The number of people in the United Kingdom who live in conditions similar to slavery is four times the previous estimate or an astounding 13,000 people, according to a new estimate released on Saturday by the British Home Office.

Majority of them are women forced to become prostitutes, work in households as domestic helpers and male employees in farms, factories and fishing vessels. They bulk of them come from the Eastern European nations of Romania, Poland and Albania and from Nigeria in Africa.

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Along with the disclosure of the "shocking" number of abuse victims, Home Secretary Theresa May launched a strategy to stop modern slavery. But she said the first step to eradicating it is to acknowledge and confront its existence.

In 2013, the Human Trafficking Centre of Britain's National Crime Agency estimated the number of people considered slavery victim at 2,744. The Home Office came up with a larger number using a statistical analysis introduced by Professor Bernard Silverman, chief scientific adviser of Home Office.

Silverman acknowledged that the data they generated is "inevitably incomplete" and must be carefully handled due to its sensitive contents.

"Modern slavery is very often deeply hidden and so it is a great challenge to assess its scale," he said, quoting Daily Mail.

May has asked Devon and Cornwall Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer to design a new national action plan for police units across the UK to work together to address the problem.

The report also discovered that besides foreigners, there are some British adults and children who also fall prey to trafficking and slavery groups.

The abuse comes in different forms. Young girls are sexually abused, beaten and passed on from one abuser to another. Men are forced to work long hours and then locked at night in cold sheds or old caravans. Domestic helpers also labor day and night with little or no salary.

Karen Bradley, modern slavery minister, said that 200 years ago, those who campaigned against slavery were driving the message that the practice was wrong.

"What we have to do today is not make people acknowledge it's wrong - everybody knows it's wrong - but we have to find it," BBC quotes Bradley.

The British Parliament has a Modern Slavery Bill under discussion. It would give courts in England and Wales new powers to protect victims of trafficking and those held against their will. Northern Ireland and Scotland plan to pass similar legislation.

Tagsmodern slavery, UK, Theresa May