Britain says 13,000 are slavery victims

LONDON — Up to 13,000 people in Britain are victims of trafficking, sexual exploitation or other forms of modern slavery, a government report said Saturday, putting the figure at four times the previous estimate.

The Home Office figures — the first official estimate of the scale of the problem in Britain — included women and girls forced into prostitution or sexually exploited for profit; domestic servants working for little or no pay; and laborers forced to work in farms, factories and fishing boats.

“The first step to eradicating the scourge of modern slavery is acknowledging and confronting its existence,” said Home Secretary Theresa May.

The report, published as part of the British government’s strategy to tackle trafficking and modern slavery, calculated what it called the “dark figure” of victims not reported by the National Crime Agency, which had put the number of victims in 2013 at 2,744.