We must ask whether culpability for the Essex lorry deaths extends right to the heart of government immigration policy

I doubt anyone could imagine how it feels to suffocate in a lorry. But this was the reality for 39 Vietnamese people who were found dead in a trailer in Grays, Essex, last year, victims of a people smuggling operation gone terribly wrong.

Two men were found guilty for those deaths yesterday; in the wake of such a crime it’s right that we ask hard questions about what led to it – including whether culpability extends beyond the people smugglers, and right to the heart of government immigration policy.

We can’t know for sure what the UK held in store for the 39 men, women and children who died on that lorry. But we do know that many Vietnamese people who enter the UK as a result of people smuggling have been, or are subsequently, trafficked into modern slavery.  

Research by Anti-Slavery International, in partnership with Every Child Protected Against Trafficking (ECPAT), shows some of the ways Vietnamese migrants are exploited here: some find themselves forced to work in illegal enterprises, such as cannabis farms; some are exploited in High Street nail bars; and some are trafficked into sexual exploitation.  

Vietnamese migrants are among the most numerous victims of trafficking in the UK, often compelled to enter the country by a complex mix of social factors and exploitation. This was certainly the case for at least some of the Grays victims.

News reports have given an insight to the lengths some of the victims went to try to enter the UK, including paying small fortunes to people smugglers. We know that some Vietnamese migrants will have offered their families’ homes as collateral to so-called labour brokers. Many leave their home country assured that they will have safe passage across Russia and Europe, only to find themselves trafficked into slavery en route. By the time they arrive in the UK, they could have faced debt bondage, threats to their families’ welfare and perilous journeys.

By any measure, many of those who survive the journey to the UK are victims of a chain of exploitation stretching all the way from Britain to Vietnam. But the moment they cross the UK’s “hard border”, they face being treated as criminals: it is next to impossible for them to find legal work or rent property; their earnings are subject to seizure by the government; and they know they face detention and removal from the UK if their immigration status is identified. This is the essence of the government’s "hostile environment", an eight-year-old policy that has been condemned by the United Nations for stoking racism and xenophobia.

While it has made life hard for victims of trafficking and people smuggling, the hostile environment has created a fertile environment for modern slavery and those who prosper from it. Traffickers know that the state effectively colludes in keeping their victims silent. Fearful of deportation and the traffickers’ threats, migrant victims of modern slavery are deterred from approaching the authorities – so many disappear into a hinterland of exploitation and fear.

It seems likely that this is what lay ahead of the 39 Vietnamese people who died on that airless trailer in Grays. It’s almost certainly what lay ahead of the other people who had been smuggled into the UK by the same criminal gang, and others, in previous weeks, and this exposes another problem with the hostile environment: it simply doesn’t work.

At least 7,000 people successfully made perilous crossings of the English channel on small boats this year, a number likely exceeded by the number of people who entered the UK by air, land or sea and subsequently disappeared into modern slavery. Just as the hostile environment benefits traffickers at home, it benefits people smugglers abroad – because it does nothing to address the social and economic factors that push or pull migrants from Vietnam and into the UK.

People will continue to try to enter this country, and as long as the government puts up hard borders and “go home” placards, they will continue to be willing to risk their lives on smugglers’ false promises.

The hostile environment is a failure of policy and humanity – and a stain on this country’s hard-earned good reputation for tackling modern slavery. We need to see a sincere change of heart and direction from the government, including the institution of safe routes for migration across the Channel and guaranteed support for victims of trafficking from the moment they are identified. 

These steps would embolden victims and their advocates, while starving people smugglers of people who feel compelled to trust them. We owe it to the 39 people who died on that airless lorry in Essex to make sure this kind of tragedy cannot recur – as it will, unless the hostile environment is abandoned at once.

Jasmine O’Connor is CEO of Anti-Slavery International