Labour MP Praises Theresa May For Bringing Modern Slavery To "Centre" Of Political Debate

Former prime minister Theresa May was introduced to the House of Lords on 12 September 2024 (Alamy)

Prior to Westminster, Hayes worked as a councillor at a mental health and domestic abuse charity, and was appointed as co-chair for Oxford Anti-Slavery network. He won Bournemouth East from the Tories at the general election with a majority of 6,000 and became the first Labour MP to win the seat in its history.

Anti-Slavery Day will take place on 18 October to raise awareness of slavery in Britain. Awareness of the issue became more prevalent in Britain when the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was passed back when Theresa May was Home Secretary. It forced companies over a certain size to report on slavery in their supply chains.

Despite being a Labour MP, Hayes told PoliticsHome he wanted to “pay tribute” to May for putting modern slavery on the political map.

“[May] took an issue which was very much on the margins of the political debate, she clearly felt very passionately about it. And she put the political will that she felt about bringing forward a Modern Slavery Act into implementation.

“She passed the act with the support of Labour and Co-operative MPs. It was very much a law that had a lot of cross-party support. And I think that too was really important, because it hopefully builds a consensus of improvements of the modern slavery provision that we've got.

“Based on my experience of working within an anti-slavery network, running as a charity that did research into modern slavery and had supported victims of modern slavery, Theresa May does not get enough credit for what she did there.”

The Labour MP added that there were “very few” politicians on the international stage which brought the debate around modern slavery “from the margins into the centre”, which he claimed was incredibly “impressive”.

May’s political career as prime minister between 2016-2019 was dominated by Brexit. After she lost the Conservative parliamentary majority in 2017, she struggled to get her withdrawal deal through the House of Commons and subsequently resigned as leader. But as part of her legacy, Hayes said he hopes her work on modern slavery is “something that people will remember” her for.

“When I was co-chairing the anti-slavery network, [we] were very fortunate to have Theresa May come and provide a video which talks about the importance of tackling [modern slavery]. I know it's something that she's still addressing [now].”

A new commitment on tackling modern slavery did not feature in Labour’s manifesto at the general election. Data shared with The House has shown one in five MPs believe it to be a foreign policy issue — with this figure dropping to three per cent for Labour MPs — while almost half of MPs believe UK legislation will not significantly reduce slavery in the UK.

Despite the lack of attention it received in its manifesto, Hayes said he was content with Labour's position on the issue,  

“There were announcements ahead of the manifesto which talked about how Labour were going to prioritise tackling slavery,” he told PoliticsHome.

“You saw Jess Phillips, [the Home Office minister], a few weeks before the election called [for] stamping out modern slavery,” he said, referring to her article in LabourList in June a month before the election on 4 July.

Nonetheless, Phillips was a backbench MP at the time, after resigning from the front bench over Keir Starmer’s position on the war in Gaza. She was appointed to the Home Office five days after the election on 9 July, when she narrowly held her seat in Birmingham Yardley.

Hayes told PoliticsHome he believed it was important for the public to understand that modern slavery was not just about “manacles and chains” but more subtle elements of abuse. 

"It is about these invisible types of control that you see and stamping that out, and it's also about recognizing that often victims of slavery and trafficking will really want paid work," he said. 

Some people see sex work as tantamount to modern slavery; does Hayes believe that to be the case?

“Yes,”  he replies, “where it is done without the control and consent of the person involved.

“Consent and control are the most defining features of modern slavery, where that happens and a person is coercive controlled into providing sex as a form of labour that is modern slavery.”

Apart from his immediate work as an MP, he said the most shocking forms of slavery he had seen were on building sites, where he has seen people who were “malnourished” and “were not treated appropriately by the people who were staffing the building site.”

"There's a real amount of myth busting that has to happen within modern slavery," he said. "I mean, I think a lot of people would be surprised... that British nationals are in the UK, a very large proportion of people who identified as victims of other slavery."

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