High Court finds Home Office approach to disqualifying victims of human trafficking from support and other protection to be unlawful

On 17 December 2025, Mr Justice Morris handed down judgment in R (on the Application of ABW) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 3280 (Admin) concerning the correct interpretation and scope of the duties owed by the Home Secretary to victims of trafficking before she can lawfully disqualify a victim from support and other protection under section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on public order grounds. 

Normally individuals who have received a Reasonable Grounds decision that there are Reasonable Grounds to believe that they are victims of trafficking must be provided with support to assist with their psychological and physical recovery from past trafficking, pending the completion of the victim identification process. They also should not be removed from the UK pending the victim identification process. Although the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 gives the Home Secretary a power to disqualify certain victims of human trafficking from these protections, Mr, Justice Morris found that the Home Secretary had been misapplying this power.

In particular, Mr. Justice Morris found that 

1. the Home Secretary did not have authorisation from Parliament to stop the victim identification process simply because she has decided to disqualify a victim from accessing support and other protection.  Instead, the Home Secretary is under an obligation to make conclusive grounds decisions to victims of trafficking who have reasonable grounds decisions and who have been subject to a public order disqualification, whilst they remain in the UK. The Home Secretary has failed to fulfil this obligation to date.
2. Home Secretary’s approach to deciding whether to disqualify a victim was unlawful and that the Home Secretary wrongly applied a blanket assumption that a victim with a criminal conviction would be disqualified unless their needs are greater. This approach was found to be contrary to what Parliament intended and is incompatible with the UK’s treaty obligations under Article 13 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against the Trafficking in Human Beings, which Parliament implemented into domestic law.
3. The Modern Slavery Act Statutory Guidance applies the unlawful blanket presumption in favour of making a public order disqualification. This presumption precludes the Home Secretary from assessing whether to apply its discretion to disqualify on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the passage of time since the relevant offence, whether the offence was a result of exploitation and whether and to what extent the individual has engaged with rehabilitative work.
4. This has had grave consequences of unlawfully depriving vulnerable victims of human trafficking from the protection they require to recovery from past experiences of exploitation and exposing them to risks of re-trafficking (which had occurred in the Claimant’s case).

The Claimant's public order disqualification was therefore unlawful because it resulted from the application of this unlawful presumption.

Although strictly obiter, Mr Justice Morris found that, even if the Statutory Guidance is lawful, the Claimant's public order disqualification was unlawful because, amongst other reasons, the Home Secretary had irrationally concluded that there was not a credible suspicion that he was at a real and immediate risk of re-trafficking. The Home Secretary’s assessment of re-trafficking focused wholly and solely on the risks posed to the Claimant by former traffickers and did not address the Claimant's general vulnerability to re-trafficking from other sources.

The judgment can be read here.

The Claimant was represented by Shu Shin Luh and Agata Patyna, instructed by John Crowley from Leigh Day. Rosa Polaschek was led by Shu Shin Luh in earlier stages of the proceedings, including on the question of the correct court jurisdiction for bringing a challenge to a public order disqualification decision. The judgment on that matter can be read here.

The Court will consider the Home Secretary’s application for permission to appeal, alongside what final orders to make, and an application from the Home Secretary to stay the effect of those orders in the New Year (2026). An application to stay the interim effects of the judgment (pending consideration of the substantive application to stay/permission to appeal in the new year) was refused on 17 December 2025.