Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[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.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I too support this amendment. Those who work at the front line with women who come before the courts share the frustration voiced by my noble friend Lady Corston. So much time has passed since her report that it is a serious failure for us as a nation that we have not dealt with this issue of women offenders and the best way of responding to it. I know that the Minister is well aware of the statistics. About 80% of the women who come before the courts are victims, brought up in homes where domestic violence was part of the round or where they were sexually abused. They are more victims than many who readily bear that title. Over 60% of them suffer from mental illness and 66% are mothers with children. When we send them to prison, we actually visit the effects on whole families, bringing the care system into play. Housing is often lost and the consequences are dire.

Real speed is needed to respond to this. I attended a conference only a week ago chaired by the previous Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers. The room was full of people who work on the front line in the probation service. All said that they hoped the Government would take urgent action. I support the amendment but I also want us to say that my noble friend Lady Corston did an absolutely vital piece of work. It reiterated what many people had said before, recently in Scotland by Dame Elish Angiolini. I hope that the Government will see that this is a story that has been told over and over again. Somehow we have to respond with greater speed than has happened so far.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as someone who has put her name to amendment after amendment on this issue of why on earth we did not include women in a Bill on crime and courts, I hope that the Government will do something about it. The Corston report is totally brilliant. We have all agreed that. It set out the areas that needed attention and not just that: we all know that there were many reports before it. It is not just a question of five years, but of report after report making special recommendations about the needs of women offenders. We all know the degree of mental health problems and sexual and other forms of abuse that these women have had over the years. Equally, we know of the terrible damage to children when families are broken up and children taken into care.

Returning to what my noble friend said about young offenders, I was looking at a report by the probation inspectorate. Ofsted and, I think, Estyn did a sample looking at the support that these young people had. Many of them have, no doubt, come from homes such as this, and have been in care for goodness knows how long. More than a third of these children examined by the inspectorate were placed more than 100 miles from home, and a lot of them were found in situations where they were almost next door to offenders. One was found having sex with a 15 year-old boy in a children’s home. It is not exactly a pretty picture.

Although we did not manage to reach these amendments on the days that we were promised they would be reached, and therefore could not vote on them and cannot vote on them now, will the Government please think very hard about making these changes? I have waited a long time this afternoon and have not taken up time on other amendments. We should not wait just because we have a brilliant Minister; I am sure that she is brilliant. Above all, I hope that we can now ensure that mention is made in the Bill of the needs of women, who are a very important group.