Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I apologise for interrupting my noble friend but the Minister has made a winding-up speech on this set of amendments. I wonder what relevant points the noble Lord is making at this stage. I think he may be referring to the next group.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness may not be entirely right as the Minister was putting forward the government amendment. As it happens, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke to that amendment before it had formally been put forward. As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is now speaking to the government amendment, and I believe that he is entitled to do so.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I understand that my noble friend was responding to Amendment 4, in which case I apologise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. I have added my name to it. I will be brief as both the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who has just spoken, have made the case clearly and forcefully that the current law must be inadequate as there have been no convictions. I have heard the argument before that there is no issue with the law, but that it is the practice which is the problem, and that is why there have been no convictions. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said, it cannot be that it is just the practice, it must be that the law is deficient in some way, otherwise there would have been convictions against those who commit this horrible crime against children.

The treatment of cases involving children must reflect that in international law children are a special case because of their particular vulnerability and so cannot consent to exploitation. As it stands, Clause 1 of the Bill does not state clearly enough that there is no need to show that force, threats or deception were present in cases of child exploitation. Subsection (3) of the proposed new clause set out in Amendment 5 makes the point that there is a need to include that in the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned the letter written by the Minister to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, on 16 February. It stated:

“Where a person deliberately targets a vulnerable person, such as a child, there is no requirement for any force, threats or deception to be used to induce the child into being exploited”.

This statement perfectly encapsulates what the Bill itself should state so that there are no grey areas and those prosecuting cases are 100% clear what the thresholds of proof are in children’s cases. Government Amendment 4 is welcome, but in my view it does not go far enough towards including that. The Government must formally commit to their intention that force, threats or deception are not required in children’s cases. A failure to improve the current Clause 1 offence leaves the Bill open to interpretation on this key issue, which would be a major disservice to child victims. They must be able to trust in our laws to protect them and ensure their access to justice for the heinous crimes committed against them. I hope that the Minister will be able to comment on that, if not in the Bill, then to state it clearly for the record that that is the Government’s intention.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I am the first person not to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. I have sympathy for the points she has made and I am very relieved by government Amendment 4 which was discussed earlier. However, one important point that the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Patel, have rather overlooked is that the present law will be changed by this Bill. Therefore one hopes that when it becomes law, there will be the prosecutions which have been so lamentably absent under the previous law.

A lot of what has been said turns on issues of training and practice. This morning I met the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, who was at pains to tell me that he sees his job as commissioner to include pushing the College of Policing, pushing the chief constable, Shaun Sawyer, with whom he has been in conversation several times and is seeing again next Monday, and pushing the Crown Prosecution Service towards better practice and better training. He sees all this as some of the most important parts of his work.

I hope that when the Bill becomes law much of what has been said so far today will fall into the background. It is also important to remember that when the joint pre-legislative scrutiny committee, of which I was a member, discussed child exploitation, we rather bravely and rashly put forward our own Part 1 of the Bill. In it, we had a child exploitation clause, but within the wording that we put forward in the clauses that we recommended. The Government did not accept our Part 1 of the Bill and have put in, under Clauses 1 and 2, different propositions. If we now have a child exploitation clause, it will clash with and to some extent repeat what is already in Clause 1. There will therefore be a degree of confusion for the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and even at the end of the day, I suspect, for the judge instructing the jury as to what the position really is. It is very important that when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for whom of course I have the greatest admiration and respect, spoke about the child exploitation clause, he was doing so in the context of giving evidence to the Select Committee at a time when he was looking at our draft as well as at the former government draft, which is not the same as the present one.

Another point, made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is that age dispute issues in the Administrative Court are easy to resolve. They appear, from what I am told, to be a great deal less easy to resolve in the criminal courts. Indeed, Kevin Hyland, the commissioner, said to me that when he was head of the human trafficking group in the Metropolitan Police, he was present at a trial when an issue was raised of whether the child was or was not a child under 18. It took up so much of the time, and the jury clearly was not satisfied whether the child was or was not a child and acquitted. There is no shortage of young women coming into this country who are attractive and mature; they may well be 14, or they could be 19 or 25. We are not talking perhaps so much about English children brought up in this country, but children from Nigeria.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for giving way. Does she not recognise, first, that exactly the kinds of dispute she is describing now are litigated on a daily basis in the Administrative Court and, secondly, that good case management, which is part of the Leveson reforms and recommendations, can make the preparation of these issues and their determination very much easier and as routine as analogous issues?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I certainly hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is right about that. However, with the government position under Clauses 1 and 2, including with Amendment 4, you do not have to prove that the young person is 16, 17 or 18 in order to get a conviction. You will have an aggravated situation if you show that it is in fact a child, say of 14 or 15, and not a young woman of 20, and the judge’s sentence will no doubt be greater. However, the issue of age will not arise for the jury to try because, under Clause 1, you do not have to have an age—anybody who is treated in the way that Clause 1 describes can be found to be a victim. This seems to me to be something introduced by the Bill which has not come in before and which will, I certainly hope, make a very dramatic difference to the way in which prosecutions are dealt with.

Another point that Kevin Hyland made, which I think is of some interest, is about control and prevention orders, on which we have spent virtually no time at all in this House. He told me about a group of Roma—not all of whom are Romanian; some are from other parts of Europe—who apparently are camping at the moment in either Park Lane or Hyde Park. They are begging, and the children are no doubt thieving, in Edgware Road and Oxford Street. He says that when the control and prevention orders come into place, if you can find that these children are doing this, a control or prevention order can be made against the adult—many of whom, of course, are not the parents of these children—and that can last for up to five years and will protect the children, who can also be taken into care. He also made the point that this could be done at the border by the border police, who can get a magistrate’s order in order to protect these children well before you have to come to a prosecution because the children are being exploited. I thought that these were quite interesting points to relay to the House.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I am somewhat bemused about where we are in this debate. My view has always been quite clear: we already have enough legislation. I think that some of these cases are already appearing before the courts under general children’s legislation.

As I understand it, CAFCASS has recently been involved in a situation where a child was begging. We have to remember that very often the people who are exploiting children are the children’s own parents or relatives. This child was being exploited and selling the Big Issue 12 hours a day on the streets. She was exploited by her father, who went to prison. That seems to be just the sort of case we are talking about, but prosecuted under quite different legislation—the children’s legislation concerning neglect. Maybe that is where we should also look. We should see where else action is being taken.

I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, very carefully. I do not agree with her amendment but I am very much in sympathy with what she was saying in her speech. She identified some very important issues. One issue that perhaps we have missed throughout this debate is the one found in proposed new subsection (6) of the amendment, about vulnerable children who find themselves in difficulties because they do not understand what they are being expected to do, and even if they do, they have been so groomed or so frightened that they carry out whatever action is undertaken quite unconsciously; and even if it is consciously, they are in difficulties. We need to look at that and make absolutely sure that we are not going to be prosecuting children and young people when they are in those sorts of difficulties.

However, I am still of the belief that if we look at all the horrific incidents in the newspapers that have happened to children and young people recently—never mind all the ones that we in the profession know about: the thousands of children on child protection registers and the hundreds of cases that go through the courts every day—we know that there is legislation that could have protected those children. There is no doubt that the girls of Rotherham could have been protected by the legislation that is there. That is what the inquiry found: they could have been protected. So I disagree with my noble friend—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, having listened to all the various learned speeches on the matter, I should like to tackle the matter from a slightly different angle. Although it is very hard to find a different angle at this stage of this short debate. What harm would be done if the new clause were included in the Bill? The Government have already moved forward with Amendment 4 but, as other noble Lords have asked: is that enough? The telling point has been made that it would clash with and be repetitive of other legislation. Are we saying that there is no legislation in this land which does not clash and is not repetitive? We have that all the time; perhaps we should not.

However, the question we must ask here is, I hope, this. If the amendment under consideration, as proposed by my noble friend Lady Doocey and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and others, was passed by this House or taken into account by the Minister after this debate, would there be a possibility of even one child not being exploited where previously that child or children may have been? I think that the numbers will be great but even if it was one child not being exploited, surely it would be worth while having this specific provision in the Bill. It would mean that it would be clarified and made more important for those who enforce the law. I hope that when my noble friend the Minister replies, he will say that the Government—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Perhaps I might ask the noble Lord about the other point that I made on confusion. What does he have to say about confusion?

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness very much. We are talking about semantics and about circumstances, confusion and all the other words in the English dictionary. I would in fact be cheerful if there were some confusion, if it saved one child from being exploited. At the moment, I can see that there may be some modest confusion but I do not see that that weighs in any way with having specific legislation to protect the child. Are we saying that for fear of being confused, or of clashing or being repetitive, we desire to be in the middle, which I call sitting on the fence with the nails sticking in you where they should not? That is not enough; what we want is the best protection for the child.

I have not heard any Member of your Lordships’ House, on any side on this debate, say that they are not against the exploitation of children. I think we are all of a mind on that but what is not in agreement is whether this amendment is needed. I am not a lawyer and I shall not nitpick about confusion or circumstance, or any other such word in the dictionary. But having listened to the debate, to my mind we need a strengthening of Clause 4. I believe that this amendment would do that and that it is worth any confusion—any sitting on the fence, any clash or repetition—if it saves the exploitation of even one child.