Heather Bellamy spoke with Carly Jones, the national manager for Mission Without Borders, about the European Commission's anti-trafficking report.

Carly Jones

According to the European Commission's anti-trafficking report, the UK has been identified as one of the most targeted countries by traffickers, due to the high demand for low cost labour and services. In response, Mission Without Borders has renewed its call to support vulnerable people, particularly women and children. Heather Bellamy spoke with Carly Jones, the national manager for Mission Without Borders, about what the report revealed and what needs to be done to tackle the problem.

Heather: What sort of services and jobs in the UK, have a high demand for trafficked people?

Carly: Overwhelmingly, where people are trafficked in the UK, it's in sexual exploitation. However, what we're seeing now, is that there is an increase in forced labour as well. That is especially in agricultural areas for farming and in jobs like picking fruit. We are seeing a lot more people trafficked for those kinds of activities.

Heather: In the UK?

Carly: In the UK, yes. The other area on the increase in the UK is child trafficking for forced begging. That is becoming quite a significant issue too.

Heather: With the farm work and picking fruit, would the employers know that they are employing trafficked people?

Carly: Not necessarily. It would depend on what the organisation is. Often these networks are very complex and quite often run like businesses. So you have these quite large organised-crime networks where some employers may think that the trafficker is actually a recruiter and he's recruiting low cost labour for them, when that isn't actually the case, its forced labour. However in some cases there is a certain degree of complicity. Some employers are aware and are actively involved in what's going on too.

Heather: I presume low cost would still be minimum wage, so it's still legal wages?

Carly: No, not usually and especially not where trafficking is concerned. Low cost would be very much under the minimum wage. Also, minimum wage in Eastern European countries, which is all a UK employer has to pay, is a lot less than minimum wage in this country. Often workers will be getting less than £2 per hour.

Heather: What other things were highlighted in this report?

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Carly: All of our work is in Eastern Europe and three out of the six countries where we work, were identified in the top countries for trafficking. They were Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. That was a big issue for us. They also recorded quite a sharp increase in child trafficking and obviously that was a significant concern for us as an organisation.

Heather: What sort of numbers are being trafficked each year?

Carly: In terms of children, it is still relatively small, but in terms of overall people, you're talking about something like 23 million as a global figure.

In Europe it is very difficult to give an actual figure, because these instances are very poorly recorded. People are not registered as victims properly, because it's so difficult to identify victims. I think the numbers of recorded victims for sexual exploitation for instance was around 15,000, but we know that the real figure is significantly higher. These are generally people that have been forgotten and fall through the loopholes in the system.

Heather: What makes people vulnerable to trafficking?