Associate Professor Liora Lazarus was invited to submit evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill on 11 February 2014.

The Committee was particularly concerned to hear about the human rights implications of the preventive orders proposed in the Bill. While welcoming the extent to which the Act met the positive obligations arising out of Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Professor Lazarus highlighted concerns with the legal certainty of the preventive provisions.  The committee referred these concerns to the Home Office and were dissatisfied with their response. The Final report of the Joint Committee highlighted Professor Lazarus’s concerns, and adopted a number of the amendments she proposed on pages 52 to 54 of the report.

You can read Professor Lazarus’s submissions, and the report of the Committee.