Judge rules that back-to-work scheme is not 'slavery'

Mr Justice Foskett, sitting at the High Court in London today, said that "characterising such a scheme as involving or being analogous to 'slavery' or 'forced labour' seems to me to be a long way from contemporary thinking".

He said that both of the claimants were entitled to a declaration that there had been breaches of the 2011 jobseeker's allowance regulations in their cases.

But he ruled that the mistakes did not invalidate the 2011 jobseeker's allowance regulations, nor did they breach human rights laws banning slavery.