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Fiona Mactaggart
Indeed. Unfortunately, that is one of the risks of a strict liability offence; it tends to have a lower penalty. It would have been good had there been something tougher, but what I am hearing from the police is, “Oh whoops, we can’t prosecute because we have to prove both that she is under duress and also that he has offered to pay her.” The police keep telling me that they cannot do two things at once, which is a bit sad really. What they need is someone to drive them to do it. The only person who will do that is the Minister who will reply to this debate. I am expecting him to do that, and I hope that the figures that we see over the next couple of years will be an improvement on the 43 prosecutions that we know of already.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
On that specific point about the priority that police forces should attach to prosecuting the offence, it is not I who should drive that. The right person to do that and for MPs to raise this with is the police and crime commissioner. The police and crime commissioners will be setting out the policing plan for their particular areas and they will need to tell the chief constable that this matter is important and is something that they should be making a priority. Then they should make it clear that the resources are available.
Fiona Mactaggart
The Minister is right from a month ago, but up until a month ago—for the whole of 2011 and for most of 2012—it was he and his predecessor who were responsible. In 2011 and 2012, I expect to see a pathetic number of prosecutions, because the number in 2010 was pathetic. I have already spoken about the matter to the police and crime commissioner in Thames Valley whose main concern seems to be with wildlife crime—I will not go down that route right now. That is what happens when a person does not prepare a speech and has just got out of their flu bed.
This is a very serious issue for the Government, and it is not sufficient to say that the police and crime commissioners must let the flowers bloom. Human trafficking is an international crime that needs national effort to solve. There will be parts of the country that say, “It does not happen here,” and the Minister knows that they are wrong. I remember the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) telling the all-party parliamentary group that that had been his experience after the discovery of the horrible events in his constituency. He described how shocked people were to discover that in a very pleasant part of the country, such exploitation could occur. This matter needs national Government leadership. It is spin to claim, as the report does, that action, which I am proud to have been an author of, is going to do much more than it has done so far.
The second claim of spin is in paragraph 7.29, which states:
“Whilst traffickers’ attempts to move victims”—
of domestic servitude—
“to the UK illegally are likely to continue, the changes to the route of entry for overseas domestic workers coming to the UK to work in the private household of their employer means that”—
wait for it—
“fewer will be eligible to come to the UK and as a result the risk of abusive relationships developing in this visa category should reduce further.”
Well, that is nonsense. Every single study of this matter, of which, I think, there have been three by the Home Affairs Committee, has concluded unanimously—many of the parties involved had believed that kind of nonsense to start with—that the overseas domestic workers’ visa was one of the best protections against human trafficking. In the report “Service not Servitude”, which I wrote last year to mark international slavery day, there is compelling evidence to show that the introduction of the overseas domestic workers’ visa reduced exploitation. It did not end it—I am not claiming that—but it reduced the levels of abuse and exploitation experienced by migrant domestic workers. If we compare the level of reported abuse in 1996 with that in 2010, we will see that the number of migrant workers who were expected to work 17 hours a day or more was halved. The visa cut significantly the proportion of such workers who were denied time off and who had faced psychological abuse. It more than halved physical abuse and it reduced sexual abuse by a quarter. Those are just one set of figures showing the impact that the visa has had on migrant workers.
This Government are not alone in thinking that abolishing the visa might be one way of controlling immigration and that it actually might be a sensible thing to do. Previous Labour Governments thought so too, and started consultations on doing it. I was part of the campaigns that prevented them from doing so because we were able to produce compelling evidence that showed the extent to which trafficking for domestic servitude increases. I am shocked and sad that the report, which is supposed to be the report of a rapporteur, is actually promoting spin about Government policy. Every single independent analysis of the overseas domestic workers’ visa makes it quite clear that it was one of the best protections for overseas domestic workers against domestic servitude.
Consequently, I am depressed about this debate, not only because it has got me out of my sick bed but because we are better than this, we care more than this, we can do more than this and we do not want to be “spinners”. We believe that we can be transparent, frank and honest about our successes and failures in dealing with this appalling crime. However, as can be seen from just the two examples I have given, the report falls down on those requirements. I do not believe that the Government want to fall down on this issue; I do not believe that. I am not saying that the intentions of the Government are malign—they are not.
Nevertheless, there is an ineffectiveness to this kind of report. It attempts to big up things that are good, for example joint investigation teams. However, when we look under the surface of those things, difficulties arise. When I talked to Steve Gravett, it looked like joint investigation teams had a short future.
Is it not time for us to be big enough to be completely open about the effectiveness of what we are doing on international trafficking? What we are doing is not as good as we want it to be; it is not good enough, but it is better than what we did before. That is fine, but it is not fine for the Government to produce something that is too much in the way of spin. That is sad and I expected more of this Government, and of any British Government.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Thank you very much, Mr Robertson, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on lobbying the Backbench Business Committee for this debate, and it is good to see Members from all parts of the House debating this really serious and important issue.
I will focus on one aspect of human trafficking that I became aware of in my constituency back in September 2011, and I will go on to show that, sadly, it was not an isolated case, because something along similar lines was reported in the press the next week. I will end by suggesting a number of ways that all of us—MPs, police officers, local councils and above all the public—can come together to play a combined part in trying to eradicate human trafficking from our country.
The first thing that I will say in that regard is that human trafficking is not just about people being trafficked from Asia or eastern Europe into this country. That is, of course, a very big part of human trafficking, and it is appalling. Human trafficking is, at one and the same time, both a global scourge and capable of being so intensely local that it can be happening right under our noses.
When more than 200 police raided a Traveller site just outside Leighton Buzzard in my constituency in September 2011, they rescued 22 victims. Among them, there were Romanians, Poles and people from other eastern European countries, but the vast majority were British citizens who had been trafficked from all around the country to come to work as slave labourers in Bedfordshire, so I want to set a marker at this stage of the debate to say that when we are talking about trafficking, yes, we are talking about people from Romania, Ukraine, Thailand and Nigeria, but also about people from Wembley, Southampton, Leeds and Birmingham, who are taken against their will and forced to work in other parts of our country. I just want to be clear that that is recognised, that it is part of this debate, and that it is as much human trafficking as is the international dimension.
Going back to September 2011, after a considerable period of surveillance, Bedfordshire police and Hertfordshire police got together more than 200 police officers to go on to the Greenacres Traveller site outside Leighton Buzzard early one Sunday morning. They rescued 22 victims of slavery or human trafficking. Some of them had been on that site for 15 to 20 years—a very, very long time.
I am pleased to say that there has been a trial, and that James Connors is now in prison for 11 years, Josie Connors is in prison for four years, and Tommy and Patrick Connors were convicted of holding and forcing men to work, so the justice system has worked, but I want to put on the record what life was like for the victims of human trafficking on that site during that period, and I think Members will be quite shocked when they hear some of the things that went on.
The people who were forced to work were often given next to no food. They were forced to wash in cold water. They often worked 19-hour days, and at the end of those days they were forced to come back and immaculately clean the caravans of the slave-owners for whom they were working.
They were also physically abused. When the police arrived at the site, they found that many of the victims had injuries. The victims had often been punched, kicked or hit with broom handles. The men were told that if they used the toilets and washing facilities in the caravans of the Connors family they would have their legs and arms broken. They were forced either to use a bucket or to go outside into the woods. One of the victims was forced into the boot of a family car and forced to sing children’s songs.
The people exploiting these men made millions of pounds by forcing these vulnerable people to work without pay, in some cases for nearly two decades. When the police turned up on that morning in September 2011, some of the victims had broken bones, scars and fresh wounds from abuse that they had recently suffered.
It is fair to say that most of the victims on that site had fallen on hard times of one sort or another. They had been found by members of the Connors family in night shelters, soup kitchens and jobcentres. They included a wide variety of individuals. One was a Gulf war veteran who had served this country with distinction; another was a former priest. Many others were just at difficult stages in their lives.
When the men arrived at the site, their heads were shaved, and their possessions and papers were taken from them, which is very reminiscent of what happened in the concentration camps. They were generally unable to shower, except on a Friday night, and there was a reason for that; it was because on Saturdays they were forced to go and knock on doors, to try to drum up more work for the block paving business that was the main business of the Connors family at the time.
The press reported the trial, which took place in Luton Crown court earlier this year, as
“the first quasi-slavery trial in this country for over 200 years.”
Many of the victims said that, rather than the Connors family hiring machinery, the victims had been used to carry out very heavy manual work. One man who had been promised £80 a day told the police that in the 15 years that he had worked for the Connors family he received a total of £80. Another victim described life on the site as “beatings, starvation and work.”
That was in my constituency. We have had the trial; actually, there will be a retrial, because the police want to press further charges. Nevertheless, we have had some convictions. I pay tribute to those MPs who, in the last Parliament, ensured that the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 was passed. I am thinking particularly of section 71, headed “Slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour”, because that section enabled Bedfordshire police to bring those successful prosecutions. That shows that what we do in this House can have an effect and does work.
I had thought that this incident in my constituency was perhaps an isolated, though particularly horrid, one; it is one that, as the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, I have often recounted to members of the all-party group on human trafficking. However, only last week I saw on the BBC website that in Gloucestershire, the county from which the Minister comes, there had been another trial, and five other people also called Connors—I do not know if they are related to the other Connors—had been found guilty of keeping their own private work force and of treating their victims in a similar manner.
On the site in Gloucestershire, some of the victims were from Leeds, and one had been picked up at the YMCA hostel in Birmingham. The victims had been forced to work in Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and had been trafficked to eastern Europe and Russia to work; the same happened in the case in Bedfordshire. This is a case of British citizens being trafficked to work in eastern Europe and Russia, as well as in different parts of this country. It is not just a trade into this country; British citizens are being trafficked to work outside this country, and are desperately exploited.
Mr Harper
I want to put on record that the case in Gloucestershire—I am pleased to say that the family members were found guilty last week and were sentenced to time in prison yesterday—required a year-long police operation, including a long five-month surveillance period by Gloucestershire constabulary. Picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), I am pleased that Gloucestershire constabulary takes such cases very seriously and is willing to put significant effort into them. That, and the example given by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), should be a lesson to all police forces about taking such cases seriously across the country.
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for making that point. The case required considerable resources from Bedfordshire police, which is a fairly small force. It, too, had to do months and months of surveillance, as well as all the work after the raid. Assembling all the information needed for the trial made a considerable demand on its resources. Now that convictions have been made, I hope that at least some of the ill-gotten proceeds of the Connors family in Bedfordshire will be used to recoup the costs incurred by Bedfordshire police in manning the operation. I hope that the same can happen in Gloucestershire.
Going back to what happened in Gloucestershire, some of the victims had been working on Traveller sites in Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire—and also outside the United Kingdom—for nearly two decades. Physical violence was a regular part of what they endured. They were beaten, hit with broom handles, belts, a rake, and a shovel, and were punched and kicked. They were stripped and hosed down with cold water. They were given so little food that in many cases they had to scavenge from dustbins. The people they were working for—it was the same in Bedfordshire—had luxury caravans and top-of-the-range kitchens. They enjoyed expensive foreign holidays and drove a Mercedes and even a Rolls-Royce.
Similar levels of work were required. Again, the work was in the block paving business or laying manholes. The victims were often required to work six days a week, sometimes seven, from dawn until dusk. One of them said that slaps were a way of life. One of the victims ran away from the Gloucestershire site back to Leeds, where he was from, but Miles Connors went to Leeds that day to bring him back, which shows the level of fear and intimidation. I make no apology for putting graphically on the record the events in these two cases.
I want to focus on what all of us can do to try to bring such cases to an end. We all have a role, particularly the customers of the Connors in both Bedfordshire and Gloucestershire who actually bought block paving from them and had their drives block-paved. It is not simply up to the police, the local council and Members of Parliament to spot these things. Yes, we all absolutely have a role, but the police can fully do their job only if the public are their eyes and ears. If someone is having their drive re-laid and the people re-laying it look as though they have not had a square meal in ages, and look fearful, frightened and emaciated, that person has a duty to contact the police to alert them to their concerns. It is much better to make that call and find that nothing is wrong than to stay silent and allow victims to go on being intimidated year after year. It is not just Traveller sites; whether we are in shops or restaurants, or visiting factories, we all have a duty, and we all need to see what can be done.
I pay tribute to Councillor Kristy Adams from the Newnham ward of Bedford borough council. She shares our concern and passion on this issue. She has done something that I have been trying to do for a long time, which is to provide a checklist of signs to look for to try to spot victims of human trafficking. She has produced a little bookmark with a list of signs and information on what to do if someone has suspicions. I will read out what it says, if I may, so that it is on the record, because it is so helpful. At the top of the bookmark, it says:
“Is the person you are with a victim of Human Trafficking?”
It has a number of pointers:
“Doesn't know home/work address? Expression of fear, distrust, anxiety? As an individual or group, movements are restricted by others? Limited contact with family and/or friends? Money deducted from salary for food and/or accommodation? Passport/documents held by someone else? Recognise any of the above? Please call 101 or Crimestoppers 0800 555 111.”
Councillor Kristy Adams is going to make sure that the bookmarks are with the police, local authorities, and as many people as possible in Bedfordshire who can take action. She wants to provide the bookmarks to raise public and front-line workers’ awareness of human trafficking. She wants to provide training on how to identify a trafficked individual and who to contact, and she wants to set up a human trafficking working group in Bedfordshire to deal with these issues. That is a fantastic initiative from a local councillor.
We all have a role—Members of Parliament, local councillors, local authorities, the police and members of the public. Here is a great initiative from Bedfordshire, and I commend it to colleagues. I am sure that together we can take further action.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and the chairmanship of Mr Robertson, who preceded you. I thank, as most hon. Members have, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) for securing the debate. I knew that he planned on doing so and it is timely that it arrived today—the last day the House sits before Christmas. This has been a good debate, with contributions from Members who are well informed about the subject and know their stuff—I think that is the general view. I have certainly picked up on points that were made, but I suspect that I will not be able to cover them in the 22 minutes I have left. The debate has provided me with food for thought on the steps the Government will take.
Echoing my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), I want to put on record my thanks to Anthony Steen for his work with the foundation he chairs. I found him to be an excellent colleague when he was in the House and very focused on human trafficking. He and I spoke about it occasionally, though it was not within my area of responsibility. When he left the House, he told me that he would continue to focus on it and promised that he would be back here regularly to highlight the issue. He has kept that promise. I add my tributes to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough.
My hon. Friend reminded us that he welcomed the Government opting in to an EU directive. I suspect that it is the first and probably the last time he will ever utter those words, but I will treasure them.
Mr Harper
Indeed, I will frame them.
Rather than going through the remarks in the order I had planned, I shall do so in the order my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough raised them. I will deal with his remarks first, because he, with others, picked up the debate and got it going. I take his point, which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) repeated, about the group’s title. By repeating it, he raised a point that had occurred to me: the Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Human Trafficking is not the catchiest of titles. I will go away and reflect on that. Having been in government, he knows that Governments do not come up with catchy ways to describe things.
The right hon. Gentleman might have a good point, but that should not detract from the fact that the group includes not only Ministers from across Government, but members from all the UK’s Governments—the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. We have not been reflected on that, but it is important partly because it addresses the points made about independence. If the UK Government wanted to sweep things under the carpet, there are members from three other Governments, who are not of the same political party, who would not let us.
When I was given the job and told that I was chairing the group, I thought about the arguments for an independent rapporteur and the effectiveness of a group of Ministers. A ministerial group is also effective in ensuring that action is taken, which was my prime reason for being in favour of it. If we want to get things done, whether requiring legislation or otherwise, it is important to have Ministers from across Government working with our colleagues in the other parts of the UK, particularly on an issue that several Members described as one that the Prime Minister takes seriously. If we cannot make things happen, no one in Government can.
I did not understand the criticism from several people about the group not being able to get information from within Government. We are all Ministers in the Government, and if we want to get information from Departments we do not need a statutory basis to do so because we are able to get it. Having thought about it, I genuinely believe that having a group of Ministers is effective in delivering change and making things happen in practice. This is the group’s first annual report, and I accept that it is not perfect. We can do many things to improve it, some of which I will set out.
Mr Frank Field
None of us argued for one strategy or the other; we argued for both—the ministerial group backed up by the rapporteur.
Mr Harper
I accept that, but I felt slightly beaten up about the question whether the interdepartmental ministerial group was effective. I was also worried by the almost unanimously positive comments from Opposition Members about me and my future career—it is never good when Opposition Members over-praise Ministers; I always think that does us great harm—but I will take them in the spirit in which I am sure they were intended.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead raised the question of data and of really understanding this issue, which is something I have raised internally. The cases referred through the national referral mechanism are only the tip of the iceberg. Globally, reports suggest that many millions of people are affected in the trade. One task that I have given my officials is to crunch those numbers and to understand the true picture, including how that plays out across the country.
As some Members have said—my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made the point powerfully—and as the NGOs that I have met have echoed, the problem is not just in inner cities or parts of the country where people think this sort of thing goes on. On anti-slavery day, I met several people from what some might call leafy parts of the country, such as Surrey, who had seen this activity happening. They felt that, as my hon. Friend said, it is important to get people to think about the issue, to understand that it might be going on in their street or round the corner, and to be alert to what they should look for.
On data and understanding the problem, it is important to get the public to understand that there is an issue—picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty): telling a constituent why it matters to them, and making them understand that—and to focus on it. That, in turn, picks up the point made by the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) about pressures on police forces and constabularies. People must understand that this is a big problem and that there are interconnections, in that people involved in trafficking are also involved in wider organised crime. This big economic problem generates lots of money that is then used for other criminal activities. It is not a small problem located in one place; it is very wide and police forces ought to take it seriously.
I will not go through this issue at length, but it is worth saying on police and crime commissioners—I take the point made by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that they have been in existence for not quite a month—that the Government are making sure they are aware of their national responsibilities as well as their purely local ones. In other words, they must be aware of the types of crime with a national or international dimension that will impact on them, so that, in setting priorities, they understand that their police forces must think about such matters.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough mentioned the National Crime Agency. It will have within it the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the Human Trafficking Centre and the Border Policing Command. It will be a repository of good intelligence gathering and an analysis operation. It will have its own operational police and law enforcement officers but, as my hon. Friend said, it will also have the ability, if necessary, to task police forces for particular operations. Clearly, it will be much better if it engages such police forces by debating and explaining the issue and getting them on board voluntarily, but it also has a tasking power that may ultimately be important, certainly in getting people to pay attention, as my hon. Friend rightly said.
My hon. Friend and other Members raised the issue of the protection of children, which the Government take very seriously. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke about training in the UK Border Force and the UK Border Agency. On meeting front-line Border Force officers who are at the primary checkpoints as people come into the country, and the staff of the UKBA, I have been struck by how aware they are of the child protection issue and the need to be alert to it, of all the signs of children travelling with people who are not their parents, and of what we need to put in place to protect those children. I am not saying we are perfect—we can always do better—but I have been pleasantly surprised by that. Before doing this job, I was not really aware of how much training and expertise is available at the border for those officers as people enter the country. As I have said, I am sure we can do more, but we are very focused on that area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough also raised the issue of how we look after adult victims of trafficking. We have the contract with the Salvation Army to look after adult victims because there was no existing process for looking after them. There is an established mechanism for child protection that, as my hon. Friend said, is delivered through local government. I absolutely heard what he said about its effectiveness. There have recently been several cases in which—if we are in any doubt—we can see that trafficked children are not always well looked after by local government. I listened carefully to the examples he gave of projects that are under way to find a better approach. I do not want to prejudge their outcomes, but I assure him that I and other members of the ministerial group will consider those results closely to see whether there is a better way. He specifically referred to the Barnado’s pilot project for safe homes for children, and that and various other pilots will provide us with evidence about what works best, and we will be guided by what the evidence shows is effective.
Another thing worth saying is that the failures there have been will drive change in how we deliver care for children generally. Not only have trafficked children not been as well protected in the care sector as they might have been, but many UK-based children who have not been trafficked end up not being well looked after. We will need to see what various reports suggest the Government should do instead before we respond. The protection of children is one of the most important things—my hon. Friend said it was the single most important thing—and that feeling was generally shared by the Members who have spoken.
My hon. Friend also flagged up that the report did not specifically mention the all-party group on human trafficking or the Human Trafficking Foundation. I assure him that, if so, that very much falls into the cock-up and not the conspiracy camp. There was certainly no deliberate intention not to mention them, and he was right to put on the record what he said about the Human Trafficking Foundation, which I have already echoed. He was too modest to mention, although others did, the excellent work of the all-party parliamentary group—that is not a catchy description either. It is important and helpful to get together people from across Parliament not only to take evidence, but to visit other countries and see what goes on. In a previous debate, my hon. Friend invited me to attend a meeting of the all-party group and if he wishes me to do so at an appropriate time, I would be delighted to attend, both to listen and to talk.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk mentioned child guardians, which we have not introduced because there are existing mechanisms. However, I have signed off funding for the Refugee Council and the Children’s Society, which he mentioned, to undertake a joint independent scoping review of the practical care arrangements for trafficked children in care. That will look at the experience of trafficked children and practitioners to find examples of how people have been treated in the care system, and will report by the end of spring 2013. When we commissioned the report, we wanted something that told us about the experience of real children who have been through the system rather than a piece of desk research. We will look very carefully at the evidence to see whether it leads us to change policy in this area.
There are trafficked victims who end up undertaking criminal activity. We want to protect them and ensure that they are not turned into criminals. Let me be clear: if the circumstances of the arrest, or the evidence referred to by a prosecutor, suggest that someone may have been trafficked, the guidance is clear, as was I think acknowledged. In such a case, prosecutors should obtain further information, and work with the police to get more evidence. Where there is evidence that a suspect has been under duress, the prosecutor should not proceed. That is clear in theory, but I understand the concerns of Members about the extent to which that theoretical plan is carried through in practice.
Mr Harper
Yes, I will. My hon. Friend the Solicitor-General, who sits on the interdepartmental ministerial group, is obviously responsible for prosecution policy. If my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough gives me some specific examples of that policy perhaps having not been followed, of course I will look at them and, where appropriate, discuss them with the Solicitor-General to see whether we need to take further steps.
Fiona Mactaggart
About six months ago, I spoke at a meeting of the Thames Valley criminal justice association at which a number of defence barristers were present. They said that their universal experience was that young Vietnamese gardeners in cannabis factories were always prosecuted.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady gives me a link into my next point, about children who are being ruthlessly abused to run cannabis farms. Again, the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers is clear. It says that we should look at the circumstances and be alert to the fact that the children may well have been trafficked. If that is the case, there should be a child welfare response rather than a criminal justice response. I absolutely hear what the hon. Lady says about whether that is actually happening in practice. I will speak to my hon. Friend the Solicitor-General to see what data there are about the position on the ground—I know we have gathered some from Crown prosecutors—to see whether we can be better informed. She is quite right: if people have been trafficked and are under duress, we should treat them not as criminals but as victims. That is what we intend to do and what the guidance says, but I accept that what is supposed to happen in theory does not always happen in practice.
The hon. Lady made a number of points. I am pleased that she is here, and I wish her a speedy and full recovery from the flu. I would not have known that she was ill apart from the odd cough. Her illness did not seem to detract from her performance. If that is how she performs when she is suffering from flu, woe betide me in the next debate when she is not.
Let me disabuse the hon. Lady of her main point. We absolutely did not try to bury this report. We chose to launch it to coincide with anti-slavery day. We did our very best to make people pay attention to it. We had some success on social media. We worked with NGOs to promote it and we did a very good piece on the BBC, which took this matter very seriously and covered it extensively on its news bulletins to raise awareness. I am pleased to talk about the report at every opportunity, and I do not think that we buried it at all.
I thought that the hon. Lady was a little unfair about the report, and, by the way, if she could only find two examples of what she called spin—I do not think that they were spin—she cannot say that this whole exercise is about saying that the Government are doing a great job. Genuinely, I looked at her two examples, and did not think that spin was a fair characterisation of the report or the way it outlines what the Government are doing. I am sorry she thinks that, because that is not in the spirit of the way in which we have engaged in this report. The report was an attempt to give a fair picture of some of the data that show what the Government are doing to develop a human trafficking strategy. I rebut what she says and feel just a bit disappointed.
Fiona Mactaggart
In what way does the Minister believe that the abolition of the domestic worker visa makes it less likely that people will be trafficked into domestic servitude?
Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)
May I remind you, Mr Harper, that we must leave three minutes for Mr Bone?
Mr Harper
Absolutely. Let me just deal with that issue. We have made changes to reduce the numbers of overseas domestic workers who are eligible to come here and to protect them, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation. We can have a debate about it, but it is not fair to say that it is spin. The changes include insisting that domestic workers work for an employer for longer. We have ensured that they have to provide more evidence of that relationship, that they have proper written terms and conditions, that they know their rights and that they are given information in their local language, setting out the position when they apply for their visa. We want them to be properly alert to the position in the United Kingdom. Her specific point was about whether we had given them information produced by Stop the Traffik. I am not sure whether that is the particular document we give them, so I will go away and consider that matter. I think it was the “travel safe” resource that she talked about. If that is good information, I will look into supplying it to the workers as well.
Mr Harper
Let me conclude, then.
I am sorry I have not managed to cover all the points raised in this detailed debate. I agree with what everyone said about slavery being one of the great man-made evils, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead described it. The Government are determined to do what we can to combat it. I am grateful to the Members who have spoken today. This will not be the last debate on this subject, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough for securing it and look forward to his summation.