Case No. UKUT-00226-(IAC)

[2011] EWCA Crim 1691 [2013] QB 82 , the Court of Appeal highlighted that the concepts of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour in Article 4 ECHR share a common denominator, namely that “ … the victim is subject to a degree of enforced control ”: see [40]. In [41], the Court emphasised the broad spectrum of conduct which may be encompassed by these different concepts: “ One person may exploit another in many different ways. ” Turning its attention to “ the menace of a penalty ”, the Court stated, in [42]: “ Where ‘forced or compulsory labour’ is concerned, the menace of a penalty can be exerted in various ways. It can be direct; it can also be indirect. Constraint can be mental or physical. It can be imposed by force of circumstances. Where it is alleged that one person has been compulsorily employed by another, the level of pay he or she has received, if any, may have evidential importance. It may point to coercion; it may bear on an employee’s ability to escape from his or her employer’s control. On its own, however, a derisory level of wages is not tantamount to coercion. ” We shall revisit th is discrete issue of compulsion infra . (30) As cases such as R v SK show, o ne of the interesting features of the United Kingdom jurisprudence is the combination of decisions belonging to both the civil and criminal fields. This is illustrated in