A new report has exposed the staggering rise of the modern slavery claim used by lawyers to block migrant deportations.

The Home Office lost an appeal against a high court ruling which temporarily blocked the deportation of an Eritrean asylum seeker to France under Labour's "one-in, one-out" pilot scheme.

It saw new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood respond, saying: "Last minute attempts to frustrate a removal are intolerable, and I will fight them at every step," she said.

"We have taken immediate steps to tackle this issue by amending policy on 17 September. I have also commissioned work to consider wider reforms and what more can be done to prevent misuse of modern slavery system."

A report prepared by Stand for Our Sovereignty along with Facts4EU.org revealed the staggering number of applicants under the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) which is the framework in the UK for identifying and supporting victims of modern slavery and human trafficking.

Claims under the NRM have jumped by 32 per cent in the last year alone.

Modern slavery is a term that includes any form of human trafficking, slavery, servitude or forced labour - according to the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The exclusive report suggests that the Home Office had stated that "referrals have broadly increased since 2014".

Shabana Mahmood was left disappointed by the appeal

However, the number in the second quarter of 2014 was 506 and in the second quarter of 2025 there had been 5,690.

It represents a shocking increase of 1,025 per cent in the last 11 years.

Stand for Our Sovereignty revealed that the Home Office said it was "not possible to point to a single cause or factor driving this increase".

There are two levels of approval possible for migrants and two levels of reject as well as an appeals process.

The extraordinary rise in modern slavery claims in the UK

The two levels of approval include reasonable grounds, and conclusive grounds.

Under the reasonable grounds approval, the decision maker could suspect that the individual was a victim of modern slavery, but it did not have to be completely proven.

That test was then amended post January 30, 2023, so that it was based on objective factors, and it was again changed six months later - meaning the decision maker had to "agree with the statement that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a person is a victim of modern slavery".

Once an alleged victim had a positive reasonable grounds decision - they then proceed to a conclusive grounds decision to determine the evidence on the balance of probabilities.

According to the report, the top 20 countries where migrants claim to have been made victims of modern slavery include Libya in the top spot, Vietnam, Sudan, Albania, France, China, Somalia, Turkey, Ethiopia, Cambodia, India, Iran, Russia, Greece, Thailand, Hungary, Brazil, Belgium, Italy and then Germany.

Of the 5,690 potential victims which were referred in this quarter, 74 per cent were male and 26 per cent were female.

The figures refer to all migrants, not only small boat migrants.

Before the criteria was reviewed in early 2023, nine out of 10 reasonable grounds decisions were successful.

In the last quarter, this changed dramatically.

From April to June 2025, out of the 5,895 reasonable grounds decisions, 58 per cent were positive.

For cases which received a conclusive grounds decision from April to June 2025, the average time taken from referral to conclusive grounds was 712 days - just two weeks shy of two years.

The Home Office has indicated that the backlog is dropping.