UK HOME SECRETARY; THERESA MAY, TAKES ON SLAVERY GANG MASTERS.

Slave masters who undercut British workers with cheap labour faces a human trafficking crackdown as crooks convicted of using abduction and threats to control workers from abroad could be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the Government’s Modern Slavery Bill will also ban traffickers from running com­panies and returning to areas in which they operated.

Mrs May said: “Vulnerable people from all over the globe are trafficked into Britain every day.“Most end up working as modern-day slaves, without pay, without rights and without hope.”

She added: “The only way to minimise the number of victims is to maximise the number of modern day slave-drivers that we convict and imprison.”

But Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary said: “Stronger action against traffickers is welcome.

“But the proposals also need to include stronger action and enforcement against gangmasters and employers and more support for trafficked victims, especially children and young people.”

All gangmasters have to be members of the Government’s Gangmasters Licensing Authority since 23 Chinese cockle-pickers died while working in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire in 2005.