Despite the battery of laws designed to prosecute traffickers, there are more victims of trafficking than traffickers in prison for so-called immigration offences.
"It is positive in the sense that it is an entirely new initiative, but is it going to do anything?" The modern slavery bill brings together current offences on trafficking and slavery, introduces tougher sentences for traffickers, and creates an independent anti-slavery commissioner, likely to be a former police officer.
And anti-trafficking laws supposed to protect the victims of trafficking are used to deport them.
"While I deplore what happened this week, I absolutely deplore what happened... by the same token there can be no truck with drug trafficking," Abbott said in an interview on 2GB Friday.
In this month's podcast, we'll look at forced labour and the role of international conventions in offering protection; the realities of working on the frontline against slavery; some of the trends in the anti-slavery movement; and the Centre of Social Justice report into the failures of the UK government to address human trafficking.
We will also hear from Leonardo Sakamoto, who covers slavery for Reporter Brazil, and a first-hand testimony from a Chinese human trafficking survivor.
Clarke said: "The first priority of any British government is to provide for the security of the citizens of the country, and at the moment in the criminal field all the major activity is international, whether you're talking about international people trafficking, drug dealing, whether you're talking about illegal migration or whether you're talking about counter-terrorism.
But if there is a hub, a clearing house for the complex, cynical and murderous business of trafficking migrants, then it is a place where the state is defunct and society disenchanted, where the border guards are biddable for $400, where the beaches are broad and where the sea lapping the shore stretches north to another far more promising coastline.
It also suggested that the children could have been part of a human trafficking operation or were bought for organ harvesting, according to the family's website.
The pledge not to lock up pregnant women and the victims of trafficking and sexual abuse is also long overdue.
Anthony Steen, who advised on the legislation and chairs the Human Trafficking Foundation, said the bill, which will be debated in parliament on Tuesday for its third reading, had "yawning gaps", and failed to focus on the needs of victims of trafficking in the UK.
