Human Trafficking (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has properly said, this is a vital Bill affecting a large number of vulnerable people exploited by evil gangs. I therefore think it quite wrong that the government business managers attempted to muzzle the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and to restrict him to six minutes, and to encourage the rest of us to finish all we have to say within what is now about 50 minutes.

I shall make two preliminary points. First, like the sad individual stories which the noble Lord, Lord McColl—I am tempted to call him “my noble friend” for all sorts of good reasons—has given, I was most moved by an episode of “From Our Own Correspondent” relating to a woman from Moldova looking forward to going to work in a cafe in Italy. The correspondent describes her wearing her best dress and, carrying her small number of belongings, waving goodbye to him. He felt quite sure that she was probably on her way, unwittingly, to a brothel.

This is not an evil restricted to London. I shall give one or two thoughts on the Welsh connection. I am delighted that the National Assembly has an all-party committee and that we in Wales have established a national co-ordinator, a former senior police officer, who, a few months ago, pointed out that the looser controls at our ports may well lead to an increase in trafficking by these evil individuals and organisations.

My chief interest is that I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and, as noble Lords are aware, the Council of Europe introduced a treaty on action against trafficking in human beings which came into force in February 2008. The UK ratified the convention in December of that year, and it has been in force in our country since April 2009. Our compliance with the convention is now monitored by the Council of Europe group of experts on the convention—known as GRETA—which visited this country at the end of October to evaluate the implementation of the convention, so this issue is not far from the Government’s mind.

I congratulate the Government on the coalition agreement on tackling human trafficking as a priority, but I have concerns about the lack of effort to make us compliant with the demands of the Council of Europe convention, and I suspect that those concerns are shared by GRETA. They are twofold; first, the Government seem to have taken action only at the level of policy, not at the level of legislation, which raises real concerns about long-term enforceability within our legal system; and secondly, the Government seem to relate to the subject of trafficking as if it were an immigration problem when the Council of Europe’s convention against trafficking is in fact a human rights convention. Anyone reading the recently published government anti-trafficking strategy could be forgiven for thinking that we are not a signatory to the Council of Europe convention because of the overwhelming focus on immigration and lack of recognition of and focus on the human rights dimension, which is covered strongly in this welcome Bill.

In this context, of course I welcome the Bill because it provides the most concrete device to appear since we became a convention signatory for giving our new commitments effect within UK law. The Bill is, I am sure, precisely the kind of innovation which GRETA would approve and without which I suspect we are unlikely to get high marks when GRETA’s report is published in June.

For time reasons, I shall not go through the individual clauses of the Bill and their relation to the convention, save to mention that Article 12 of the convention requires the Government to provide assistance to victims of trafficking. However, as the noble Lord described, the situation on the ground suggests that service provision is far from ideal and Clause 7 addresses those issues.

Article 10 of the convention states that as soon as an unaccompanied child is identified, that child must be provided with representation,

“by a legal guardian, organisation or authority which shall act in the best interests of that child”;

However, in the UK we still have no system of guardianship as have other developed countries in the European Union. The noble Lord mentioned the sad figures of children who have escaped or been taken from local authority control, which is covered in Clause 9.

Finally, Article 29 of the convention requires states to consider appointing a national rapporteur. The UK Government have not taken serious action on this point thus far, which is covered in Clause 12. There are aspects of the convention not in the Bill, including Article 15, which deals with using assets seized from traffickers to fund assistance for the victims of trafficking. I hope that the Government will look at that.

The Government have done some good things. I particularly welcome the fact that expenditure has continued at the same level. However, we cannot take the convention seriously just through policy commitments. There is a need for some change within domestic legislation to give proper, enforceable, accountable expression to key convention commitments. This is the end purpose of the Bill, which I find timely and I wholly welcome. I congratulate the noble Lord on the Bill.