Glasgow councillors have raised concerns over “harrowing” changes to the UK asylum system that they claim will put victims of human trafficking at risk. 

A paper brought before members of the environment and liveable neighbourhoods committee shows that since 2023 a service provided by TARA (Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance) has been negatively impacted by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023.

The Act has reportedly resulted in significant delays in allowing women to access support, due to a demand for additional and corroborating evidence that someone “is” a potential victim – as opposed to “may” be a potential victim.

Between April 1, 2023 and the January, 15 2024 it took 39 days for a decision to be made for TARA service users – before the Act was introduced the average timescale for a decision to be made was five days.

TARA helps vulnerable women who are a victim of trafficking and in December last year, 414 sex buyers were observed in the East End alone with four in the city centre. 

TARA is worried that this legislation will act as a barrier to victims of human trafficking from coming in and asking for help. 

Although Human Trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation are not immigration issues there remains a persistent myth that trafficking and modern slavery are confined to the flow of people into the UK. 

Labour councillor Stephen Curran said: “This legislation clearly makes us have fewer protections for the victims of modern slavery and it is weakening the potential support that TARA can offer.

“I hope we can get an urgent update on this as this is extremely worrying and hopefully there may be changes at a government level some point over the coming year that may help us.

“But in the meantime, we have got incredibly vulnerable people who rely on this service that have bluntly been put in a far worse situation because of legislation that has been designed deliberately not to help them or designed to ignore them.”

Green councillor Holly Bruce asked if letters could be written to the Scottish Government to point out the council’s concerns which was agreed.

Councillor Bruce said: “This report is really harrowing to read and those two pieces of legislation are brutal and are going to push more and more women into destitution.

“I feel like this committee could appeal to the convenor of equality to write to the Scottish Government to ask for additional resources to see what support is available to us because this will probably get worse as that act is then commenced.

“We don’t have a timeline for that either so the Scottish Government pushing for that timeline to be made available would be welcome.”

The council is also expected to write to the UK Government about the damage the legislation will do to people in Scotland.