September 27, 2023

UK Parliament receives evidence from Kalayaan

On 13 September 2023, Kalayaan provided oral evidence on the experience of migrant domestic workers in the United Kingdom.

Alex Millbrook (Lawyer at Kalayaan), Virginia Mantouvalou (Professor of Labour Law and Human Rights at UCL, and Trustee and Chair of Kalayaan) and Kate Roberts (Head of Policy at Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), and Trustee at Kalayaan) were invited by the Joint Committee on Human Rights to provide evidence on the subject of Human Rights at Work.

At the meeting, Alex, Kate and Virginia set out various issues faced by populations at risk of human trafficking and modern slavery (including migrant domestic workers) in the United Kingdom. They covered the lack of inspection and enforcement of labour laws for those populations, the link between short-term non-renewable visas (such as the Overseas Domestic Worker visa or the Seasonal Worker visa) and the increased risk of exploitation, and the shortcomings of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – noting, in particular, that the mean time period for Kalayaan clients waiting for a final decision on the NRM is 941 days (2.6 years), and the median is 786 days (2.2 years).

The video recording of the oral evidence is available to watch here.