Scotland lags behind the rest of the UK in the fight against people trafficking. That is, at least, what a Scottish government report published earlier this month says.

The report’s publication coincided with the coming into force of the European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and detailed a trade that, according to Council of Europe estimates, affects up to 600,000 victims in Europe every year. The trade is run by organised criminal gangs and is worth £22bn globally – second only in value to the drugs trade. Police in England and Wales last year arrested 528 traffickers in one operation alone, many of whom are now serving long custodial sentences.

Yet Scotland has so far failed to bring a single successful prosecution – despite evidence that up to 700 victims of human trafficking are working in the Scottish sex industry and still more in Scottish restaurants, takeaways and other ‘legitimate’ businesses. But then, as the report said, ‘the picture of human trafficking in Scotland is a complex one with numerous gaps’.

The report’s author, Korin Lebov of the Scottish government’s justice analytical services and organised crime unit, blames nobody specifically for the failure to bring prosecutions. He writes instead of a lack of ‘shared understanding’ and of inadequate intelligence and evidence.

Lebov’s report doesn’t mention lawyers at all, but Samuel Condry of the Law Society of Scotland’s law reform department says the Scottish Society is on the case. ‘There are no specific practice guidelines in relation to human trafficking yet, but it is an area of increasing concern and the criminal law committee and immigration and asylum committee may recommend that consideration is given to formulating guidelines.’

Let’s hope for the sake of the 700 mentioned above that those guidelines come into existence sooner rather than later.