Tackling Cuckooing: Proposed Amendments to Modern Slavery Act Explained

A new proposal from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) thinktank seeks to improve legislation to protect victims of ‘Cuckooing’. Many politicians and campaigners have backed the proposal, including MPs Jess Phillips and Iain Duncan Smith.

What is Cuckooing?

Cuckooing was recently brought into the spotlight thanks to a key storyline in the hit BBC police drama, Happy Valley. 

Cuckooing is a phenomenon in which drug gangs or other criminals take over someone’s home for their criminal activities. 

The CSJ states that victims of cuckooing are often targeted because they are vulnerable individuals. This can include individuals who are considered vulnerable due to addiction, age, or disability. 
 
Victims are exploited, threatened, and manipulated by the gangs who then use their homes for drug dealing or other criminal activity, such as prostitution.

Issues with current legislation

Prosecutions for cuckooing are currently covered in the Modern Slavery Act (MSA). However, cuckooing can fall outside the scope of this legislation if the victim has done nothing apart from submit to letting drugs being supplied from their home.  

Section 1 of the MSA is what the CSJ are hoping to change. At present, it reads:

Section 1: Slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour  

(1) A person commits an offence if—  

(a) the person holds another person in slavery or servitude and the circumstances are such that the person knows or ought to know that the other person is held in slavery or servitude, or  

(b) the person requires another person to perform forced or compulsory labour and the circumstances are such that the person knows or ought to know that the other person is being required to perform forced or compulsory labour. 

Under these rules, charges can only be brought if the victim is forced into labour, threatened or attacked. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) clarified the position when questioned by the CSJ: 

“...  the CPS position is that a charge under section 1 MSA is highly unlikely to be pursued in cases where the cuckooed victim has done nothing apart from acquiesce to drugs being supplied from their home.  

In these cases, it would be challenging for a prosecutor to argue that this amounts to an offence under section 1 MSA. However, cuckooing activity does not involve rights of ownership of the person or the requisite denial of freedom to amount to slavery or servitude. That leaves only forced or compulsory labour.  

The issue then is whether the owner / occupant of the property has been forced or deceived into providing a service or a benefit. The provision of a service or benefit involves a person actively doing something for another. A service or a benefit cannot be provided by passively doing nothing. Simply failing to notify the police that your home is being used by others to supply drugs cannot amount to the provision of a service or benefit.” 

This loophole is why MPs and campaigners are calling for an overhaul of the Modern Slavery Act.

New Rules 

The CSJ proposes amending Section 1 of the MSA to recognise that taking over someone’s home is an act of forced servitude. Doing so would help both police and victims achieve a positive outcome. 

Introducing new rules is vital for the UK, considering cuckooing is a growing problem. During County Lines Intensification week (11th-17th October 2021) 894 cuckooed addresses were visited with 1,468 people arrested as a result. 2,664 vulnerable people, including 2,209 children were identified as being exploited in these arrangements. 

But despite these shocking figures, the true scale of the issue is unknown. According to Anti-Slavery International, at the end of 2021 there were: 

• 12,727 potential victims of modern slavery – the highest number of referrals since the records began in 2009 

• 43% of all of these were children – meaning there were 5,468 potential child victims 

• 31% of people referred were British nationals 

However, slavery experts believe that the true number of victims in the UK is closer to the 100,000 mark. With nearly half of these being children.  

Last year, the government did announce they were due to make amendments to the MSA, but cuckooing wasn’t mentioned specifically. A Home Office spokesperson said: 

 “Cuckooing is wholly unacceptable and the government is determined to tackle it and those who perpetrate this abuse. There are a range of tools that can be applied to disrupt this behaviour which can result in criminal sanctions if breached.”