Queen’s Speech
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I want to begin by talking about the implementation of regulations sanctioned by the Modern Slavery Act. I look forward to the conclusion and evaluation of the child trafficking advocate trials and hope that the resolution from the Secretary of State, and regulations to roll out that scheme across the whole of England and Wales, will follow shortly thereafter. I am sure that the Minister would expect nothing less, but I reassure him that I and many other noble Lords will look in detail at the expected regulations to ensure that the independent child trafficking advocates have all the necessary authority, functions and training to meet the needs of those extremely vulnerable children and be in accordance with international best practice guidance.
I also look forward to the completion of the pilots of the revised national referral mechanism. As I stated during our debates on the then Modern Slavery Bill, I am concerned at the vagueness of references to identifying and supporting victims in that legislation and hope that it can swiftly be remedied with the introduction of regulations and publication of statutory guidance. As I made clear during the debate, I believe that the provision of regulations, and therein a statutory basis for this support which has been provided in Northern Ireland and will soon be in place in Scotland, is most significant. I encourage the Government to use powers in the Modern Slavery Act to introduce regulations on this matter as a priority. I understand that the Government wish to take account of the pilot projects in moving forward in this area but I hope there will not be a lengthy delay. Perhaps the Minister can provide further details on the timetable for completion of the pilots and when we might expect to see draft guidance or regulations regarding identifying and supporting victims.
For my second subject, it will not surprise your Lordships to learn that I want to turn to the important issue of online safety. I welcome and applaud the fact that the Government have negotiated a voluntary approach to default-on adult content filters with the four big internet service providers. This constitutes an important step forward, and I pay tribute particularly to the work of the Prime Minister, whose personal leadership on this issue has been, and continues to be, of great importance. There is, however, a great deal more to be done to make sure that the default-on filtering framework works properly.
As I explained during a debate last November, there are two significant problems, in that the voluntary approach to default-on covers only 90% of the market, leaving thousands of children beyond its protection. Nor, crucially, does it age-verify those seeking to lift the filters before allowing them to opt in to access adult content.
In raising this subject today, I want to look at age verification in relation to specific websites rather than filters, and I welcome the Conservative general election manifesto commitment in this regard. Rather than making an age-verification commitment in relation to filtering, page 37 of the manifesto made a commitment to require websites providing pornographic material to put in place robust age-verification procedures in order to protect children from accidentally or deliberately accessing these pages This commitment provides a direct parallel to the commitment to website age verification mandated by the Gambling Act 2005. Since that Act required online gambling sites to provide robust age verification before permitting people to gamble online, the children’s charities have not been made aware of any children with online problem gambling difficulties.
At a time when we are presented with increasing evidence of children and young people developing pornography addiction, and when it has become apparent in court that a number of boys charged with sexually assaulting young girls had been acting out hardcore pornography which they had accessed from computers in their bedrooms, the Conservative commitment is very timely. We already have legislation requiring that sites based in the UK that specifically live-stream R18 video- on-demand material have robust age verification. This was introduced courtesy of the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2010 and 2014, which implemented the audiovisual media services directive 2007. Happily, the 2015 manifesto commitment is more wide-ranging, applying to pornography generally rather than just to R18 video-on-demand material. That is very welcome indeed.
However, the experience of the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations prompts important implementation questions for the Government. The amount of hardcore video on demand that comes from websites based abroad is huge. Experian Hitwise statistics for UK visits to just six “tube” sites are staggering. PornHub gets 66 million monthly UK hits; xHamster, 63 million; XNXX, 29 million; RedTube, 28 million; Xvideos, 28 million; and YouPorn, 26 million. That is a total of 240 million hits from the UK in a single month to adult sites without any form of onsite child protection. Given the scale of the hardcore pornography problem in the UK that comes from beyond the UK, it is very clear that we will not find a credible means of protecting children unless we find a way of regulating porn from foreign as well as UK sites.
Two points follow from this. First, given that some of these sites are based in EU jurisdictions that are also subject to the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2007, have the Government considered whether the Commission is adequately assessing the implementation of the directive in other jurisdictions? We need an answer to that important question Secondly, and more importantly, however, it is vital to recognise that, given that some of these sites are definitely based beyond the EU, pressing for proper implementation of EU legislation does not provide us with a real solution to the problem.
What, then, is the solution? We will have to wait to debate my new online safety Bill on another occasion, but it does propose an answer to the all-important question of how to regulate sites based outside the UK projecting pornography into this country. It draws on the model for regulating online gambling sites that are based beyond the UK which the Government have developed through their Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act. I ask the Minister: through which legislation do the Government plan to introduce their welcome age-verification manifesto commitment; and, crucially, given the scale of the problem, how will they apply this commitment to sites beyond the UK that are accessed in the UK? In this respect, I hope the Government will find the model in my Bill useful.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I should like to add a few words in support of Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, who has made a convincing case today and on previous occasions for why measures about support and assistance, in accordance with our obligations under international treaties, should be put into statute. I agree with the noble Lord that it would give confidence to victims, improve access to support and establish a consistent quality of care for victims, wherever they might be or whatever their personal circumstances. I am particularly concerned that continuing with a policy-based approach will perpetuate the scope for failures in support provision identified by the NRM review, but highlighted by many NGOs and the Council of Europe GRETA report a long time before the NRM review took place.
Flexibility to respond to changing circumstances is important, but it must not come at the cost of meeting our international obligations and ensuring that all victims receive the support they are entitled to and at a proper standard. I welcome the inclusion of Clause 50 in the Bill and very much hope that, before too long, we will see the introduction of regulations that Clause 50 enables. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, has said, during Report I was one of those who asked the Minister whether he would consider incorporating something into the regulations under Clause 50. Specifically, I asked if he might look at adding,
“key elements ensuring consistency in standards of care”.—[Official Report, 25/2/15; col. 1681.]
Amendment 2 would provide the necessary direction to ensure that the regulations promote that consistency. I am particularly interested to hear from the Minister why he does not believe it valuable to add such elements to Clause 50. If, as I suspect it might, the Minister’s answer points to the guidance in Clause 49, perhaps he could indicate why that clause similarly contains no details about the international reference points for the guidance or even that the guidance should cover the elements of providing support set out in Amendment 2—that is, the types of support, the manner and circumstances in which support is provided and provisions for monitoring support.
As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, noted, the requirements for the regulations about independent child trafficking advocates are far more specific about what needs to be covered, than either the reference to guidance in Clause 49 or the regulations in Clause 50.
I would also like to ask the Minister how the Government intend to ensure consistent standards in victim care provision without reference to them in the Bill. For example, can he give details of the minimum standards to which the care providers will be held, and the inspections referred to by him on Report? Will he also indicate whether—and, if so, where—those minimum standards of care have been published? At the end of this remarkable landmark Bill, I am still very disappointed that the Government have not introduced amendments on this matter. I very much look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, it is not just trafficked people who need physical, psychological and social support when they arrive here; the same is true of many asylum seekers who have experienced torture, rape and imprisonment as well as arduous journeys to get here. Many Members of both Houses have pointed this out on successive immigration and asylum Bills. However, I am not sure that the Home Office yet fully reflects these points in its day-to-day practice, particularly as regards women asylum applicants. I strongly support the amendment.
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 5 after Clause 70 is clearly a well intentioned measure, but I am concerned that if mandatory reporting of FGM is implemented in isolation it could have unintended consequences. Like my noble friend Lord Patel I am worried, in particular, that professionals will have no discretion and will be obliged to report, even when it may not be in the best interests of the child. The evidence from other countries where mandatory reporting of child abuse in general has been introduced suggests that there could be similar unintended consequences if a duty was introduced for FGM. Most notably: women and girls could be discouraged from seeing healthcare professionals because of concerns about catapulting themselves or friends and family into criminal investigations; professionals may seek to avoid discussions that could lead to disclosure if they are fearful of the consequences; and individuals would be likely to report on any occasion when they come into contact with a girl who they believe has undergone FGM, resulting in a girl being visited by police or social workers on multiple occasions in the short space of time before they are 18, which could be a fairly traumatising experience.
Will the noble Baroness please clarify what would happen in instances where the duty to notify police of FGM is not in the best interests of the child? Surely it is vital that the guidance on this piece of legislation is fully and carefully considered, and that experts who deal with these cases are fully involved. Can she also clarify the intentions for the guidance on how this duty will be implemented, and confirm whether this guidance will be subject to full consultation?
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I add a few words of strong support to those of my noble friends Lord Patel and Lady Howe. It seems that this is trying to deal with the problem after the horse has bolted. As the Minister knows, we argued at length earlier in discussions on the Bill about the need to tackle this matter at source, where these ideas are being pressed—by the leaders and religious leaders of some communities who believe that this is necessary to save you from hell and such matters. To go down this road will be quite dangerous, because there will be an inclination by families and communities to hide these children from view. Not only may they not seek medical attention—that would be incredibly serious, as my noble friend Lord Patel has said—these girls and women need extra healthcare and may get none at all if they are hidden away. But you can also imagine that these children may be hidden away from “ordinary” English schools, because teachers may come to know about what has happened, and these families and communities will be under more pressure to set up separate schools, not integrating with our society. That would be absolutely retrograde to encourage in some way.
Obviously this is an unintended consequence. I am sure the Government’s motives are utterly right and pure, but these things can have the most devastating unintended consequences, and one can just imagine the greater isolation, being kept away from healthcare, schools and so on. These children will be incredibly vulnerable if these amendments go through, and I put on record again that we need to tackle FGM—and my goodness, we need to tackle it—at source. It is probably far too late in the day, but really it is the community and religious leaders who need to be stopped when they are preaching non-authentic Hadith and pressing for FGM on that unauthentic basis. Even at this late stage I plead with the Minister to take a step back and think whether this is the right way forward. I profoundly believe it is not. The most eminent QC in this country, Dexter Dias, who knows about these things, would say the same. Go to the community and religious leaders; do not try and deal with this after the event when these children have already been tortured.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I simply want to ask a question relating to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McColl. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me; I will be brief and then I will not need to intervene again.
Following the very useful meeting that the Minister called with Barnardo’s, he subsequently wrote to us explaining that local authorities had, in fact, taken proper action. This again raised a concern that I would like to put on record and for the Minister to speak to regarding the line of accountability between the local authority and the independent advocate. At the meeting, he made it clear that ultimate responsibility for the oversight and care of the child remained with the local authority, and that the independent advocate was, if you like, a help in terms of that. Something clearly went seriously wrong with communication but not with action, and the Minister subsequently told us that. My only question is to ask him to put on record that the respective roles of the independent advocate and the social worker are absolutely clear. Otherwise, we will have subsequent confusion. I was reassured at the meeting. I am no longer reassured about this and remain doubtful about the way in which this will work. I apologise but that was the only point I wanted to make.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 59A in this group. First, however, I would like to commend the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for his perseverance in bringing this issue before the House over so many years. I hope your Lordships would agree that his work and that of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have been recognised in the amendments to Clause 48 that we are discussing today.
In Committee, I said that I was disappointed that the Government would not “be bolder” in their statements of the principles that would underpin the role of the advocates. I am glad to see that today they have gone some way towards meeting my concerns. At Second Reading, I said that we needed,
“a proper definition of child trafficking advocates”.—[Official Report, 17/11/14; col. 307.]
Again, I am glad to see that the Government have put forward some helpful clarifications in the series of amendments tabled by the Minister. In particular, I welcome the addition of the word “independent” in eight of his amendments.
However, as was said about the anti-slavery commissioner, adding the word “independent” does not mean that the role really is independent. I am grateful that the Government have recognised the strength of the argument in the case of the commissioner and amended the Bill to ensure that there really is independence with budgets and staff. I feel the same way about the use of the word “independent” in relation to child trafficking advocates.
Clause 48(2) currently says that the Secretary of State,
“must have regard to the principle that, so far as practicable, a child should be represented and supported by someone who is independent of any person who will be responsible for making decisions about the child”.
I know that the Minister said in Committee:
“Our provision sets out key principles in the Bill, such as that the advocate must be independent”.
He also said that,
“we are very clear that these advocates need to be independent in order to support and protect the child effectively”.—[Official Report, 8/12/14; cols. 1683-84]
The noble Lord said that the principle of independence was set out in subsection (2), so it was therefore unnecessary to include the word “independent” in the title of the clause or the title of the role.
I welcome the Minister’s change of heart on the use of the word “independent”, but there are so many new references to “independent” included in this clause that Clause 48(2) remains unamended. I am left perplexed about what “independence” might actually look like if it was only to be “so far as practicable”. It is for that reason that I tabled Amendment 59A, which would amend Clause 48(2) and clarify what “independent” means in this subsection, thereby removing the uncertainty that the words “so far as practicable” engender.
The need for an independent person was recognised in the 2013 report, Still at Risk, produced by the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council. That report recommended that,
“a system of protection needs to be developed which includes an independent trusted adult appointed to a separated child as soon as they come to an authority’s attention”.
The handbook on child trafficking advocates published last year by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights has independence and impartiality as one of its six fundamental principles, saying that advocates must,
“be in a position to make independent and impartial decisions, assessments, actions and representations guided by the best interests of the child”.
Lord Bates
I totally agree with that. I also recognise that the guidance will be a key part of filling in some of the gaps in the information. When the guidance is released, it will be informed by the results of the trial. That will strengthen still further the operation of the role going forward.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I just wondered why the Minister had not made any comments about my Amendment 59A. I was hoping that he would reconsider the wording in Clause 48(2).
Lord Bates
I am sorry about that. I do not appear to have a note relating to that amendment. Just looking at Amendment 59A, which says:
“Page 37, line 27, leave out from beginning to ‘be’ in line 28 and insert ‘For the purposes of subsection (1), a child must’”,
perhaps I could come back to the noble Baroness on that. I am sorry I did not deal with it specifically. If she wants to raise a specific point about the effect of that amendment, which I could perhaps respond to, I would be very happy to deal with that.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am happy to await any sort of further answer the Minister may have to my point. I was just somewhat surprised that there was no mention at all of what I was saying.
Lord Bates
I can say that the response was given in my answer but I did not highlight it as being in response to Amendment 59A. The government amendment to allow for independence when practical was drafted to give some flexibility for the basis of a future national scheme depending on what was learnt from the evaluation of the trial. We are clear, however, that the advocates will be independent. Although not tagged as such, that was our response to Amendment 59A.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in support of Amendment 78, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Morrow.
In Committee, I highlighted the concerns raised by the Council of Europe’s group of experts and quoted in detail from their recommendations 26 and 27 that the UK,
“should make further efforts to ensure that all potential and actual victims of trafficking are provided with adequate support and assistance from their identification through to their recovery”.
I quoted from the Joint Committee on the draft Bill about the lack of consistency in the support being provided to victims of human trafficking. I said then:
“If this Bill contained details of the minimum levels victims should be receiving under our international obligations, it would strengthen the likelihood that all victims would receive that level of assistance”.—[Official Report, 8/12/14; col. 1693.]
I continue to have concerns that provision of support will be patchy and may not reach the standards expected by international treaties if the Bill does not make a specific guarantee that support of particular types will be available to victims, and create a statutory framework to govern how that support is provided.
I understand that an organisation that provides support to victims told the evidence review in the run-up to the draft Bill:
“In order to ensure that victims of human trafficking are confident that the UK will provide adequate protections it is vital that protections, entitlements and support are clearly defined in legislation and are not afforded through a ‘policy’ approach that can be subject to different interpretations .... Clear, legally defined obligations towards supporting potential victims of trafficking will improve confidence in the state to provide protection for them, further encourage cooperation and lead to the successful prosecution of perpetrators”.
I agree, and am disappointed that the amendments tabled by the Minister do not address this issue at all, especially as the Government’s own NRM review revealed that the current provision of support falls short of what we might expect and of the UK’s obligations in international treaties. For example, as the NRM review noted, the use of asylum support accommodation for victims of trafficking who are also making an asylum claim raises concerns with regard to victims’ safety and protection. This has been mentioned by other noble Lords. The report concludes that asylum support accommodation,
“may be suitable for some, but not all. Shared rooms or mixed gender accommodation are not suitable for those who are highly traumatised or who have been victims of sexual exploitation for example”.
Article 11.5 of the EU anti-trafficking directive requires that victims should be provided with “appropriate and safe accommodation”, as does Article 12 of the European convention, which specifically requires countries to take due account of the victim’s “safety and protection needs”. The evidence from the NRM review about the use of asylum seeker accommodation calls into question how well those international obligations are being met. Amendment 78 contains the requirements for appropriate and safe accommodation and for support to be provided with due regard for the victim’s need for safety and protection. Putting these requirements into law would prevent the placement of a vulnerable victim in unsuitable accommodation.
The review also “noted with concern” that there is no formal audit or inspection of services provided. I am glad to see this addressed specifically in Amendment 78, through proposed new subsection (1B)(g) and through the creation of minimum standards in proposed new subsection (1B)(d). The noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred to this. The absence of official minimum standards and independent auditing processes for support services means there is no way to ensure consistency in the type and quality of the assistance provided to victims. Victims of human trafficking are all different: they have experienced different types of exploitation, and their national and cultural backgrounds are different. Men and women can respond differently to the trauma that they have been through. Different needs will mean that different forms and methods of support will be appropriate.
I agree with the recommendation of the NRM review, which states:
“Support should be provided based on an assessment of the individual needs of the victim”.
But, as the Centre for Social Justice report on modern slavery, It Happens Here, notes:
“Whilst a variety of approaches is to be welcomed there is a need for consistency across all organisations which are providing support”.
The report goes on to recommend the establishment of minimum standards, echoing an earlier recommendation from the Council of Europe group of experts report, which I quoted earlier. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group has also made this recommendation on more than one occasion.
We must ensure that all victims receive the care that they are entitled to and that they are cared for in a safe and appropriate manner. Amendment 78 provides a foundation to do that. I commend it to the Minister. If he is unable to support it today, perhaps he may reflect on how key elements ensuring consistency in standards of care might be incorporated into the regulations that he proposes in Amendment 82.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I want to speak briefly on what might appear to be a rather discordant note. I support the government amendments for the following reasons. I have great sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, which has been supported. However, when the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, raised the issue about child exploitation, we talked about the spectrum of people with needs.
In local authorities there are individuals with as high a level of need as some trafficked individuals—and I am not saying that trafficked individuals do not need a specialist service. I work with some of the relevant organisations, and a specialist service is needed. There are numerous sexually exploited young people who the local authority is attempting to support—the Children Act 1989 was as special as this legislation is—but because of cuts in local authority spending, children’s services are unable to provide the level of service needed, particularly in mental health support services, hostels for runaways and a whole range of services that we would expect to be given to asylum seekers. It is therefore difficult to set a standard for one group of individuals and say that we are not going to meet it for others.
I would be delighted if the Minister were able to say, “We are going to set this standard, and it should be for all individuals who have these needs”. However, under the 1989 Act, children who are described as being in need—there are thousands on local authority books—are simply not receiving those services. I wanted to inject that into the debate because someone has to speak for the local authorities, which are continually derided as not providing services appropriately. I speak as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, but that is neither here nor there. I simply hear from social workers and people in communities who are attempting to deliver services but against all odds. If there are specialist advocates who can give a high-quality service, such as guardians ad litem—I was eight years in CAFCASS, and I know all about the services such specialists are able to give—we need to look to enabling local authority social workers to give such services to every child in need.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee and a member of the council of the campaigning organisation Liberty. I rise to speak in support of Amendment 90 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. As I mentioned in Committee, victims should be at the heart of this Bill. We cannot waste the opportunity we have here to improve protection for these victims of modern slavery. As has already been mentioned, migrant domestic workers who are tied to their employers are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The inability of overseas domestic workers to change their employer leaves them powerless to escape their abusive situation and to bring a case against their perpetrators. Instead of protecting victims, we have a current visa system that facilitates trafficking, undermining the very purpose of this Bill.
I regularly come into contact with families and individuals who have been victims of crime and injustice. My first piece of advice is that they must speak out and seek help. The Minister for Modern Slavery and Organised Crime in the other place agrees. In a Radio 4 programme the Minister said:
“I want them to come forward. I want them to come into the system. I want to give them the help and support they need and I want to catch that perpetrator”.
But how do the Government expect workers to come forward in a system that ultimately criminalises them rather than recognising them as victims? That is exactly what is happening. Many domestic workers will not come forward for help or escape because they are aware that they would be breaking the law if they did. Therefore, numbers on the system are low and workers are driven underground and remain hidden. Those who do come forward are usually unaware of the visa rule. Many charitable organisations encounter clients who, after hearing that they have broken the conditions of their visa and are at risk of deportation, never return to them or consent to official help.
Kalayaan, the migrant domestic workers charity, provided me with some telling statistics. In 2014, it identified 54 clients as trafficked victims, but only 25 referrals were made to the national referral mechanism, so less than half of those identified as trafficked consented to being transferred to the NRM or the UK authorities.
The questions we must ask are: why was that and what can we do to ensure that victims are not afraid to come forward? Expert organisations such as Kalayaan and Anti-Slavery International, and numerous parliamentary inquiries into this issue, have all concluded that this visa rule is one of the biggest barriers to support and justice. This is a huge problem and we should address it in this Bill. Employment tribunals are not an effective route to justice, either. How can we expect a domestic worker to stay with their abusive employer while they are bringing a case against them? How can we expect a domestic worker, who is usually paid very little, to afford the legal costs of a case—a situation which is made all the worse with cuts to legal aid?
In his letter of 16 February to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the Minister spoke of the Home Office’s independent review and listed further arrangements to strengthen protections. While measures to increase awareness of domestic workers’ rights and to assess their situation upon entering the UK are welcome, I fear that they will have a limited effect as it not clear how the Home Office will ensure that those rights are upheld when the worker actually begins work in the UK. Will the Minister say what was lacking in the examination of this issue during pre-legislative scrutiny such that a further review is needed?
The Home Secretary is currently addressing the importance of protecting the rights of those who are most vulnerable to abuse of stop and search. She recently stated that if the stops-to-arrests ratio does not improve, a Conservative Government will not hesitate to bring in primary legislation to make it happen. Surely in the same way this Government can commit to protecting the rights of overseas domestic workers. I believe that Amendment 90, by reinstating the original migrant domestic worker visa, will empower these workers once again with the most basic rights and effectively protect them from abuse and exploitation.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I did not intend to take part in this debate. Having listened to the passionate speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and his examples and the various other aspects that were put before us, I was particularly moved by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said. I remember some of the issues that took place at different stages of the Bill. Of course we can wait if it means putting it off for four or five months or something like that—but God knows how many more wretched trafficked slaves will pass thorough in that time, so I share the view of my noble friend Lord Kerr. What harm can it do if we make the decision today? So let us make the decision today.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, in moving government Amendment 31, I will speak to government Amendments 34, 35 and 37. These amendments clarify the role of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner in relation to victims’ services, working with voluntary organisations and with the Victims’ Commissioner.
We had an important debate in Committee about the anti-slavery commissioner’s remit. Through our debates, noble Lords have expressed concern about whether the commissioner’s role adequately covers victims’ issues and services. The Government have listened to these concerns carefully. We have been clear throughout the passage of the Bill that the commissioner can look at victims’ issues because they are crucial to his remit. For example, incredibly vulnerable victims will not be able to support prosecutions and make effective witnesses unless they are receiving the support and assistance they need to recover.
We are supportive of the approach the commissioner-designate has taken. He has set out how he proposes to work effectively with victims and NGOs working in this sector, and to look at victim services in support of his remit. Given the genuine concerns raised about whether the commissioner can look at victims’ issues, we want to put the position beyond doubt. I am therefore moving government Amendment 37 to make clear in the Bill that the commissioner can look at victim assistance services in support of his remit. I also want to ensure that there is no doubt that the commissioner can engage with those with most insight into victims of modern slavery. Therefore, I am moving government Amendments 34 and 35 to clarify that the commissioner may consult and co-operate with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses and with voluntary organisations.
The provision on the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner is a United Kingdom-wide provision, so I want to express our thanks to the Northern Ireland Executive and the Scottish Government for working with us to develop the government amendments, which are carefully designed to stay within the legislative consent of their legislatures. Given that the Government are proposing action to address the important concerns about the remit and victims’ issues raised in Committee, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support these government amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I rise very thankfully to support Amendment 37 in particular, which aims to include the “assistance and support” provided to victims among the subjects for the commissioner’s attention. As I said in Committee, it is essential that the commissioner engages with victims. I know that Clause 41(1)(b) includes victim identification in the commissioner’s remit but I believe that he should take a leading role in promoting high standards in victim care as well as in law enforcement activities. Like others, I was heartened by the obvious concern for victims demonstrated by Mr Hyland, the commissioner-designate, during our meeting. I thank the Minister and the noble Baroness for arranging that meeting, as I believe that it has given many of us greater confidence in our new commissioner.
Supporting victims must be among our highest priorities when addressing modern slavery. As has been said before and was echoed by the commissioner in his presentation to Peers, we will never be able to gain a full picture of the extent of this crime if victims do not feel confident in coming forward. We will not achieve an increase in successful prosecutions if we do not ensure that victims have the necessary support and assistance to put them in a position physically and psychologically to engage with police investigations.
Reaching and maintaining high standards in victim care is a fundamental part of achieving the objectives set for the commissioner in the Bill to strengthen law enforcement efforts and improve identification of victims. Ensuring high-quality victim care is something that interacts with promoting good practice in prevention, detection and prosecution of those crimes, and in identifying victims. Thankfully, it seems that the commissioner-designate is keenly aware of this as he has made it one of his key priorities.
While I say that victim care intersects with the other functions, I am not sure that it should be properly viewed as implicit in those functions as the Bill is before us today. I am therefore pleased to welcome Amendment 37 in particular, and all the amendments in the name of the Minister, which make that connection explicit and give express permission for the commissioner to consider these matters.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, as many of us have made clear through the progress of the Bill, if the true impact of establishing an anti-slavery commissioner is to be realised, we must not shy away from awarding him the powers and autonomy he will need to make this role truly effective. I therefore congratulate the Government on these amendments. The role of the commissioner may include the provision of assistance and support to victims of slavery and human trafficking offences. I am heartened by the progress that has been made thus far in strengthening the commissioner’s remit.
We still have some way to go in providing the level of consistent and comprehensive support that victims truly need but I believe that the anti-slavery commissioner will now, through these amendments, be better placed to address this. I, too, had the pleasure of meeting Mr Hyland two weeks ago and I was most impressed by his approach and what he had to say. I am delighted to support these amendments, especially Amendment 37.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I support the principle contained in Amendments 66, 67ZA and 67ZAA, but also most, if not all, of the amendments that have been spoken to, all of which are immensely important to the debate. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Cox on what she had to say, because that dimension clearly is important and needs to be taken fully into consideration.
It is essential that the commissioner’s role engages with the experience of victims, and in particular that he should have the authority to take a leading role in promoting best practice and the highest possible standards in the care that victims are given. There are two very clear reasons for this. First, I believe that we have a duty to protect and support victims of these terrible crimes. I will speak more about how I think we need to strengthen the Bill in that regard when we reach Part 5. To see that that duty is effectively carried out, there needs to be some form of oversight—someone to champion the cause, not of individual victims, but of all victims. Good practice in how to provide support and care to victims needs to be shared with other organisations that fulfil the same role. We need someone who can independently identify that good practice and help to disseminate those models or skills to the wider network of organisations involved in this support work. The recent review of the NRM was a welcome development, but ongoing monitoring of support that is able to pick up examples of especially good care provision and identify where things need to be improved should be much more effective. I understand that there are probably some assessment processes built into the contract for providing the victim support programme, but in reading the NRM review and the report of the Joint Committee on the draft Bill I feel that there is a vital co-ordinating and monitoring role that the commissioner could and should play in this regard.
The second reason why I support these amendments is that it is well known that victims who are well supported make better witnesses in police investigations and court proceedings. It therefore seems to me that, since Clause 41 requires the commissioner to promote good practice relating to investigations and prosecutions, he may well need to encourage practice that promotes the needs of the victim as a witness. Yet, by not giving him authority to promote good practice in the support and protection of victims, he will only be able to look at improving the way that law enforcement agencies treat victims in the course of investigations or court cases, not the wider structure of support. This seems to be very short-sighted and could possibly limit the commissioner’s effectiveness.
In conclusion, I find that it is rather disappointing to discover that the role is purely focused on operational improvements in law enforcement. The title “anti-slavery commissioner” conjures up images of a much more holistic and comprehensive approach to addressing modern-day slavery in our nation. I urge the Government to accept the principle of Amendments 66, 67ZA and 67ZAA and many, if not all, of the others that have been mentioned today, and expand the role of the commissioner to include oversight of support and protection of victims.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of a company which, in working with companies on their corporate responsibility, has to look at ways to eradicate modern slavery in their supply chains. One therefore has some direct understanding of the problems that the commissioner will face. I associate myself with the generality of the arguments put forward, particularly those of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness who spoke so movingly earlier on. It is obviously difficult to get the balance right and none of us should ignore the fact that, if you are not careful, you have a commissioner who is commissioner for everything. The Government are trying to ensure that the commissioner has a series of priorities and deals with things sufficiently narrowly so that he is not pushed all over the place. I understand the Minister’s problems, but I suggest that there are some elements in what has been said which may not have been adequately presented in the wording of the amendments but which the Government might like to look at to see whether they can bring forward amendments themselves to cover some of the central issues.
The first of these was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who pointed to the fact that the international implications of what we are doing here must not be ignored. Modern slavery is not a national activity: of its nature, it has international ramifications. We may well not want to put in the Bill that the commissioner may work with high commissioners, ambassadors and the like all over the world, but we must have something which would make it impossible for people to object if the commissioner, in his work, were to reach out beyond the shores of the United Kingdom. Otherwise, I do not believe that he can achieve what the Bill intends.
They may not be the ways of doing it, but the kinds of implication which the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, put forward have got to be thought of seriously by the Government. In practical terms, you may be working with a British company but, in order to give advice on its corporate responsibility, you have to deal with some possible slavery situation far away. If you were restricted in not being able to be in touch with, deal with and discuss with people in those countries, you would not be able to do your job properly. That is an important parallel with the commissioner.
Secondly, independence is a vital part of this. I am very excited about the Bill: it is another of those occasions when Britain has taken a significant step ahead of very many other countries. As chairman of the Climate Change Committee, I see a sort of parallel to this. We are doing something of real value to the world as a whole. Drawing from my experiences with that committee, it is of considerable importance to your independence that you are seen not as a departmental subject but as open to advising the Government as a whole. I therefore hope that the Government will look again at exactly how the terms of the relationships between the Home Office and the commissioner are drawn. This is not because I think that either this Home Secretary or this commissioner will find it difficult to work together. It is that we are not legislating for this Home Secretary or this commissioner; we are legislating so that the office of commissioner shall develop in the way that offices develop in the context of different personalities in the Home Office and as commissioners.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister will think seriously about whether there are ways to make sure that the independence of the commissioner can be seen to be clear even in those countries where the idea of independence is quite difficult—which brings me to the core of this argument. We are of course legislating for Britain but we know that we may well be legislating in a way that will be copied by others. Indeed, Ministers have been very clear in saying that they hope that this will be copied by others. It is true that we will not deal with modern slavery unless it is copied by others.
The Government need to be very careful about assuming that, if you have the relationship which at the moment is adumbrated in the Bill, people will understand that the commissioner is as independent as he actually is. The wording about redaction and the like can easily be adapted by those countries where what that would mean would be that the commissioner would not be independent at all but would be the subject of whatever is their equivalent of the Home Secretary. One thing that we need to be careful about here is not to feel that other people carry with them the cultural understanding that we have when we talk about independence and know that that independence will in our system be properly respected. When my noble friend replies, I hope that he will not say, “Well, we all know that it will all be independent and perfectly all right”. Even if we knew that, the Bill will not be seen by others in the context of that knowledge. Therefore, getting the wording right and making sure that the independence is clear is crucial.
As chairman of the Climate Change Committee, I have to say that it is extremely helpful to be able to point to the Act and say, “I am doing this because the Act tells me not only that I have a right to do it but that I have a duty to do it”. That is important because the choice of what you do does not of itself imply a political or other bias. I am now about to start on the report which will assess the success of the Government in mitigation and adaptation, which will come out in the middle of next year. No one can say that it will come out in June because I have chosen the moment in order to inform some possible new Government; it comes out in June because the Act says that it has to come out in June. That gives enormous independence, because it makes sure that the choice cannot be cast into dispute.
My worry about the way in which this commissioner’s job is placed is that, at the same time, it appears to restrict him and not to give him sufficiently strong direction for him to be able to say, “I have done this because the Act requires me to behave in this way”. So I suppose that I am asking the Government particularly to listen to today’s debate and to say to themselves, “Are we sure we’ve got this balance quite right? Can we take from what has been said today a sufficiency of advice and information to rewrite this part of the Act in order to make the amendments perhaps not as extensive or as detailed as has been suggested but to make such amendments as will ensure that what the commissioner says he wants to do will be absolutely congruent with what the Act says he ought to do?”.
Otherwise, if from the beginning he does what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, reports that he intends to do, there is ground for arguing that that is in some sense outwith the scope of the Act. I have a very simple worry, and I ask my noble friend to accept it entirely in this spirit: it is that this great démarche—this Act of such importance—might find itself in this kind of argument, which is the last thing we want, very early on in its implementation.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I support these amendments, including the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who have been at the forefront of this commitment to there being an advocate for children.
I want to emphasise some of the things said by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I, too, sit on the Joint Committee on Human Rights and we took evidence on unaccompanied migrant children. The concerns about dilution are somewhat misplaced because the experience of people who are doing this kind of work—and I am speaking about colleagues at the Bar—is that children, like adults who have been trafficked, in the first instance because of fear of those who have trafficked them, do not immediately disclose. It is often after some trust has been developed that children will eventually disclose matters that show that they have, in fact, been trafficked and that they are precisely the kind of child whom we should be concerned about. If a child is unaccompanied, almost invariably there is a back story and it takes time to gain the confidence of the child for the full story to become clear. It is important that we recognise that the role of the child advocate should be from the very point of dealing with the child arriving in the country or identified in the country as being unaccompanied but being a migrant.
I want to reinforce some things that were said by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. Local authorities often, I am afraid, fail to understand or respond adequately to the needs of trafficked children. Of course, they have their own problems now financially and so they are feeling particularly hard-pressed. A legal advocate has to have powers to compel the council to act; otherwise we will see real gaps in the provision for these children, who need to be properly assessed and supported. Without having that power, the advocate will be no more than a pleader to local authorities and there will be times when children will fall through the net.
I also press on the Government the importance of having a power to instruct legal representation. These things are complicated. The law around this is not simple and I think at quite an early stage there is going to have to be support from experts in the field of immigration law. Invariably it is about immigration law but also children’s law. If the power is not there to be able to access the right kind of legal representation for a child, then the child’s rights may not be properly argued. We often talk about international conventions. It is an area of law that is not straightforward. I hope that the Government will listen to the pleas being made by noble Lords moving these amendments, which I strongly support.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, clearly things have moved on a little since we debated the Immigration Bill on 7 April. Nevertheless, there is clearly a long way to go. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, who I thought made a brilliant speech, and to the other noble Lords who signed this amendment and again brought this issue before your Lordships’ House with Amendment 86H. I am pleased to support them.
While I welcome the action of the Government in trialling the delivery of a child trafficking advocate system, I am disappointed that they are not being bolder in their statement of the principles that would underpin the role of the advocates. I agree with the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, which said that pilots are not,
“a substitute for a statutory advocacy scheme”.
Since that report, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that the UK prioritises,
“the appointment of a competent and statutory guardian as expeditiously as possible to safeguard the best interests of the child during the criminal justice process and ensure that a child victim is referred to asylum-seeking or other procedures only after the appointment of a guardian”.
There are many pages of recommendations from well established and respected international organisations on how a guardian advocate system should function, which would allow us to set out a framework that could be adopted by the Bill.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in support of Amendment 86M, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, to which I, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, have added our names. At Second Reading, I welcomed the fact that the Government had responded to the concerns expressed by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill about the absence of any victim care provision through the introduction of Clause 48, which requires the Secretary of State to offer guidance about victim care. I also made clear, however, that in my view this fell far short of the provision of the statement of support services for victims of trafficking that would be expected to be itemised on the face of any ambitiously titled Modern Slavery Bill, which we are encouraged to think is leading the world on these very important matters. I, too, thank the Minister for the comments in his letter sent to Peers, following Second Reading, in which he shared the concerns that we provide victims with the services that they need.
Those of your Lordships who have had an opportunity to look at the Modern Slavery Strategy, published on 29 November, will see statements about the Government's commitment to continue raising the profile of victims, which is very welcome. Paragraph 7.1 of the strategy states very clearly that,
“our approach to tackling modern slavery is victim-focused”,
but any victim looking at the support promised to them by this Bill would, I fear to say, fundamentally disagree. The current wording of Clause 48 gives very little reassurance to victims and seems to pay scant attention to our international obligations under the European convention and the European directive.
I am sure the Minister will say that we do not need Amendment 86M because all the assistance and support is being provided already. I am not convinced by that argument. I do not dispute that the Government take seriously their obligation to care for victims, as the Modern Slavery Strategy, the NRM review and the interdepartmental ministerial group policy statement have all indicated. However, I am not convinced that in practice all victims are receiving the support they are entitled to. The Joint Committee said:
“The quality of victim support and assistance provided under the NRM varies greatly. We have privately heard from victims some harrowing stories of poor medical treatment, no access to legal advice and wholly unsuitable accommodation”.
This is not an acceptable way to treat victims who, as the Government rightly say,
“have often endured horrific physical, psychological or sexual abuse at the hands of slave drivers and traffickers”.
If this Bill contained details of the minimum levels victims should be receiving under our international obligations, it would strengthen the likelihood that all victims would receive that level of assistance. Noble Lords will know that in 2012 GRETA, the Council of Europe’s group of experts, published its first analysis of UK compliance with the European Convention against Trafficking in Human Beings. Recommendations 26 and 27 state that the UK,
“should make further efforts to ensure that all potential and actual victims of trafficking are provided with adequate support and assistance from their identification through to their recovery. This should involve, in particular: … adopting clear support service minimum standards for victims of trafficking and the provision of adequate funding to maintain them; … ensuring that all children victims of trafficking benefit from the assistance measures provided for under the Convention, including appropriate accommodation and access to education … ; …. enabling victims of trafficking to have access to the labour market, vocational training and education as a form of rehabilitation; … ensuring that victims of trafficking who need it can benefit from translation and interpretation services; … improving the provision of legal advice or assistance to victims on various matters (NRM, asylum criminal proceedings, compensation)”.
Amendment 86M, which proposes to replace Clause 48, meets GRETA’s recommendations, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, has told us.
Not only do we need to ensure that victims have access to all the support they are entitled to under the European convention and the EU directive, we also need to ensure that more victims can access this support. According to the National Crime Agency, some 60% of the potential victims who were encountered in 2013 by local authorities, police forces and NGOs were not referred to the national referral mechanism and thus could not access government-funded assistance under the victim support programme. Many other charities also say that they provide assistance to victims who do not wish to be referred to the NRM. We need to do all we can to build confidence among individual victims that, if they come forward, they will receive help.
The evidence review chaired by Frank Field for the Home Secretary prior to the publication of the draft Bill makes the following recommendation:
“The protections, entitlements and support that victims are entitled to should be clearly defined in law to help ensure that victims (and the NGOs that support them) are more confident to come forward. Formalising these provisions in law should in turn increase the accountability of the agencies responsible for delivering this support”.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, which is why I have put my name to Amendment 86M. As the UN says, in commentary on its model laws on trafficking,
“Adequate victim assistance and protection serve the interests both of the victim and of the prosecution of the offenders. From a law enforcement perspective, poor victim assistance and protection may discourage victims from seeking assistance from law enforcement officials for fear of mistreatment, deportation or potential risk to their personal safety”.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in this Second Reading debate on the Modern Slavery Bill. I commend the Government for bringing the Bill forward and for the increased focus that the heinous practices of slavery and trafficking will receive as a result of this proposed legislation and the measures within it. However, like many other noble Lords, I believe that there is significant scope for improvement.
Like many, I was very concerned that when the draft Bill was published it seemed more like a Modern Slavery (Criminal Justice) Bill than a credible, ground-breaking Modern Slavery Bill. It simply dealt with the traffickers and not the trafficked, and to that extent it was very lop-sided. Any Modern Slavery Bill worthy of the name must put in place both better provisions for catching traffickers and better provisions for caring for the victims of trafficking.
The Bill before us today is improved in two crucial respects, although there is still much work to be done. In the first instance, the Government have responded to the concerns expressed by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill about the absence of any victim care provision through the introduction of a new clause, Clause 48, which says that the Secretary of State must offer guidance on victim care. This falls far short of the provision of a statement of support services for victims of trafficking that you would expect to be itemised on the face of any Modern Slavery Bill, but at least it is something.
In the second instance, the Government have taken a step on the journey to converting this from a Modern Slavery (Criminal Justice) Bill into a credible Modern Slavery Bill, principally, I think it is fair to say, as a result of a vote in your Lordships’ House on 7 April this year. My noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, supported by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and others, moved an amendment to the Immigration Bill introducing child trafficking guardians. This was opposed by the Government, who were then defeated by 98 votes.
Let us remind ourselves of the facts. Many children who have been trafficked go missing from care after they have been identified and rescued. Reports from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre record that between 2005 and 2010 almost a third of the children identified as probable victims of trafficking and being “looked after” by local authorities had gone missing. I have also seen other localised studies which give the much higher figure of 60% of children going missing.
Until a foreign trafficked child comes into the care of the authorities, the only people in this country whom they may know or trust are likely to be their traffickers. Children are vulnerable to being manipulated and threatened. They are told not to trust the police or other authorities and they can be warned by traffickers that the authorities will imprison them or treat them badly. They can be manipulated into trusting and caring for their traffickers as if they were members of their family. Protecting trafficked children from the continued influence of their traffickers once they come to the attention of the authorities must therefore be of the highest priority. One key way to do this is by providing these children with the support of a person with specialist understanding of the particular needs and challenges experienced by child victims of trafficking.
The Still at Risk report commissioned by the Home Office and conducted by the Refugee Council and the Children’s Society, already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, following debates in your Lordships’ House in 2012 noted:
“Respondents in this research felt that the immediate provision of intensive, one-to-one support for these children by an adult who the child can form a trusting relationship with, and who could help them to make sense of the different processes and professionals that they encounter, would reduce the risk of the child going missing”.
That description perfectly describes the role that a child trafficking advocate should play. Clearly, the factors involved in a child going missing are many and complex. However, one step is to provide the child with support from someone with specialist expertise who will be able to build a relationship of trust with the child and will advocate for the child to receive the sort of accommodation, legal advice and care that will best help to protect them from their traffickers.
Part of the rationale for moving the child trafficking guardian amendment on 7 April was that, since the Government had made it plain that they were not interested in having such a provision in their Modern Slavery Bill, we must look elsewhere. When confronted by the amendment to the Immigration Bill, however, the Government resisted it on the basis that a better place for it would be the Modern Slavery Bill. When they were defeated, they agreed to reintroduce a provision in the Modern Slavery Bill—Clause 47.
Although I am very pleased that noble Lords played a key role in helping to deliver a second victim support clause in the Bill, helping to give grounds for the claim that this is a wide-ranging Modern Slavery Bill, I have to say that in the same way that Clause 48 is very disappointing for merely delivering guidance, Clause 47 is very disappointing because it is bereft of the proper definition of a child trafficking guardian which your Lordships’ House voted for so overwhelmingly on 7 April. Clause 57, which commences Clause 47, also remains equivocal about whether these guardians will ever come about, putting this off to a future decision.
As I survey these two clauses, I am glad that the Bill now has two victim care clauses. These two steps forward are welcome but the Government have given so little away that, to me, the Bill still feels more like a Modern Slavery (Criminal Justice) Bill than a genuine Modern Slavery Bill. Further steps now need to be taken and I very much hope that they will be taken in your Lordships’ House. We need Clause 48 to move from guidance to statutory support services for victims and we need to amend Clause 47 and Clause 57, which commences Clause 47, so that Clause 47 contains a proper definition of child trafficking advocates and ends all equivocation about whether such guardians will be provided.
Again, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, mentioned, the imperative for this change is now greatly strengthened by the fact that the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to introduce both provisions last month through the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill which, while sounding less grand than our Modern Slavery Bill, actually goes further. This should, indeed, give us pause for thought. I do not want—neither I am sure do your Lordships—victims of trafficking in England and Wales, both adults and children, to be given fewer rights than victims in Northern Ireland.
This is a very important Bill but there is clearly still work to be done during its remaining stages. I hope and believe that we shall succeed in improving it still further.
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 46, which relates to the protection of children from sexual communication. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, his amendment is supported by the NSPCC. It proposes a new offence so that it is always illegal for an adult intentionally to send a sexual message to a child.
In recent years children’s internet usage has grown exponentially. As your Lordships know, children between the ages of eight and 15 now spend far more time online than they do watching television. They are also keen users of social networks, with many engaging in risky online behaviour, including being in contact with people via social networks who are not directly known to them, sharing personal information, which makes them vulnerable to abuse, and sharing indecent pictures. We have heard about that from the noble Lord, Lord Harris.
Indeed some people behave in very different ways online to offline, apparently. Police interviews with sex offenders show that the majority differentiate the real world from cyberspace believing that their behaviour is acceptable because what is happening is not real or tangible. One offender said that masturbating on a webcam in front of a teenager seemed like “Fun at the time”. He stated that he would not behave that way offline. Consequently, young people are experiencing all sorts of abuse on a scale that we have never seen before. Last year, Childline, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, had an amazing 168% increase in contacts from children relating to online sexual abuse.
The law needs to be changed better to protect children from adults who send these sorts of sexual messages to them. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested that existing laws cover online grooming but the NSPCC and others who support this campaign do not believe that is true. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 was referred to. But, increasingly, abusers online have no intention to meet and abuse the individual child physically. Therefore, the Act apparently does not cover online grooming. There is a similar situation with the Malicious Communications Act 1988. Finally, if the Crown attempted to prosecute an offence under the Communications Act 2003, the defence could argue that the threshold of,
“a message … that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”
had not been met. The Act also does not cover the use of private networks to communicate.
Current laws mean that police can be powerless to act until a child has been coerced into sharing an indecent image, lured to a meeting offline or, in the worst cases, sexually abused. The confusing nature of the law in this area means far more needs to be done to enable the police to take early action to prevent abuse escalating, reducing the risk to children and young people and helping them to keep safe online.
The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, seeks to close this gap in the law better to protect children online and would enable action to be taken against offenders at an earlier stage of the grooming process before an arrangement to meet had been made. It would help protect children from unwanted sexualised content online, potentially have a deterrent effect on offenders and put more responsibility on adults to ensure that who they are talking to online is indeed another adult. More than 75% of people believe it is already illegal for some aged over 18 to send a sexual message to a child under 16, while more than 80% of people have expressed support for such a change in the law. I very much hope that the Government will support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, it always seems churlish to take up points in the text of an amendment when one supports the thrust of it but I am afraid I am going to. The action of grooming is hugely serious. On the noble Lord’s example, I wonder whether at least a part of that will be covered by the revenge porn amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill about the use of images, moved on Report. My noble friend Lady Grender, who put her name to it, arrived just after I had managed to find the text of that amendment. However, that is not my only point on this amendment.
The grooming which the noble Lord described often includes a lack of knowledge in either direction of the people taking part in e-mail exchanges. Therefore, I wonder whether it is appropriate to use the words, which I think have come from the 2003 Act, of A not reasonably believing that B is 16 or over, particularly as I suspect—I do not have detailed knowledge of this—that B, the child, may often claim to be older than she or he is. That is probably my major concern. There is also a reference to subsection (3) which sets out the circumstances in which no offence has been committed—but that only applies to paragraph (1)(d) where it must also apply to (1)(c), and it does not actually need stating in either case.
Perhaps I had better not go down the road of whether communications are written or oral—perhaps verbal is the word one should use there. More serious is the question of whether the list in proposed new subsection (4) is intended to be exhaustive. I would have thought not, but it reads that way. In proposed new subsection (4)(d) I query the reference to promotion of,
“emotional well-being by the giving of advice, and not for a sexual purpose”.
I am not sure whether those words correctly describe the difference between the sexual purpose of the perpetrator and the connection between emotional well-being, sexual advice and sexual well-being, which are inseparable.
Finally, might it not be better to go at this by trying to amend the Sexual Offences Act itself? That would lead to consequences, including the sex offenders register, to which the noble Lord quite rightly referred. Again, while I support the thrust of this, I am afraid that I could not support this particular amendment, which would take us in a direction that might be more difficult to untangle.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I am grateful to the Lord Chairman for allowing me to collect my thoughts on this amendment while he was going through those other amendments. The purpose of this amendment, which is rather different from that of the previous one, is to create a requirement for an internet service provider that provides a facility for the storage of digital content to consider—no more than that—whether and to what extent that facility might be open to abuse by the storage of indecent images of children. Where the service provider,
“considers that there is a material risk … they must take such reasonable steps as might mitigate, reduce, eliminate or … disrupt”,
such actions.
The context of the amendment is the fact that there are tools available to internet service providers to find out whether such indecent material is contained on their systems. As I am sure noble Lords are aware, images are reduced to digital content as a series of zeroes and ones, so even a very complex image, whether pornographic or otherwise, is simply reduced to a series of zeroes and ones. Most abuse photographs are circulated and recirculated. Many of them are known to the law enforcement authorities, and it is possible for those authorities to search for identical images, so that they know whether a particular image has appeared before, and in what circumstances.
However, I am told that increasingly, abusers are making tiny changes to images—sometimes no more than one pixel—so that the images are not identical, and are not picked up in the same way by those methods. However, I understand that Microsoft has developed a system called PhotoDNA, which it is making available free to providers. This converts images into greyscale and breaks the greyscale image down into a grid. Then each individual square on the grid is given what is called a histogram of intensity gradients; essentially, that decides how grey each square is. The signature based on those values provides a hash value, as they call it, which is unique to that particular image—I appreciate that these are technical terms, and until I started looking into this I did not know about them either. This technique allows people to identify images that are essentially the same.
Until now, the way to identify which images are essentially the same is that some poor police officer or analyst has had to look at all the images concerned. But it is now possible to do that automatically. Because the technology can operate in a robust fashion, it can identify what images are appearing, and whether they are essentially the same. It is not possible to recreate the image concerned from that PhotoDNA signature; it is only possible to scan systems or databases for signature matches. What is more, because the data for each signature are so small, the technology can scan a large volume of images extremely quickly. Apparently there is a 98% recognition rate.
I have gone through that in some detail simply to illustrate that there are such techniques available. I believe that Google is working on something—which would, of course, have to be bigger and more complex than what has been produced by Microsoft—which will do the same for videos. It will then be possible to identify similar videos in the same fashion.
The benefit of these techniques is that they make it possible for ISPs to trawl their entire database—to trawl what people are storing online and to identify whether some of the previously known indecent images are in the system. They will then be able to see whether there is a package, or a pattern, and whether particular users are storing more than others. That then gives them the opportunity to raise that issue with law enforcement officials or take disruptive action, perhaps by withdrawing service from that user.
The benefits of the specific technology are that humans do not have to scan the individual images. A number of noble Lords have seen the suites used by CEOP or New Scotland Yard whereby a row of police officers sit viewing indecent images of child pornography, which is distressing for those officers and possibly harmful to them in the long term. That does not need to happen in this case. The service providers do not have to store the images that they are matching to carry out this exercise because all they are storing are the DNA hash values of the images concerned, and they are therefore not exposing themselves to potential charges as far as that is concerned. The technology makes this comparatively easy and simple to do and does not involve a great deal of data. It also means that the service providers are not interfering in any way with the privacy of their users other than to check, in this anonymised way where they do not view the images, that no images contained there are of known child pornography.
The purpose of this amendment is to place an obligation on service providers to make use of these technologies as they are developed. Some providers already do this and are willing to do this. I think that Facebook has quite a good record as far as this is concerned. However, the amendment would place an obligation on all of them to consider whether they should use these techniques. As I say, in this instance Microsoft is making the technology and the system available free to providers.
Before the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, goes through whatever drafting faults the amendment may contain, I should point out why I think it is important. In our discussions just three months ago on the DRIPA legislation it was suggested that one of the reasons why the relevant changes were being made was to provide service providers with legal cover against legal challenge in other countries in which people asked why they were allowing law enforcement officials to do these things. The amendment would provide some legal cover for those service providers—in exactly the same way as the DRIPA legislation does—against challenges that this measure somehow infringes the freedom of speech of people who want to store pornographic images of children. The purpose of this amendment is to require service providers to consider whether or not they might be at risk of this misuse and then to take appropriate reasonable steps using the best available techniques to,
“mitigate, reduce, eliminate or … disrupt”,
it. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 47 of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Some may take the view that internet service providers cannot be held responsible for information that people use them to hold. Although, in my view, ISPs certainly do not have responsibility for generating content, they do, however, play a very important role in facilitating it: first, in the sense that storage protects the material in question and thereby helps to guarantee its continued existence; and, secondly, in the sense of providing a basis from which the said material may be transmitted. In so doing, they have a responsibility actively to take all reasonable steps to ensure, on an ongoing basis, that they are not facilitating the storage and/or transmission of material of the kind set out in subsection (1) of the clause proposed in the amendment.
For myself, I would also like ISPs to have to demonstrate that these active steps have indeed been taken, and are being taken, on an ongoing basis. We must foster a legislative framework that exhibits zero tolerance of all aspects of child sex abuse images, including ISPs facilitating the storage and/or transmission of such images. I very much look forward to listening to what the Minister has to say in his response to this important amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I hate to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Harris, but I fear that I am going to, as I simply have a question for him. I speak from a basis of almost no technological knowledge, but I would have thought that, presumably, all the services are open to abuse. Can I just ask what consultation there has been on this? The noble Lord talked about the responsible, innovative and exciting—if you are that way inclined—work being done by some of the ISPs. Like him, I have found the big players to be very responsible and wanting to be seen to be responsible. However, the proposed provision would obviously put an obligation on them. I would be interested to know how they have responded to it, if the noble Lord has had the opportunity to ascertain that.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. In my remarks, I shall focus on the experience of a specific victim of domestic violence—Laura, as she is called—to illustrate why, because of the shocking treatment that she has received not just from her abuser but from the authorities, all the changes that are being proposed are so important.
Laura’s case highlights why the law must change, to take account of all forms of domestic violence, emotional as well as physical, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said. Her case also serves to show why police and prosecutors should look at the patterns of behaviour in these crimes.
I will quote Laura’s own words. She said:
“I was made to feel worthless—made to feel that the way I was treated was normal. I was punched, kicked, slapped, strangled, thrown around, spat at and emotionally mocked ... I was locked in and outside my house if I went out or did something without his permission. I was watched by him on a daily basis by cameras that were put up in our home by him”.
The abuse to which the victim was subjected continued over a three-year period. In that period there were numerous witnesses to the abuse, including local builders, members of the public and even a bank teller, who recorded him physically assaulting the victim. Laura has also spoken of the factors that inhibited her from leaving her home. It is important that these are also put on the record, since in many instances people who have not been subject to domestic violence cannot understand why the victim would not leave the perpetrator. It is this precise ignorance among some police and prosecutors that leads to victims not being taken seriously when they finally reach the end of their tether and report the crime.
Laura has spoken about how her abuser threatened to cut himself out of the lives of their children or indeed to harm her, leaving her children without a mother. It is also telling that she said:
“I left on a number of occasions, but he kept stalking and harassing me. In the end I just thought … I may as well return to a controlled situation where I knew what to expect. Also, his side of the family pressured me and made me believe that, every time, he had changed and how unfair I was being on my daughter by taking her dad away”.
Laura eventually went to the police, but she said:
“I was very afraid, so at times I didn’t want to give statements as I knew it was his word against mine. The police were always called by other people, but he was always let off, even when there was strong evidence. The final time I left and never went back I moved to an address I kept secret. I was harassed constantly via the phone, sent death threats, stalked, chased in my car. When he did find out where I was living he tried to break into my house and then when he finally saw me he threatened to burn my house down with me and my daughter in it. Again there were witnesses. People told him to leave and in the end he left … I reported this all to the police. This was the final straw. I did make a statement about the offences he had committed where there were witnesses ... but it turned out that there were no laws in place to protect me at all ... he was let off”.
Laura has spoken about how disappointed she felt at the treatment that she had received from the police. She has spoken about how the police did not always give due credence to how distressing coercive and controlling behaviour can be. For instance, she says that to this day, 14 months after she reported the crime, she is still waiting for the police to take her phone and download abusive messages that the perpetrator left for her.
That is why the training of police and prosecutors must be improved, to take account of all methods of domestic abusive behaviour and to have regard of the impact that this debilitating crime can have on its victims. To make matters worse, this victim was also told that because the perpetrator had left the country for six months, the time limit on his crimes had elapsed and he could not be prosecuted. That is why many campaigners believe that domestic violence cases should not be subject to time limits. I certainly agree on that point.
It is clear that the current law is not working for victims. Laura’s message to those in power is:
“Please recognise the need for change. We need to ensure new laws are brought in ... We need harsher punishment for perpetrators. We need to ensure that we are doing all we can to support victims and to charge the offenders ... The whole background of the relationship needs to be taken into consideration and indeed … the perpetrator’s whole background in general. Information on past relationships where similar incidents were reported, even if no charge was brought forward, must not be ignored. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with”.
I commend Amendment 49 to the House and to the Government.
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Swinfen (Con)
I am not sure that I heard my noble friend correctly but he talked about child cruelty when someone was, first, in possession of drugs and, secondly, under the influence of drugs. I understood him to say that they were actually under the influence of the drugs of which they were charged with being in possession. Purely for clarification, what is the position if they are in fact under the influence of a different drug? I ask this because barristers are on the whole extremely clever. I would like to make certain there is no escape clause in the Bill.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, was going to speak to Amendment 41A, but if he is not here I would be happy to make that case—or part of it, anyhow.
Child protection law clearly defines a child as a person under the age of 18. This is enshrined in the Children Act 1989 and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the law on neglect is 80 years old, so quite clearly it is seriously out of date. In 1933, life as a 16 year-old was very different. The school-leaving age at that time was 14. In 1931, 88.5% of males and 75.6% of females aged 16 to 17 actively participated in the labour market.
Current laws on work and benefits mean that 16 to 17 year-olds are made more vulnerable to neglect. You will not qualify for universal credit if you are under 18—with some limited exceptions. The minimum wage for a 16 to 17 year-old is £3.72 an hour, which makes it impossible for many to live independently.
This law clearly has had serious impacts on 16 to 17 year-olds. The police find it much harder to prosecute parents or guardians of 16 and 17 year-olds for abuse or neglect because these laws do not apply to 16 and 17 year-olds. Around 16,000 young people aged 16 to 17 experience a risk of homelessness as a result of conflict or relationship breakdown with their families. Ofsted’s review of serious case reviews between 2007 and 2011 showed that 18% of cases were in relation to 14-plus year-olds. One of the issues that the review highlights is that many young people in SCRs were treated as adults rather than being considered as children because of confusion about the young child’s age and legal status, or a lack of age-appropriate facilities.
What I am really stressing is that the law is inconsistent and needs clearing up. While a 16 year-old can marry, they still need permission from a parent or guardian. It makes no sense that an adult can break the law if they sell alcohol or cigarettes to a 16 to 17 year-old, or smoke in a car with a 16 or 17 year-old in the back seat, but not if they abuse or neglect them. I very much support this amendment from the Children’s Society. I hope that the Minister will be able to take account of it and work further on what needs to be done to update this law.
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 40BZB in the name of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss. I am sure that many of your Lordships are aware that very often there is a cycle of family dysfunction from one generation to the next. For instance, we know that many of the young women who come through the care system are more likely to have their children removed from them in due course.
One of the results of early neglect in childhood can be the development of a character which is very resistant to advice or intervention from others. Being rejected by one’s parents at an early age can give rise to a personality that is very wilful and resistant to others, understandably, because such people may distrust others around them. I can see this amendment being particularly helpful when one thinks of a parent who may be very wilful, who may believe absolutely, “I am not going to be told by anybody else what to do. I know how to bring up my own children”. That wilfulness may be influenced by their early experience. Dealing recently with a middle-aged man whose mother was an alcoholic and talking to the health professionals dealing with him, it was striking that no one could tell him what to do. He resisted all attempts to provide him with treatment and any advice from those around him, even the professionals.
The particular advantage of this amendment is that it may help individuals who are very resistant to taking advice from professionals. It may just be the extra incentive that will give them the chance to try something different with their children or to seek help for themselves when they are very distrustful of other people and professionals. I hope that is helpful.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I very much support my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, because her amendment absolutely stresses this emotional side that we are talking about and which has been in the background for far too long.
However, I am on my feet only because I think that the point made by my noble friend Lady Howarth is absolutely right. All these measures, and particularly the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, need to be brought in to the Bill, which should be amended. For that reason, I very much hope that the Minister will do just that.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, at Second Reading a month ago, I committed the cardinal sin of making some very specific and detailed comments of a nature belonging more to a Committee stage than otherwise. I am not going to make up for it by making a Second Reading speech today, but I very much welcome the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
I have little doubt that the draftsmen of Clause 1 of the 1933 Act intended that “cruelty” should relate to both physical and non-physical cruelty. However, in 1981 in the case of Sheppard, this House caused some confusion in relation to that matter by placing what might be described as a somewhat heavy gloss upon the words of statute. The combined effect of the amendment and Clause 62 is that the situation will be made abundantly clear. I very greatly welcome that.
I also take the point that in so far as defining cruelty in terms of serious harm, a very great bringing together of two concepts has been achieved; that is, the definition of “significant harm” in Section 31 of the Children Act 1989, which of course is the section that sets up the machinery for the obtaining of a care order, is now almost exactly the same—or so near as to make no difference whatever—as the definition of the criminal offence that this clause brings about.
I take wholeheartedly the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the last thing one wants to do is to bring these civil situations into a criminal court. Sometimes that is inevitable. I also take the point that it is right that social workers and those involved in the protection of children in the civil field should, as it were, have the same hymn sheet as those who deal with those situations in the criminal field. They are two different fields, which should be mutually exclusive if humanly possible, but nevertheless it is right that the same standard should apply to both.