Immigration Bill

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I will draw my comments to a close, as I have been generous to hon. Members across the House.

In conclusion, this power is narrowly drawn and aimed at addressing a real and current threat posed by a small number of individuals. The Government have taken steps to listen to the concerns of both Houses about statelessness. We are committed to taking proportionate action to protect the public and remove the privileges of British citizenship from those who abuse it. That is what these provisions do, and I commend them to the House.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I support the Lords amendments. Having listened to their lordships and to contributions from Members across the House, and having noted the keen interest there appears to be in this debate, I hope that the Minister will reflect on what he has said and support the Lords amendments in due course.

I will start with a quote:

“If we identify someone as a person proposing to commit a serious terrorist offence, for example, surely the obligation is on us to deal with that person. If we simply deport him, we shall be handing on—in my submission, irresponsibly—this terrorist problem to another state which may not have the same capability of dealing with it as we do. It cannot be a proper response to the terrorist threat to refuse to deal with it ourselves”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 October 2002; Vol. 639, c. 277-78.]

That was the late Lord Kingsland who spoke in October 2002 as Conservative shadow Lord Chancellor when these matters were debated in relation to nationality. At that time, the then Labour Government determined that statelessness should not be part of the legislative framework, and that prompts the question why have the Government brought forward this proposal at this time?

I think the Lords did a service to Parliament in providing it with an opportunity to discuss this proposal again, and I remind the House that the Lords voted by 242 votes to 180 to ensure that the amendment was accepted in another place. Among those who voted were a large number of Labour peers, and it is fair and proper that I report that to the House. There were also many others, both Cross-Bench, from the Government Benches and among the Bishops, who voted to ask this House to consider the matter again. Those included Lord Judge, a former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Hannay, a former senior diplomat, as well as such Liberal Democrat notaries as Lord Lester, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Lord Oakeshott and Baroness Neuberger, and also the notable former Foreign Secretary Lord Howe of Aberavon. That group of peers did not vote for the amendment to cause trouble for the Government; it is a group of peers who take an interest in this matter and have reflected on the Government’s approach. Whatever else can be said, the Home Secretary did not convince the other place that her measures were right and proper. In fact, the charitable view is that the Home Secretary has made a mess of this matter. She has tried to rush the proposals through.

[James Brokenshire]

No.

[Mr Hanson]

The Minister says no, but the Home Secretary brought forward the proposals on 30 January on Report, after they were tabled on 29 January. We had to table a manuscript amendment on Report, which we withdrew because we wanted to take legal advice. That legal advice led to a cross-party Lords amendment, moved by Lord Pannick, to ensure proper consideration of the proposals in Committee.

The Lords amendment is reasonable. It asks for the establishment of a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider and report on the complications of the removal of citizenship and the issues raised by Members across the House. From discussions I have had with the Minister, I know he is concerned that that would lead to delay, but I hope I can reassure him. Through agreement outside this House, we could, if the Lords amendment was accepted, give a time scale to that consideration to ensure that we have detailed examination and, effectively, pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposal, so that we can take the concerns raised in another place seriously, look at what points are being made even today by Members of this House and come to a consensus on this extremely serious issue—the removal of citizenship from individuals.

I think we can come to an agreement whereby a proposal is considered and completed perhaps, dare I say it, by the summer recess. I do not want to pre-empt the Gracious Speech in a couple of weeks’ time, but it will undoubtedly include a criminal justice Bill. Measures could be introduced at that stage and looked at in detail.

[Dr Huppert]

The shadow Minister is talking about the process and that is very interesting, but can I press him on the Labour party’s view on the policy principle? Some of us, including some Labour Members, voted against the measure on principle. He says that it may be a positive thing to have this sort of deprivation. His party abstained, with Whips quite forcefully stopping people voting. What is the Labour party’s position on the principle at stake?

[Mr Hanson]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come on to that point in a moment. We abstained on 30 January because we wanted to ensure that we gave proper consideration to this matter, and we supported the amendment in another place to ensure that we did consider this matter. My noble Friend Baroness Smith of Basildon signed the amendment before the House today. We want to support the amendment today and return it to the Lords.

The Labour party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) will not do anything that puts the security of the United Kingdom at risk. I want to ensure that we do not remove citizenship without a proper right of appeal. I want to ensure that people know the grounds of that removal of citizenship and that the consequences are considered. I want, with the Minister, to tighten up how the Government intend to exercise that power. How do the Government intend to ensure that what is “reasonable” is deemed to be reasonable? I want to give the Minister the opportunity to explain that. This is a serious matter that needs proper parliamentary scrutiny. We have had a very short time in another place and one day in this House to consider this matter. We need to look at it in much more detail and we need to take evidence. A large number of people outside this place have raised concerns and we need to ensure, and not just in one-and-a-half hours, that the Minister justifies the opportunity and practice over a period of time.

[Mr Harper]

The more the right hon. Gentleman speaks, the more confused I am about his position. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary tabled the amendment in January, so more than three months have passed since she put this provision before Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman has now said, notwithstanding the fact that the amendment says the Committee will serve for the duration of the Parliament, that it could all be sorted out before the summer recess, which is only two months away. What does he expect to learn in the next two months that he has not learnt in the past three?

[Mr Hanson]

I think both Houses of Parliament should have an opportunity to take evidence, as happens during pre-legislative scrutiny, and I am not the only person who thinks that. Moving the amendment in the House of Lords, Lord Pannick said:

“A Joint Committee is required because Clause 64 was added to the Bill very late in the passage of the Bill through the other place—that is, 24 hours before Report and Third Reading…so there was no pre-legislative scrutiny of this proposal, no consultation and no opportunity for consideration by the Public Bill Committee of the other place. The absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and proper consultation is especially unfortunate in a context such as this.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1168.]

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) may want to steamroller the Bill through, but I think it important that we get it right.

[Glenda Jackson]

There is a great, gaping hole in the Government’s argument. However much the Minister may speak about the powers of the Home Secretary, no British Home Secretary in the House of Commons has ever had the power to impose on a sovereign nation state laws governing whom it should or should not take back, and to whom it should or should not give a passport and citizenship.

[Mr Hanson]

My hon. Friend has anticipated some of my own arguments. Like the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), I think we need to examine important issues relating to both the deprivation of citizenship and the impact on terrorism prevention. The Minister is seeking to delete the amendment in order to prevent potential terrorist action. I want to test him on that, potentially during scrutiny in the Committee, but also in the House today.

If citizenship is removed from an individual who happens to be outside the country, we shall have given up all jurisdiction over that individual, who could be returned to the United Kingdom by a third-party country that did not recognise him as having citizenship of that country. As Lord Kingsland said in 2002, he will not be the responsibility of the United Kingdom, but will still be potentially able to undertake activity that the Minister would not support, as a result of the Minister’s own actions.

[James Brokenshire]

I am somewhat confused by what the right hon. Gentleman is now saying. Does he not support the Government’s existing use of the deprivation powers to deal with counter-terrorism?

[Mr Hanson]

The Minister should reflect on that. He will know that the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 specified just two grounds on which citizenship could be removed: it could be removed from those who had gained it through fraud, and it could be removed

“if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the person has done anything seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of…the United Kingdom”,

provided that the revocation of citizenship did not render the person stateless. That is the point, and that is the position that was taken by the Labour Government in the 2002 Act, about nine to 12 months after the horrendous events of 9/11. Surely, if we made that judgment in 2002, at the height of concern about the impact of 9/11, the Minister will be able to back it up in 2014. If he cannot, let him justify that to a Joint Committee. Lord Pannick said in another place:

“The Joint Committee will also want to consider whether the benefits, if any, of the proposed new power justify the… international implications.” .”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1169.]

How can the British Government lecture others, or promulgate international law, when the Bill proposes the establishment of circumstances which, in my view, would break international requirements across the board? The Minister says that that is not the case, which is a view that we need to discuss.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I agree with what my right hon. Friend has just said, but is not one of the fundamental problems the fact that what the Government are doing has about it more than a whiff of Executive decision making on major issues to which there is no simple legal remedy? The Government are trying to avoid a court process, and to give powers to an elected politician over an independent judiciary.

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful for that because my hon. Friend anticipates the concerns we had and that we raised in the debate on 30 January. The proposal then from the Minister was that the Home Secretary could determine, on reasonable grounds, the deprivation of citizenship. There was no judicial oversight promised. The Minister has today brought forward amendments (a) and (b) which would provide for a review. I do not happen to think they go far enough. I think we need to stick to the original idea of an examination by a Joint Committee. The Minister, however, has brought forward those amendments which move slightly from his original proposal of some six or seven weeks ago. Why has he done that? He has done so because he has been roasted in another place and, this proposal having been considered by Members of that other place, has lost the vote quite considerably. Yet today we find that, rather than listening to those concerns, the Minister wishes to vote down this amendment and has brought forward proposals that, again, I think do not go far enough.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd), when I hear phrases such as “review by SIAC” I shudder on the question of process, but I am interested to hear what the right hon. Gentleman would say to my constituents who want us to move quickly on all immigration issues—who say we are not moving fast enough, we are not making change quickly enough. What is the relative merit of his proposal to support Lords amendments that would delay enactment as opposed to the Government proposal to see and review the impact after enactment?

[Mr Hanson]

That is a legitimate question, and it is one that deserves an answer. The point I would make is that we are legislating. If we legislate for this and if it goes back to the other place in the form the Minister has brought forward, it will be enacted: it will have Royal Assent within a matter of, presumably, days. We will therefore have one year of operation between May or June 2014 through to May or June 2015. That is fair enough. We will then review it and make changes. All the concerns raised by Members today would potentially be applicable in that 12-month period. The argument I would make is that if we accept the amendment that has been considered by the Lords, we can look at this, get it right and ensure that the concerns that have been raised not just here today but by Members in another place are dealt with. The measures that are taken will then have the full confidence of both Houses of Parliament. At the moment, given the vote that was taken in the other place—242 in favour and 180 against— the proposals the Minister brought forward previously do not have the support and confidence of both Houses. The removal of citizenship is such a challenging and extreme measure to take that it must have the confidence of both Houses of Parliament.

[Mr Buckland]

I listened with interest when the right hon. Gentleman talked about his fear that the UK would be in breach of its international obligations in relation to statelessness if the Government’s proposals went through. Which particular international obligations does he think the UK would be in breach of?

[Mr Hanson]

I am trying to ensure that we propagate good practice. There are many states that currently remove citizenship from individuals. It has happened in Iraq and it has happened in other countries before, and we have been critical of that. We are trying to ensure that any action taken by a Government, particularly when it is one of Executive power by the Home Secretary, is supported by both Houses of Parliament.

Let me give the hon. Gentleman the opinion of international lawyer Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, who says that:

“any state that admitted an individual on the basis of his or her British passport would be fully entitled to ignore any purported deprivation of citizenship and as a matter of right return that person to the UK.”

That was the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson). We need to consider this in considerable detail.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The shadow Minister did say that this was in breach of our international obligations, but he now says it is only a matter of good practice. He has quoted another international jurist and many Members from the other place, but we are the elected Members. Some of us have come to this debate to try to make up our minds. If we could hear more of what the right hon. Gentleman thinks of the principle of the Bill and the arguments around it, we could make a decision today, and I for one would enormously appreciate that.

[Mr Hanson]

I could do worse than to cite what Lord Deben, a Conservative peer, has said—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman looks as though he lacks concern about this, but I am expressing a number of concerns that have been expressed, both in this House and in—[Interruption.] My view is that we need to ensure that if we take this step, we do it in an effective and appropriate way that does not damage the credibility of the anti-terrorism case. Removing someone’s citizenship is an extreme measure and it has to be done in a way that is appropriate. The Minister has not made it clear to me that the “reasonable” judgments of the Home Secretary—[Interruption.] If the Parliamentary Private Secretary would like to join in the conversation, he could go to the Back Benches and do so. For the past three months we have received wodges of legal advice and wodges of views saying, “This is not practical, it will not be effective and it will damage our attacks on terrorism.” The Minister is asking us to take things on trust, but the other place has determined that it wants to examine these issues in detail, argue them and test the Minister on them, and that is a fair proposal.

Lord Deben, a Conservative colleague of the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), has said that

“to take away someone’s citizenship, it is not reasonable to say that you assume that they can get another country’s citizenship. It is only reasonable to say that you know that they have another citizenship; anything less than that is wrong. It may not be convenient, but it is not right.

We have been the signatory to and the driver of much of the international law that seeks to reduce statelessness to its minimum. I fear that in this particular case, we may, for very good reasons—in seeking to close loopholes…do something which will do great injustice to a very small number of people.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 March 2014; Vol. 753, c. 213.]

That is what we need to test by a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament and that is what we need to test over the next few weeks and months, which is why the other place has given its support. Justice, Liberty and the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, among others, have made cogent arguments as to why we need to consider this in detail. We need to examine it, and I support the retention of the Lords amendment and hope the House will do so.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I am greatly concerned about this measure, and I will just make some observations. The Minister referred to the power that the Home Secretary used to have in relation to something being not conducive to the public good. Its removal created a real difficulty for Governments, but my concern is not the difficulty for Governments; my concern is for the British common law system. This is not about the European Court of Justice—its rulings or anything else. The issue of concern to me is: what is our process?

I believe, and this was fundamental to our legal system, that a person should know the reasons they are to be aggrieved, but that is not possible under the Bill. He or she will not know the reasons they are being deprived of citizenship, so they can make no case that can be held to be valid, because they do not know what they are challenging—or they will claim they do not know what they are being challenged with. We do not know and the public do not know, so this violates one of the first principles of our legal system—our common law system. I want the House always to remember that our common law system in England has been absolutely essential to our liberties, freedoms, standing and our sense of who we are.

I understand the difficulties that Governments face, as there are a lot of wicked, evil people out there, but the answer has always been to prosecute. We are told, “Oh we can’t prosecute because in a prosecution we may have to reveal our sources.” This is the nightmare situation that the world in which we now live is facing: we are not to know, we cannot know and we cannot challenge. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission is one of the most monstrous extrusions on the national scene, as not even the solicitor representing the accused or the person who loses their citizenship knows the reasons their client is there. Gisting? Well, all those rules that have been put in place essentially deny open justice using the argument of national security.

I have been a Member of Parliament for 36 years, and I look back over the decline of our sense of who we are, what our system is, and our freedoms and liberties, which are concentrated in the concept of the common law. I did not invent it—we did not invent it—it came from the movement of the people of this country over hundreds of years and the development of our legal system. Year after year, in a way that one could never assume would happen, Governments have gone out searching for new measures to conceal the openness of what justice should be. We, as citizens of this country, have a right to know why people are charged. That is why we have an open court system, so that we can judge whether the measures are competent, reasonable or truthful to the purpose of our nation. That is why I cannot support the very notion that so much power should be concentrated in one individual—a Home Secretary—whether good or bad, that they may make decisions of this nature without our being able to challenge whether they are valid, true or right. I want the House to stand up for who we are and what our system of justice is—and it is not secret justice.

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[Mr Harper]

Let me first remind the House what we are asking it to do today—to disagree with the Lords in their amendment. I have a reason for saying that. I listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), the shadow Minister said, as he carefully avoided setting out his party’s view and quoted lots of other people back at us. His proposed solution was to spend the next two months before the summer recess coming to a rapid conclusion. I think that he accepts that there is a legitimate national security issue here, but what he said does not reflect what the amendment says.

Paragraph (2) of Lords amendment 18 talks about nominating a Committee that would serve

“for the duration of the present Parliament”,

with no deadline to reach a conclusion. I repeat what I said in my intervention on the right hon. Gentleman. I accept his point that there was not much time between tabling the amendment and the Report stage in this House. It is a perfectly fair point that we had discussions before the issues were discussed in the House of Lords. However, three months have elapsed and these matters have been considered in the other place, and I really do not understand what we are going to learn in the next two months that we have not been able to learn in the past three months.

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal is that the Committee shall serve for the duration of this Parliament. I was trying to be ever helpful by offering the Minister the opportunity that we could, through the usual channels, determine to examine these matters in a reasonable time. We could set that time informally even if the Committee did serve for the duration of the Parliament.

[Mr Harper]

I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but that is not provided for. The Committee regulates its procedure. Nothing here talks about the balance of party members on the Committee. The Chairman of Committees in the other place will nominate the members from the House of Lords, and the Speaker of the House of Commons will nominate those from this place. There is no provision in the amendment to do what the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

If a Committee of members of both Houses considers the matter at length, it will produce a report. If we accept for the sake of argument that it manages to agree on the right outcome, it will only produce a report that will inform a further debate in this House. Members of this House will still be required to take a decision. We will still be required to weigh up the arguments that my hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration so ably laid out before the House today and the Home Secretary did in January. We will still be required to consider the arguments that the shadow Minister did not put before the House; he simply recited the views of others. We will not be freed from the responsibility of taking a decision. It is the “kick the can down the road” amendment, which allows the House to avoid taking a decision.

These are difficult issues. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd), whom I respect hugely on these matters, but there is a balance to be struck between defending the liberties of our citizens and protecting us from terrorism. I do not reach easily for the national security argument. I was pleased when I was elected to the House to vote against the provisions for 90-day pre-trial detention. But this is a proportionate and limited proposal. I supported the previous measure. The Home Secretary has listened to the debate on 30 January in this House and to the debate in the other place. Amendments (a) and (b) do two things. First, they ensure that we are not left with a situation of someone left unable to seek citizenship. She has to have reasonable grounds for believing that they are able to, and that addresses many of the concerns raised previously by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who set those out on 30 January.

A review mechanism is now in place, whether by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation or another independent person, which will enable the House to look quite quickly, after an initial one-year process, and then every subsequent three years, at the actual implementation of the legislation in practice, so enabling us, if there are issues, if some of the concerns set out by my hon. Friend for Aldridge-Brownhills or others come to light, to enable the House to amend the legislation. The concern that the Home Secretary set out with the al-Jedda judgment leaves a gap in our legislation, which leaves us vulnerable to those who would do us harm.

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[James Brokenshire]

Clearly, having announced the trials at the end of January, I want to see them proceed. It is important that we test the service and the system, which is patchy and not as consistent as I want it to be. Equally, some local authorities provide good services and it is important that we recognise that and learn from them. We want an enabling provision in the draft Modern Slavery Bill to be the bedrock that provides the mechanism, which can be informed by the trials that I want to happen, that can be acted on and be the statutory underpinning that allows it to be developed through the experience of the trials. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will find that helpful in underlining the Government’s commitment not simply to provide a statutory mechanism through that enabling provision, but to deliver practical action. The most important thing is that we provide support, advice and guidance for this extraordinarily vulnerable group, and that we ensure they are supported through the system. That is what matters most.

[Mr Hanson]

Can the Minister remind us how many trials there will be, and where and when? What is the date of completion and when does he intend to report back to the House?

[James Brokenshire]

The trials are intended to be conducted in 23 areas, commencing at the beginning of July. We have not, at this stage, set an end point for the duration of the trials, but I want evidence and feedback that can inform the consideration of an enabling power in any modern slavery Bill that comes forward. A statutory mechanism will ensure that the trials can commence and that we can learn and benefit directly from them, enabling a statutory underpinning of the optimum provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that and I have certainly heard the points she has made.

I know that others wish to speak to their manuscript amendments, but let me just say that Lords amendment 19 clarifies that the Bill does not limit the duty regarding the welfare of children imposed on the Secretary of State or any other person by section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009. Under section 55, the Secretary of State must make arrangements for ensuring that her functions in relation to immigration, asylum and nationality are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the UK. That duty continues to apply, and nothing in the Bill impinges on it.

Lords amendment 20 relates to some technical changes concerning the bank accounts measures. Lords amendments 21 to 23 respond to recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, ensuring that, where appropriate, affirmative procedure processes apply in respect of certain notices and certain aspects of the sham marriage provisions contained in part 4 of the Bill. I believe that the Lords amendments, with the exception of Lords amendments 16 and 24, improve the provisions, making them clearer and more workable in practice.

[Mr Hanson]

I, again, thank the Minister for his helpful introduction to the Government’s position on the Lords amendments. I am here to maintain Her Majesty’s official Opposition’s support for them and wish the Government to reflect on that again during today’s debate. I pay tribute to Baroness Butler-Sloss for tabling her amendments in the other place. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for scrutinising the evidence for the draft Modern Slavery Bill. I have heard what the Minister said about the proposals on a pilot and the enabling power in such a Bill, but I remain unconvinced that that will lead to the action that we want and, indeed, the action that the other place has proposed for consideration.

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[Mr Frank Field]

I hope that what the Minister has said does satisfy the other place, but if we vote against the Government motion tonight, it can decide. That is the advantage. I think that the Minister has satisfied us, but I would not want the other place and those who moved the amendments not to have the possibility to consider when they read Hansard whether they are satisfied.

[Mr Hanson]

My right hon. Friend makes a valuable point. As I said at the beginning, the vote was 282 to 184 in favour of the proposal. If we reject the proposal today, we are left with no proposal. We are left with a promise of a pilot and a Bill after the Gracious Speech, following the scrutiny rightly given to it by my right hon. Friend.

[Dr Huppert]

A few of us are slightly confused about the procedure, and the right hon. Gentleman has been here longer than I have, so perhaps he could help us. If the House were to accept the Lords amendment, the Lords would not discuss this again; whereas, if we rejected it, the Lords would have the chance to discuss it. Regardless of merit, is that not the right way round?

[Mr Hanson]

That is the right way round. The Lords expressed a clear view on the matter. The Lords will be able to examine the Government’s proposal when the Modern Slavery Bill comes forward. But we have a clear template today, and I want to see that enacted. If the Government accept this today, the proposal is a clear template. We have a number of proposals from Baroness Butler-Sloss, and I have gone through them today.

[James Brokenshire]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is saying that he wants to accept the Lords amendments because he feels that they are right, but that if he does so, it would not allow any further consideration by the Lords in terms of reflecting on what I have said from the Front Bench.

[Mr Hanson]

Their lordships have expressed their view clearly, and what the Minister has said today is known already. He announced that he had said in January that he would have pilots on the matter. The draft Modern Slavery Bill has been scrutinised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, and there is a template that we should support, and that is why I reject the Government’s proposal.

[Mr Harper]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is missing the fact that the amendments are narrowly framed. They deal only with children who come to the UK from abroad. On trafficking and modern slavery, I have constant representations about not just focusing on people who come from outside the UK. The Minister has set out a sensible point. If we reject the amendments, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has said, the other place has the option of sending them back to us again, and we can consider them again if it does not think that the Minister’s representations hold water. That is the right course of action.

[Mr Hanson]

There is clearly a common interest but a disagreement on procedure. If the Minister has a view about the impact of children being trafficked in the UK, such as in the case in Rochdale that he mentioned, he has the draft Modern Slavery Bill to contribute to those matters. But there is a clear will from the other place, which was supported on a cross-party basis, and I would wish to see that as the template for discussion today.

[Mr Harper]

One thing that would not be helpful is to put these measures in place and have a procedure that deals with foreign national children when the draft Modern Slavery Bill, expertly scrutinised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, will put in place yet another process for children who happen to be UK nationals. It would be much more sensible to have one process that deals with all children who are victims of slavery. We should not make the system more complicated than it need be.

[Mr Hanson]

Imperative action is needed now. I have dealt with a number of Bills over the past few years and seen the Government bringing back amendments and amending their own legislation not six months after they introduced it. There is potential here today for a clear statement and clear action on the international trafficking of children. The pilots that the Minister brings forward can be undertaken.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that if the Minister gave a commitment, which he has not done, that this comprehensive amendment, with all the powers for advocates included, would be in his proposed Modern Slavery Bill, we would not feel the need to press this to a vote? However, the Minister has not yet given that promise.

[Mr Hanson]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, correct. I have not yet had, following my intervention on the Minister, a closing date for his proposed pilot. We do not know what the outcome of that pilot will be. We have taken a principled position on the amendments from Baroness Butler-Sloss that there is scope for that to be done immediately. I am talking about not just us here, but UNICEF, Anti-Slavery International, Barnardo’s, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Amnesty International. An EU directive, which may not find favour with everyone in the House, says that we should consider that step. I understand that position, because 5.5 million children globally are trafficked each year. The UK Human Trafficking Centre identified 549 child victims in 2012. The national referral mechanism recognises 349 victims. A number of trafficked children face being sold into the sex trade and being exploited through work, cannabis farming, forced begging and sexual exploitation.

There is a need now to send out a strong signal that we want to take action on that in England and Wales. Trafficked children who arrive in Scotland value the care and support that they receive from their appointed guardians. That system works in Scotland, yet constituencies such as mine and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends still face real difficulties in that regard. Such a system operates not just in Scotland, but in many western European states, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. There are templates for a system and it is time that we put in place a legislative framework for it. I wish to see that undertaken and supported today.

In passing, may I say that I welcome the changes on residential accommodation that the Government have accepted from the other place? In particular, I welcome the changes on student accommodation. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) is in his place today, as he has pressed over the past weeks and months, in Committee, to me personally and to the Minister, a very strong case to ensure that all student accommodation was included in the Bill. It is good that, following the discussions in Committee and the representations from members of Sheffield university’s students union whom my hon. Friend brought to London, the Minister has accepted that point. The Minister will have our support on those Lords amendments that have been accepted on residential landlords, students and other areas, because they are important issues.

I look forward to hearing what the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) has to say on her manuscript amendments. The Lords amendment has our support, and I hope that it will have the House’s support in due course.