No human being has the right to buy and sell another. That is a basic tenet of a civilised society and yet every day we hear horrendous new stories of the abuse of this simple right.

The trafficking of girls and young women from Eastern to Western Europe for exploitation in the sex industry has been the subject of a huge amount of international effort to stop it for decades now.

The scale of it is unclear – and the efforts to beat it must be redoubled – but it is unlikely to match the scale of a less nasty but equally heinous side to the human trafficking industry, that of the sale and movement of people for forced labour: in one word, slavery.

The scale of the problem is huge – believed to involve 21 million victims and to be worth £20 billion a year to the criminals behind it – so it is no surprise that it is a growing problem.

It is these facts that have prompted the crime-fighting charity Crimestoppers to launch a new campaign to fight it by urging people to pass on any information they have which they suspect might identify an instance of forced labour exploitation.

It is nearer to home than many of us might think: only a few weeks ago a Bradford man and four other members of the same family were jailed after they were found to have lived a luxurious lifestyle on the back of forcing vulnerable men to work for them for a pittance.

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation or forced labour, often by tricking defenceless people with the promise of a new life, is an evil that must be stopped.

Anything that you can do – even just by making an anonymous phone call to Crimestoppers if you suspect something – will be an important step in stamping it out. If you know something, or think you do, please don’t hesitate.