Kevin Dent KC appears in two groundbreaking Modern Slavery Act 2015 cases before the Court of Appeal Criminal Division.
The Court of Appeal Criminal Division have recently released judgement in two cases examining some of the complexities of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
In R v Finch (Charlotte) [2026] EWCA Crim 477 the Court of Appeal sought to resolve the ambit of the modern slavery defence in the context of child defendants, ruling that the phrase 'menace of penalty' in the context of forced or compulsory labour denoted an element of compulsion that was not required for children to be able to establish the defence.
In R v Moon Swee How & Anor v R [2026] EWCA Crim 476 the Court of Appeal considered the ambit of the Section 2 MSA 'human trafficking' offence of arranging or facilitation the travel of a person with a view to their exploitation and ruled that the offence did not require proof that the “means” identified in Article 4 of The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings had been used.
Consequently, there was no requirement for the prosecution to establish that a person had been trafficked by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. The legal arguments in that case had focussed, in part, on the complexities that arise from different parts of the Modern Slavery Act (particularly the interaction between the S2 offence as against the S45 defence) but the Court of Appeal ruled that the lack of a requirement to prove means was clear from the wording of S2.
Kevin Dent KC appeared for the Crown in these cases (instructed by CPS Special Crime Division London) and the Court of Appeal upheld convictions in both. Kevin Dent KC led Laura Deuxberry of 3 Paper Buildings in the Moon Swee How case.'
Kevin is a highly persuasive advocate with a calm, measured, yet robust courtroom manner. Kevin took silk in 2019, building upon his heavyweight practice in the fields of financial crime and serious crime. Kevin is ranked in the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners.
