Lawyers say the human rights of ‘extremely vulnerable’ women were violated through the Home Office to non-public and confidential details
A British trafficking victim is suing Interior Minister Priti Patel, claiming that his branch illegally accessed non-public information, adding main points of his intimate thoughts.
If the case is successful, it can also have implications for tens of thousands of people who may also have had their nonpublic data through public servants. Five other survivors of trafficking threatened the minister and her workplace with legal action on the issue.
The woman, who cannot be known and has learning problems, lately lives in a safe, assisted house 24 hours a day through officials due to her complex intellectual aptitude problems.
She was drugged, abused and trafficked several times for sexual exploitation and drug trafficking. She has suffered sexual and physical abuse and has been exploited to interact in the activity of criminals. She was shown through the Ministry of the Interior as a serial victim of fashion slavery.
The case focuses on the Ministry of the Interior’s statement that it has extensive knowledge gathered about trafficking victims through charities contracted with the ministry, as a component of the victim assistance contract.
One charity, an interested party in the legal challenge, is the Salvation Army. It has a contract, which runs until March 2021, with the Home Office and works with subcontractors to provide support to victims of trafficking. These support workers may be involved in many aspects of the lives of those they are supporting, including accompanying them to confidential legal and medical appointments. They are also in receipt of the disclosure of personal and often intimate information.
Notes taken by staff about their consumers are stored in a database controlled by the Salvation Army. Access to this data is at the heart of the legal challenge, according to the woman’s lawyer. Ahmed Aydeed, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, says that at one point last year, the woman detained in the hospital under the Mental Health Act. She had to be released, but she had nowhere else to go.
Aydeed challenged the Interior Ministry to provide housing and argued that the government had a duty to do so because it was the victim of trafficking.
Acting for his client, Aydeed said it became transparent that the Ministry of the Interior had received sensitive data about him from the database that he was of no importance to his trafficking case. This included main points of his mind and feelings.
Although the Ministry of the Interior states that it cannot access this knowledge base directly, it can download the knowledge through the Salvation Army, which states that the Ministry of the Interior possesses the data and is obliged to disclose it under its contract.
The victim’s legal team argues that the Ministry of the Interior unlawfully accessed legally privileged communications between the woman and their lawyers, violated their basic rights with respect to available nonpublic data without their consent, violated knowledge rules and was unable to provide a sufficiently good address for the use of non-public data of victims leading to systemic problems.
It requests the destruction of the legally privileged data that the Ministry of the Interior has on it, as well as non-public data.
The ministry denies acting illegally, claiming that aid personnel assisting traffickers are “agents of the workplace at home”, who comply with the knowledge coverage law and is the controller of knowledge related to traffickers.
Aydeed submits that the Ministry of the Interior does not have access to sensitive legal data until the opposite legal proceedings are presented.
Aydeed said: “The Minister of the Interior has generally demonstrated the right of survivors to privacy and the right to obtain confidential legal advice.”
The Salvation Army told the Guardian that he may not comment on it at this time. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said: “It would be strange to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.”