Features editor Joni Ager finds out about the problem of human trafficking in the UK.


Each day more than 60 men and women would set off from Kettering and spend the day picking leeks in a Lincolnshire field.

At the end of the day they were brought back to Kettering, where they were forced to live in overcrowded, run-down and potentially unsafe houses.

Neighbours say people were being picked up throughout the day in Land Rovers and driven off – but they had no idea what was actually happening to the residents living in their street.

They were, in fact, victims of human trafficking, having been brought into the UK and forced to work for an organised gang of criminals.

The victims, from Poland and Lithuania, had applied for what they
thought was legitimate work through advertisements and employment agencies in their home countries and believed they were coming to England for decent, well-paid jobs and better living conditions.

When they arrive here their documents are taken away from them and their captors withold most of their wages to pay for housing and transport costs.

Terry Harrington is a farmer and chairman of Holbeach Parish Council, a small town close to where the Eastern Europeans were being made to work.

He said: "We are a thriving agricultural area.

"We do grow a few leeks around here but I haven't heard a word about this.

"On the farms I look after there are hardly any foreign workers, the only time I do see a few in the area is when they are cropping daffodils.

"I am surprised."

Yesterday's operation is thought to be the largest of its kind in the UK targeting suspected human traffickers.

Simon Excell, regional deputy director of the UK Border Agency, described it as a "modern form of slavery".

By its very nature, human trafficking is a covert crime.

Its victims often enter the country legally using their own passport – completely unaware they have been targeted by human traffickers.

Most come to the UK from Eastern Europe or the Far East, especially China, Malaysia and Thailand. They have applied for jobs as au-pairs, models or bar staff and they arrive here, often via low-cost airlines, only to be forced to work as prostitutes or in unskilled, poorly-paid jobs.

Once in the UK, the traffickers withold their passports or threaten violence to keep their victims from escaping or calling the police.

Some victims are told they have to work for the traffickers in order to repay them for their passage into the country, known as 'debt bondage'.

Organised criminals see human trafficking as a lucrative and relatively low-risk crime as the victims enter the country legally and are hard to detect once here.

But Mr Excell, of the UK Border Agency, said: "Human trafficking of any kind, whether for sexual or labour exploitation, is an appalling crime where people are treated as commodities and traded for profit.

"It is a modern form of slavery.

"But both the UK Border Agency and the police are determined, with our specialist foreign national crime teams, to stamp it out and catch the ringleaders.

"We are taking action against more organised criminals, facilitators and employers who break the law.

"We are also taking tough action against employers who hire illegal immigrants – naming and shaming them, imposing heavy fines, plus
prosecuting and imprisoning them when appropriate."