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This week the Home Office published its updated Modern Slavery guidance to clarify how decision makers in the National Referral Mechanism – the framework in the UK for identifying and referring victims of modern slavery and human trafficking - should consider 'disclosure' (when and how a potential victim first reveals or reports experiences of exploitation or abuse) when assessing the credibility of a trafficking or modern slavery claim. HBF is extremely concerned about these changes.

As well as changes to how and when further information should be gathered in an NRM referral, the new guidance states that decision makers must now “consider the timing of disclosure of information relevant to an NRM referral as part of their evaluation of the referral’s credibility”. This includes whether disclosure was after a particular event and whether the individual had previous ‘opportunities’ to disclose.

Decision makers are told not to issue a negative decision regarding ‘delayed disclosure’ if it is deemed that the individual did not have “opportunities to disclose, or if concerns about comprehension, support, or safety were raised at the time of the disclosure opportunity and not addressed.”

However, in setting out reasons for ‘delayed disclosure’, the revised guidance states that, “trauma, incomprehension of information provided on modern slavery and human trafficking or other reasons for delay should not be presumed. This must be documented at the time and supported by professional insight, such as by the first responder or medical expert”. Survivors must provide a “credible, evidenced explanation” for their ‘late disclosure’.

We are seriously concerned that a delay in a survivor sharing their experiences of trafficking and exploitation would ever be considered as undermining their credibility. This approach risks penalising some of the most vulnerable people in the system for what is a well-documented and entirely understandable response to trauma. The revised guidance also increases the evidential burden on people who, in our experience, often do not have the necessary support during their referral process, including access to legal advice and representation.

Why survivors disclose ‘late’ and why that is normal

"I felt afraid. . . I imagined getting told to talk about the past which I always want to keep away from"[1] 

At HBF, we work every day with survivors of trafficking, torture and extreme human cruelty. ‘Delayed disclosure’ is something we regularly see in our work. Survivors may be unable to speak about what happened to them because of poor mental health, shame, fear of authorities or exploiters, cross-cultural barriers, or simply because they do not yet have the trust and safety they need to revisit deeply painful experiences. International law, including the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking, and decades of clinical research all recognise this reality.

Critically, survivors may not even understand that their experience is relevant to their legal case. One of our clients, Habibul, had been accessing support from the Helen Bamber Foundation (HBF) since 2019, had attended years of stabilisation and trauma-focused therapy, and had two psychological medico-legal reports prepared - yet he first disclosed an experience of labour exploitation in the UK only in late 2025, in the context of a community group with trusted peers and a familiar HBF professional present. He had no idea his experience was legally relevant to his asylum claim until HBF discussed that possibility with him. His case is not unusual. It illustrates clearly that even with extensive, high-quality, trauma-informed support in place, disclosure can come years after the exploitation occurred.

Our concerns about the updated guidance

We are concerned that, despite acknowledging trauma and fear as possible reasons for delayed disclosure, the updated guidance still places the burden on survivors to demonstrate (with supporting evidence) why they did not disclose earlier. This is the wrong starting point. Given the overwhelming body of evidence about why 'late disclosure' occurs, the assumption should be that delay is understandable, rather than something survivors are required to justify.

We are also concerned about the practical application of these criteria. Assessing whether someone had a 'safe opportunity' to disclose is deeply subjective: what feels safe to a professional may feel entirely unsafe to a traumatised survivor. For example, in the new guidance it is stated that an asylum interview “should normally be regarded as a safe and relevant environment for disclosure of exploitation”. This ignores the many substantive barriers people seeking asylum have to disclosure in their initial asylum interview.  

Similarly, it is extremely difficult to determine whether someone genuinely understood what they were told about ‘timely disclosure’, particularly given the well-documented shortage of high-quality, trauma-informed legal representation. In our experience, survivors will often indicate they have understood something simply to end an interview or try to avoid ‘being a burden’ by bringing up further issues they do not understand as relevant to their asylum claim - understandable behaviour that this guidance does not appear to account for.

A trauma-informed approach

If this guidance is to operate fairly, ‘delayed disclosure’ must be treated as commonplace rather than an anomaly requiring explanation. Decision makers must receive meaningful training in trauma-informed approaches to questioning and information-gathering. And the threshold for accepting a reasonable explanation for ‘late disclosure’ must be genuinely low, reflecting the reality of survivors' lives rather than an idealised model of timely, coherent disclosure.

Getting this wrong does not just lead to unfair outcomes in individual cases. It means survivors of trafficking and modern slavery being disbelieved, denied protection, and potentially returned to danger, because the system failed to understand the very nature and impact of the harm they suffered.

[1] McDonnell, M., McGowan, J., Weldon, E., & Katona, C. (2025). The experiences of undergoing medico-legal assessments when seeking asylum in the UK: an interpretive phenomenological analysis. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 1–21.