Slavery is an umbrella term for activities involved when one person obtains or holds another person in compelled service. The number of British children identified as potential victims of modern slavery has more than doubled in a year, prompting fresh concerns about child exploitation by county lines drugs gangs.

Someone is in slavery if they are: 

• forced to work through mental or physical threat
• owned or controlled by an ’employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse
• dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’
• physically constrained or have restrictions placed on his/her freedom
• ‘slavery’ is where ownership is exercised over a person
• ‘servitude’ involves the obligation to provide services imposed by coercion
• ‘forced or compulsory labour’ involves work or service extracted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself voluntarily
• ‘human trafficking’ concerns arranging or facilitating the travel of another with a view to exploiting them.