Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I support Amendment 85A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to which I was pleased to add my name. I also express my support for the case made by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and pay tribute to him for his role in bringing us as far as we have got.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights made the case for a guardian or advocate system for all unaccompanied migrant children in its report Human Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Young People in the UK. In that report we pointed out that,

“the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called for the establishment of a system of guardianship in its General Comment No. 6. It says a guardian should be present in ‘all planning and decision-making processes’ to provide ‘the continuum of care required by the child’. The presence of a guardian was also a specific recommendation to the United Kingdom in the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s State Report in 2008, which called for an independent system to ensure that a child’s best interests was considered throughout the decision-making process. The UNHCR insisted that a guardian would help ‘best interests remain a primary consideration throughout the procedure’”.

We repeated our recommendation in our report on the Modern Slavery Bill. In essence, the argument is very much that put by Sarah Teather MP in the Public Bill Committee that any unaccompanied child is vulnerable. This is recognised in other European countries, including Scotland. Indeed, these children become vulnerable to trafficking, a point made by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. It argued that unaccompanied children and children without parental care living in residential institutions are at higher risk of being trafficked. In response to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, I suggest that that is perhaps one reason why it is appropriate for this amendment to be in the Bill.

I understand the Government’s fear, as expressed in the Public Bill Committee, that this would risk diluting the advocates’ skill set and expertise and that spreading the expertise too thinly could mean trafficked children not receiving the support that they need, a point made by the Minister, Karen Bradley. However, I think that this argument is weakened by the powerful argument put by the noble Lord, Lord Patel—it is an argument that civil society groups, particularly those in the Refugee Children’s Consortium, have put to us—that we do not always know who is a trafficked child. In order to ensure that trafficked children are not falling through the net, it is important that the advocate or guardian is not restricted only to helping trafficked children. Again, I hope that that meets the reservation expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It is essential for trafficked children for this to be widened. I hope that the Minister will address this argument and think a bit further about the argument about dilution, which I think is misplaced.

[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.