Dr von Hippel will work alongside a panel that includes the heads of the security and intelligence services, Interpol, Europol, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and senior policing leads, the British Red Cross, Caroline Haughey (independent reviewer of the Modern Slavery Act 2015) and the Local Government Association.

The membership of the taskforce ‘has crucially been designed to help drive forward the operational response with an unusually high number of intelligence and policing experts joining Ministers around the table’. The task force will explore what more can be done to bring perpetrators to justice and to support victims of slavery.

RUSI intends to bring its wide-ranging expertise to the conversation. In particular, consistent with the government’s focus on identifying and disrupting the finances of modern slavery, RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies is reviewing the extent to which engagement with the financial sector can enhance law enforcement responses and reverse the current low risk/high profit business model.
The first meeting of the task force will take place in October 2016.