficking. This provides an assessment of human trafficking in the UK and the UK’s response towards combating the crime.

It shows that 93 potential victims of trafficking were referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) in 2011. The NRM is a multi-agency framework which allows a variety of agencies to contribute towards identifying, protecting and supporting potential trafficking victims. Although the source countries can vary, in 2011, the majority of victims of trafficking recovered in Scotland came from Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.