Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for his persistence and inspiration in keeping this on the agenda and bringing this Bill before us today.

I declare a number of interests. I was on the Select Committee that helped to craft the legislation, which was a good foundation—but all the evidence shows, and some of us realised this at the time, that it needs to be developed with further investment, as we learned from victims, and the adjustments of the police and other statutory authorities. I declare an interest, too, as chairman of the advisory panel of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, to whom the noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred and who is doing some amazing work, helping us to see where the foundations can be strengthened and developed.

The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, has pointed to the fact that this is a perfect storm in the number of vulnerable and desperate people who are attracted and often tricked into coming to our country and into slavery. We have to push back upstream, as the saying goes—and it is great to hear what is happening in Hull. Next Monday, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner will release a report after he was asked by the Government to visit Vietnam and look at the relationships with cultures from which people are exported into slavery and to provide contacts for people to return. He is also looking at how economies can be developed to encounter this storm of vulnerable people.

We have heard how the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner has been working with the Work and Pensions Committee, making suggestions to the Government about the NRM. All this is evidence- based and putting victims at the centre, which is what this Bill is about and why I think it is the next obvious step for us to take.

My third declaration is that I am involved with the Clewer initiative with the Church of England and other partners, which is being launched formally on 17 October but is already working to help voluntary groups and churches in particular to engage with victims and support the statutory agencies and other partners, including safeguarding partners in local authorities, to provide energy, wisdom and expertise to add resource to what needs to be done.

Second Reading is about matters of principle, and I want to highlight two or three principles that are important to consider and invite the Minister to reflect on them with us in looking at the proposals before us. The first is about numbers. The Minister in the other place has recognised that the numbers quoted are grossly inadequate. We are looking at a vast problem affecting almost every community; even in rural Derbyshire we discover evidence of people in slavery. So the resource implications will be huge, and we have to face that. How will we resource the needs of victims as we improve our ability to identify them, pushing back against crime and helping them to recover?

The key principle that I want your Lordships to think about is recovery. This is not just about rescuing people—it is recovery. I have had the sad privilege of meeting and working with a number of victims: women who have been raped 10 times a day, who asked for drugs to save them from the pain; people in domestic servitude, who sleep on the floor and are on call 24/7, trapped in a house; and 16 or 20 men in the city of Derby, living in a two-up, two-down house with one bathroom, a bus to work and a bus back, who have £5 a week to spend and whose passports have been confiscated. We meet people like that, from whom the very humanity has been knocked out. They are broken and their ability to think of themselves as human beings is very weak indeed.

The crime works and is such a successful business because it is good at recruiting people who are vulnerable anyway: those who are homeless or who have emotional or mental health problems. This is why resourcing is so important. People in that state do not just need a quick system—at the NRM we are realising that we need more time, resource and benefit cover—they also need loving, basically, and that is really hard to do. One thing the Clewer initiative is about is finding how people can voluntarily go the extra mile and step up. In my diocese, we provide support for the police with premises for interviews. Our Mothers’ Union puts together toiletries to give to people to make them feel that their body is worth caring for. We try to provide volunteers to sit with victims and to provide accommodation, with the Red Cross and others, when the system is creaking and people are falling between the cracks.

I invite the Minister to help us think about this. There are enormous resource implications and there has to be a judgment about how it is to be delivered. How are we going to balance asking the statutory authorities and the benefit system to do what they can in the right timeframe to give people a chance to rediscover their humanity? How are we—especially the Government in their guidance to statutory bodies—going to encourage partnership with things like the Clewer initiative and other voluntary and faith groups, which can provide such a precious extra dimension by saying to people, “You are a person”; “You can be loved”; “You can have a future”? They can go the extra mile when technical resources are often constrained. I hope the Minister will help us reflect on how the voluntary and faith sectors can partner with statutory provision to provide much better resources for recovery.

Modern Slavery (Transparency in Supply Chains) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Friday 8th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I too thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and support these suggestions. I declare an interest in that I am the chairman of the advisory panel to the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and am therefore, among other things, quite heavily involved in some of these issues.

My first point is that the Modern Slavery Act recognised very clearly the importance of information, which gives power. If you hide information, people get the wrong kind of power to behave badly. Besides trying to press companies to behave well and have good practices, we need to remind ourselves that this is not simply to fight on behalf of victims—although that is of course the priority—but to fight against serious organised crime, which in itself is a very successful business model that is expanding all the time, as we speak. It is therefore in the interests of proper companies to help us all to push back against criminal business behaviour, which has these appalling human consequences and is also enormously damaging to the health of our economy and the well-being of business more generally.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned that the Modern Slavery Act asks companies to provide information, in a self-regulatory way, about their performance in this area. The research that she mentioned shows very clearly that the Act highlighted six areas on which it would be sensible for companies to report, so that one could see that they were doing all that they could to fight slavery in their supply chains. The research done recently shows that only about 10% of the companies that have even filed any kind of report are looking at those six key areas, which are essential to give anybody a sense of how they are performing, what their aspirations are and where they might be going.

The desire to have companies report in the way that the Act has sketched it out is not working in terms of the performance and response of companies. As the noble Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, there is a big issue about how to get companies to pay attention to responsible reporting. One way, which I spoke about in the debates on the legislation, would be to make a small amendment to the Companies Act 2006 to simply require this degree of reporting. The Government were not keen on that; the Minister may want to comment on the latest thinking about that slight legislative change that would deliver some important steps in this direction.

If we are to maintain the understandable line that we do not want to burden businesses, but want them, for their own good, to develop good practice and create a positive business culture, how are we going to enable them to get over the line and work properly? Let me give noble Lords some encouraging signs and then end with a question for the Minister about a particular concern.

I do a lot in this area in Derbyshire, where I work as the Bishop. The University of Derby, with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, offers a course on which businesses can send the people they employ to learn how to monitor supply chains, and how to organise supply chains and procurement contracts to develop good practice. That is one tool that is being developed. It is a simple one, but people in offices need to learn how to do it.

We have done some work with businesses in Derbyshire. I get the heads of businesses to meet the police, and when the police explain how unscrupulous agencies can filter people into the system and apparently give them a good deal, eyes are opened and they immediately see the importance for procurement contracts and for every kind of occasional supplier, down to the people who clean the windows in their factories. We must encourage businesses to recognise the scope of the crime and how vulnerable many of them are—especially the large ones—and show them the simple steps, such as this one, that can be taken.

Two weeks ago, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury was in our diocese for a few days. He and I convened a meeting with business leaders, at which a number of significant businesses—JCB, Bowmer & Kirkland and other large businesses in our culture—signed the Athens ethical principles about having good auditing practices to try to stamp out slavery in the supply chain. This is another voluntary effort. It is great that those companies are signing up, and it is an example and a model for others. However, it is very patchy, and it depends on someone like me having the passion to get people into a room and help them to get on the same page.

Another ray of hope is the fact that, with the Roman Catholic Church and on behalf of the Church of England and the Anglican communion, we are working under the banner of the Global Sustainability Network. It is trying to help companies internationally and Governments in relation to their legislation to occupy this space creatively, learn from each other and develop good audit practices. This was much influenced by the Pope’s encyclical last year, Laudato Si’, which brings together care for people and care for the planet. With good auditing practices, businesses can show that they are being positive in both those areas. Such auditing can help them to perform better and it satisfies public demand better.

I have a concern about the mechanism, which was discussed during the crafting of the legislation, for some kind of central repository. As other speakers have said, how can we know what businesses are doing, and how can a good business—such as the businesses that have signed up to the Athens ethical principles in Derby—show how it is performing? There is a free market, and a number of operators in it are offering services to help businesses. If they divide up the market, it will be even more difficult for anybody to know what a particular business is doing, whether it has registered and whether it is meeting the right criteria.

I want to ask the Minister about two organisations based in Bristol, Semantrica and a charity that works for victims called Unseen, which offer services that people will have to pay for using. Some of the information will be publicly available, but some will be available only to those who pay for it. This organisation, which is backed by Google and Polaris—some large operators are involved—claims to work in close collaboration with the UK Government. I would be very interested if the Minister commented on what that means. Are the Government trying to develop an official arm? If so, it would be helpful to know what investment the Government are making, what other models they have looked at and what processes have been considered in discerning this as the way ahead. If the Government are not involved, what are we going to do about this growing unregulated market of people trying to offer central repositories? By definition, such repositories will be not central, but partial. They are themselves businesses that are trying to do good work, but they are making our task more difficult.

The organisations I have mentioned are linking a central repository with the provision of a helpline. We also talked about this during the crafting of the legislation. It is absolutely crucial to have a proper helpline both to identify victims and, within that, to identify bad practice in businesses. What are we going to do about inviting in the people who provide intelligence—for the police, for the Government and for others—that might help us to fight this crime and about developing practices to enable us to do so efficiently? Has this particular initiative, which claims to be supported by the UK Government, looked at the practices followed by other helplines and learned any wisdom from them? Do the Government have a view about the role of helplines in this whole enterprise?

This issue is very difficult because of its sheer complexity and volume. If, like me, noble Lords occasionally meet victims, they would not hesitate to do everything they could to help businesses beyond the front line of this terrible exploitation and abuse of human beings. If, as I sometimes do, they meet business leaders, they would not hesitate to help them perform responsibly in a system that allows them to do so, sets benchmarks for them and gives them a way of letting their customers know that they are trying hard in this area. People are anxious to do that, but they need the right tools and structures. I would be very grateful if the Minister commented on what kind of tools and structures the Government want to endorse, given that, as I said at the beginning of my speech, the initial research shows that performance on the aims—I understand them to be to encourage businesses to self-regulate and to develop this themselves—is very skewed, very unsatisfactory and not very helpful to anybody.

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for introducing this vital debate and making the point that we need to keep this subject in the public domain to raise awareness and challenge people.

I want to offer some perspectives from my experience in Derby, where I operate as a bishop at grassroots level, to try to help understand why we are in this position and how we might best tackle things. Your Lordships will know that FGM is a very ancient practice going back to at least the fifth century BC. It was mentioned by Herodotus, especially in Egypt and Ethiopia, all that time ago. I remind noble Lords that FGM was practised until the 1950s in western countries as part of dealing with what was then called “female deviancy”. Things such as hysteria, epilepsy and lesbianism were dealt with by this horrific practice as an enlightened medical approach to those conditions. We have to recognise that it is not only deeply embedded in ancient culture, but until quite recently in the west, we have been implicated in using this barbaric method for medical reasons.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, have been very clear about the physical and psychological damage that FGM causes and about the sheer scale. I think I am right in saying that even today in Egypt, 90% of girls are cut between the age of five and 14, and in Yemen 75% of girls are cut before they are two weeks old. I mention those statistics because that shows how, as people move into Europe and our country, the culture is reinforced by new recruits who inhabit it. So it is not simply a matter of having a law and fighting back; the problem comes from all over the world into our midst as we speak.

There are four “reasons” in the background why FGM is and has been prevalent. One, as we have heard, is to do with culture and faith frameworks; one is to do with the idea of a rite of passage; one is to do with concepts of purity and virginity; and one is to do with the control of female sexuality. Of course the Government must take a lead in their policy and legal framework but, as someone who was involved in the legislation against slavery, I would observe that it is very difficult to express in law something that can work effectively. With slavery, as with this issue, prosecutions are very low. Therefore, besides the Government giving out a proper signal and benchmark that this is unacceptable and barbaric, we have to work at all kinds of other levels, especially the cultural and faith ones, if we are going to really try to turn the tide.

In the work I have been involved in with colleagues in Derby, there are a number of methods of trying to enable an enlightened discussion. We have much to learn because the areas concerned—gender, the role of women and sexuality—are ones that we in the West struggle with too. We have to be careful about saying that we have all the answers and other people just need to jump to our solutions; we can have fruitful discussions with friends and neighbours from all kinds of cultures about gender, female sexuality and the role of women in society.

From my experience, there are four issues which I invite the Government to think about in terms of their own investment and encouragement. The first is appropriate spaces for conversations, the sharing of stories and the sharing of cultural faith hinterlands. How do we create the kind of space that is safe? Secondly, there is a very challenging issue which we in politics ought to know about: pace. There is a great danger of moving on to the offensive, which will cause a defensive reaction. We need a conversation and debate that is paced so that people can get into it, be influenced by it, participate in it and be changed by it. We have to be very careful about wagging a big finger, so that people do not just think, “Well, that’s western liberal culture, and we have something precious to preserve against it”.

The third thing that we have learned is that the official agencies—the law, safeguarding and local authorities—have limited resources and are regarded by people in a limited way. Therefore, although they must do the policing and act out the standards, they need the support of the informal grass-roots sector, where friends and neighbours can have conversations, listen to each other, share stories and raise aspirations of what is possible, right and desirable. Fourthly, we had a day conference in Derby and did all sorts of informal work with other churches, faith groups and community groups. As a result, we now have 10 community champions, providing community support and signposting at grass-roots level, looking out for the opportunities for those conversations, encouraging them and getting people in the circle, so that there can be genuine change that people have signed up for and committed to, rather than jumping to an abstract law that is thundering towards them.

So my simple question to the Minister is: how might the Government take seriously that important grass-roots work, which requires a particular kind of space, pace, community champions and informality, and which will have an enormous effect in reinforcing the formal law and systems? How might the Government encourage and invest in that work, which would achieve real change and pushback? How might that be part of the action plan that, as has rightly been said, needs to be put on the table?

Advertising of Prostitution (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and thank him for introducing the Bill and for his important work in this important area. I will make a couple of points about the context and about the issue that we are debating. First, there is the scale of it. I was at a lecture on Saturday where somebody explained that demand for the purchase of sex increased enormously in the 1990s with the increasing availability of online pornography. The statistics went from one in 20 men buying sex to one in 10. That is a massive increase in the market. In its briefing paper, the Institute of Economic Affairs almost celebrates that by saying that it is a business worth £4 billion a year. This is not about money or business; it is about abused and oppressed human beings. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, says, it is part of an increasing scenario of violence against women in our society and treating women as commodities that can be bought and sold.

This very week, some of my colleagues who work with prostitutes in Derbyshire visited a prostitute who advertises her services on the internet. This week, she was visited by somebody through that advertising and horrifically assaulted. Advertising can be an avenue for people to attack and abuse very vulnerable women, with horrific consequences. Because many of the women who are drawn into this trade are vulnerable, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, said, we have to look at being consistent with our concerns about safeguarding. We are rightly concerned to safeguard vulnerable adults and children. Many of the women drawn into this trade are vulnerable in the most terrible way. Some time ago, I met a women here in London who was trying to escape from prostitution. The advertising that her pimp organises led to her being raped 10 times a day—the advertising provided the means for that to happen. That is the kind of human cost that we are looking at.

There are some issues about whether this is practical. I remind noble Lords that in the 19th century there was a lot of debate in this House and the other place about legislation to stop women and children being exploited in factories. At the time, one of the arguments was that you would never eradicate it. Of course it never was eradicated—it still is not—and some families really suffered. The point of the legislation then, as with this modest proposal now, is about what kind of marker the state should put down to say how we value people and how we want to protect them. This would be a powerful marker in a world that is obsessed with and dominated by advertising. I would be interested if the Minister has any comment on what kind of marker the state should put down through this proposal.

Another issue is what it says about the health of society when sexual services are advertised so freely in the press and on the internet. All the research shows that the great majority of men who use the services of prostitutes are either married or in stable relationships. Think of the cost to our society of relationships that are so unstable and immature that all this is going on. The cost is enormous. Should we not be trying to go back a bit to look at what is fuelling this demand? What is happening in the upbringing of boys and young men so that, when they grow up and become older, they patronise this kind of industry?

Advertising, if it is allowed, normalises that kind of behaviour. It normalises being able to buy a woman for sex in a very unequal power relationship. There is nothing equal about it. To allow advertising normalises buying a woman for sex.

Also at the conference on Saturday, I was with a woman, a former prostitute, who talked very movingly about being drawn into a world of fantasy. People who respond to the adverts come into a world of fantasy. She said: “The tragedy was, nobody asked the right question about me. They just wanted me to play along with a fantasy world that everybody thought was fine”. Underneath, she was hurting, she was heartbroken, she was frightened, she was being abused, but nobody asked the right question. Is it mature and right to allow human beings to escape into these fantasy worlds at such terrible cost to fellow human beings?

My last point, on which the Minister may want to comment, is that a lot of this advertising is enabling organised crime to flourish. We need to look at the link between organised crime and advertising for illegal activities to take place. I hope that we will support the Bill.

Trafficking: Children

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We have had trials in 23 local authorities, as the noble and learned Baroness, who has done so much work in this area, knows. They are now being reviewed by the University of Bedfordshire and we expect to receive a report shortly. The full details of that report will be laid before Parliament, along with regulations as to what we intend to do.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, what is being done to ensure that the responses of police forces to their new responsibilities is uniform across the country, because it may be very patchy with budget pressures? Will the Government take a lead to ensure a uniform response of police forces to these responsibilities across the country?

[Lord Bates]

Of course I can, and I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate for the significant work he has done, consistently, in this area. The College of Policing has changed its programme for providing information to and training for police officers on this; we have the national policing lead, Shaun Sawyer, working on that. The task force has been established, and the Crown Prosecution Service is also updating its guidelines and has already undertaken a number of training sessions for regional polices forces. There is still much more to be done, but a strong start has been made.

North of England: Transport

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for his clear, optimistic and encouraging introduction, and associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, and his desire for this to proceed quickly and effectively. I declare an interest in that I come from Derby in the east Midlands, so I feel a bit like an interloper in this debate about the north—although part of our diocese is the Peak District, which may just qualify as the north.

I have three short points to make and three questions that I would like to ask the Minister. The OECD report shows that infrastructure in the UK has suffered underinvestment compared to many of our competitor countries. That underinvestment is not just in the north, of course; it is right across the country, including in the east and the south-west. Similarly, the disparate quality of infrastructure between the south-east, which includes London, and the rest of the country is not just in relation to the north—it is in relation to many other parts of the country. So my first question is: for a Government who are committed quite rightly to a one-nation approach, what is in mind, alongside this very proper and right investment in this project in the north, to enable other parts of the country to be part of a strategy for the development of infrastructure, transport and communication?

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, said, last week we were debating the cities and local government proposals. How does the Minister see the relationship between the structure of the northern cities in the report behind today’s discussion and the proposals in the cities and local government report that there should be quite a lot of freedom to design political and economic working units that might best suit and enable growth? How are we going to bring these two maps, and these two possible combinations of cities and their hinterlands, together? That is a very important question. The Minister is leading both discussions on the Front Bench, and I would be interested to know how there is going to be coherence between the freedom given to make political and economic units that can guarantee growth under the cities and local government proposals and this proposal involving a number of northern cities.

My final point returns to the east Midlands and Derby. The east Midlands has attracted a very small share of the high-value regionally allocated pipeline projects but is still creating jobs and growth. Noble Lords may have noticed that this week the city of Derby has been designated the fastest-growing economy in the UK. That growth is drawn from manufacturing and engineering, with Rolls-Royce, Bombardier and Toyota. Over the five years of the economic downturn, that manufacturing sector around those great industrial giants bucked the trend, creating growth, jobs and international trade. My final question to the Minister is: as we rightly look to develop the infrastructure and potential of the north, how are we going to ensure that that kind of manufacturing base, which has been so hard earned, also participates in the proper investment in infrastructure and communication so that those elements, too, remain in the cutting edge of our international competitiveness and economic performance?

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Lords Chamber

If I thought that this amendment would solve this problem, it would be worth pushing. However, it may ameliorate it a little, but it will not solve it. We will have to come back to it, and I would prefer to do that in better circumstances and with more information. After all, that is what the Government have suggested.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for his inspirational leadership on this issue. He has frequently expressed that this is a moral and a practical issue, which is why we take it so seriously. I am also grateful for the way that the Government have responded positively to the discussion around the noble Lord’s first amendment, for which I voted. However, I am afraid that I cannot support this amendment, for reasons much along the lines of the noble Lord, Lord Deben.

The issue is very complex. In the debate in the House of Commons, there were all sorts of complex strands, which are in the background of some of the statements being made in your Lordships’ House today. There is a discussion about the nature and the length of visas. There is also discussion about the scope and limitations of the national referral mechanism. We have heard today about the spouse’s visa and where that model fits in. There is discussion about the principles of domestic labour and employment law and about what particular provision should be made for overseas domestic workers. This is a complex issue.

I applaud the Government for appointing James Ewins to lead the review because all these issues need to be looked at in the round so that overseas domestic workers can be best supported and cared for. We need to let the review do its work and not foreguess it in the way that the amendment tries to do. I am batting for the review and trusting that it can be implemented by regulation. Therefore, I am with any future Government who are serious about this issue—as they should be on moral and practical grounds—and pursue it appropriately.

I am uneasy about the details of the amendment on two counts. There is a real danger, as the Minister alluded to, of separating the victim from the crime. It is important for future victims that any system of care and support for those caught up in this terrible crime, and oppressed and abused by it, can kick back into where the crime is coming from and how it is manipulated and engineered. There is a danger that this could encourage people to try to escape from it but not be invited to play a responsible part, if they can, in challenging the crime and seeking to stop it.

Again, I applaud the desire to offer other alternatives in terms of work—the James Ewins review could look at that—but we are talking about people who have come into this country on a particular and intimate relationship and who often have a particular dependency, as those of us who have had the harrowing experience of meeting overseas domestic workers who have been abused in this way will know. They are not migrant labourers who can easily get up and go and get another job. The situation is more complex than that and needs a more subtle and careful approach.

I cannot support the noble Lord on the amendment for those reasons. I hope that we will give James Ewins the opportunity to look at all the complex issues and to come up with a more joined-up approach that we can continue to gather round and support in the future.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, we have had some remarkable contributions to this debate. I certainly do not wish to delay the outcome but I would like to ask two or three questions before we make a decision on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. Before I do so, I pay tribute to the 30 years of his life that the noble Lord has given to the effort to get social justice for this particularly badly treated group in society. I have absolutely no qualification in saying that. Of course, like everyone else, I thank the Minister for his endless persistence in trying to get answers that will satisfy the House.

My questions are very simple. The first is about access. Noble Lords have referred to the extreme risks that domestic workers in difficult situations may face in attempting to access the system we have now begun to establish, including the NRM. We need to make sure that they do have access. I ask the Minister whether access to, for example, the churches or non-governmental organisations can then be passed on by them on behalf of the person who is objecting and concerned. Is that a possibility? I ask this because the trust that overseas domestic workers—for example, Filipinos—have in a church or an NGO might be much greater, sadly, than the trust they might place in the authorities. I am sorry to have to say that, but it has been my experience in talking in particular to Filipino migrants, who are among the most helpful and forthcoming that we have in this country. They have deep concerns—from their own experience back home as much as anything—about whether the authorities will be fair in the way that they treat their complaint.

My second question concerns the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, as well as by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and others, including my noble friend Lady Hamwee. There is a complete lack of any form of legal aid for this pathetically waged group in society. I am not sure whether they would get any money at all to pursue these issues, which is why it is of such great concern to me that access to employment tribunals and the civil courts is not made available in some form that would enable these people to bring their cases forward. There may be no answer to that, but we cannot pretend to ourselves that passing laws that cannot be implemented because the people they affect do not have the money to do so is a satisfactory outcome.

I have two more questions. The third is about the inquiry. The Minister said that the inquiry would be in July, but my impression is that that is not when it will be concluded, but when it will be started. As we know, an inquiry can be a very long process indeed, particularly when it comes—as this one will—between the end of a Parliament and a general election that will be followed by the creation of an effective Government. Is the Minister telling us that the inquiry will start in July but not giving any indication of when it is likely to be terminated?

Secondly, will the inquiry look not only at the law but at the implementation of the law? It was mentioned in the Commons that there had been 63 cases where exploitation or other forms of slavery were clearly identified. There has been just one prosecution. That reminds me a little of the issues around the banks. It is no good having a law that is not implemented. Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to say whether the inquiry will be able to look into the issue of implementation as well as at the law itself. This seems to me to be absolutely crucial.

My final point concerns the issue of serious crime associated with, for example, cases of exploitation. I will give an example from my own experience, because I used to lecture on this subject when I was at the Kennedy School in Harvard. One of the most dreadful pieces of evidence I came across was that one of the single largest exports to the Philippines from the Trucial States of Saudi Arabia was that of coffins for those who had been domestic workers. I do not point the finger now; maybe things have changed. However, they were very serious in the past.

My last question is this. If someone who makes a complaint refers to a capital or substantial crime such as rape or assault, could we take that into account in the way that we deal with the issues that are now before us? Will the Minister say how that is dealt with at present, because my impression is that sometimes it is not dealt with at all?

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I support these amendments and thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his leadership. I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, about websites and technology.

I have had the privilege of being in conversation with the Minister about the importance of this legislation and what we are trying to achieve for our country as a mark to the world: that is, helping business to develop and change its culture, and to take responsibility for good practice. Of course, the discipline of using a website will enable businesses to be accountable to their investors, their consumers and their shareholders in a transparent and open space. That will encourage good business practice and help the businesses that have fallen short to be challenged. Therefore, this very sensible and practical suggestion will not only help the Bill to achieve its objectives but will help the culture of business to change in a positive way and make the employment of people in slavery less likely.

I want to make a couple of other small points. Amendment 3 includes the word “may”. Therefore, it is inviting the Minister to agree to this direction of travel as a priority to deliver what we all want to achieve through the Bill. This has been a long journey and we have learnt a great deal on it. As other noble Lords have said, we have been extremely grateful for the way in which the Minister has listened, negotiated and developed the Bill appropriately when persuasion has been there. I think that that process will go on. The website will provide for learning to go on and, with practice, to develop.

My final point is that last week, in talking about the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, we were reminded that organisations like that were able to access proceeds of crime to help fund the work. If we need to find a way of funding a website, which could be quite labour-intensive in answering all the niggly questions to which people expect a reply, the proceeds of crime might be a proper place from which resourcing might be found.

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Alton. The Minister has referred several times to the California Act during the passage of this Bill. In both Houses it has often been cited as a sort of reference point or a benchmark. We should learn from that experience. As has already been said, the Californians are saying that this is the one aspect that they regret having missed out on. They see the work embodied in the two amendments as an essential tool. The essence of this part of the Bill is transparency. We cannot have full transparency without information and knowledge.

As I said at earlier stages, many young people in particular, in the wake of disasters in the clothing industry such as Rana Plaza, are keen to know about the provenance of their clothing. As my noble friend Lord Alton has already noted, the internet is a key tool, and many young people—and some older people, too—use social media to communicate about companies they see as not upholding their values. Pressure from consumers is something that the Government have said they are keen on. It is a way of holding businesses to account and a way of ensuring that they think about their reputations and how to protect them. Therefore, consumers have some power. However, while I argue that it is not solely down to consumers to keep a check on unscrupulous businesses, I accept that they have a role to play. Without the requisite knowledge and information it is hard to play any kind of role at all.

How could such a role be played without the kind of centralised information, the potential for which this amendment allows the Secretary of State to explore? Who, apart from specialist researchers, would even know which companies met the threshold for inclusion under the Bill, let alone find the required statements from those companies that would enable them to make their choices? I wish we could say that all companies are so concerned about reputational damage that they act in ethical and sustainable ways, but unfortunately they do not. That is one of the reasons why we need the Bill. Good businesses have said that transparency is an aid for them, not a burden. Given the widespread support for this measure in the House, from business, NGOs and, indeed consumers, I hope that the Minister, who, as everybody has said, has been so helpful in not just listening to what we have had to say but in acting on so many of the concerns expressed here and elsewhere, will take this opportunity to respond positively to the amendment and help the Government to become genuine world leaders on this aspect of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, this amendment inserts a new clause before Clause 55. I thank noble Lords for the excellent debates that we have had on the Gangmasters Licensing Authority during the passage of the Bill, as well as the important discussions that we had outside the Chamber ahead of Report. I welcome the support expressed in this House for the vital work undertaken by the GLA—the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, that is. It is obvious that there is a shared interest right across the House in increasing the GLA’s effectiveness and indeed that of all the agencies engaged in the fight against worker mistreatment.

On Report last week, I welcomed the spirit—no pun intended—of the proposal from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, which was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley. I highlight that my concerns about it were of a technical nature; as in the previous group, there is no difference over the principle that we want to see in the Bill. I said that I would look again at this before Third Reading, and I have done so; the government amendment reflects our revised thoughts on the issue. It commits the Government to publishing a consultation paper on the role and responsibilities of the GLA within one year of the Bill being passed. This amendment achieves several important things, including a full public consultation on the role of the GLA, which will be placed in the context of the wider landscape of organisations fighting worker mistreatment. It provides for an evidence-based approach to further improving the role of the GLA in tackling abuse of workers. In addition, this new clause places this commitment to a consultation in legislation, meaning that a future Government must live up to the commitments that have been made during the passage of this Bill and ensure there is an urgent focus on the work of the GLA at the start of the next Parliament.

I believe that a clause on the work of the GLA in this Bill reflects the concerns expressed through pre-legislative scrutiny, debates in another place and in this House. All through the passage of this Bill, there has been a common view that we need to focus on getting the role of the GLA right, and this amendment reflects that clearly in the Bill. Through this full public consultation, we will be able to take proper account of the activity of other organisations devoted to tackling serious crime and protecting workers and make sure that, in whatever we do, we avoid creating duplication and overlaps between agencies, thus avoiding wasting time and money which could be better used than in allowing the perpetrators of mistreatment of workers potentially to escape scrutiny. Preparatory work on the consultation document will start immediately so that it can be published as soon as possible in the next Parliament.

I know that some noble Lords have supported the idea of an enabling provision to allow extension of the GLA remit by secondary legislation. Our assessment is that would not achieve its main purpose of avoiding the need for further primary legislation should a decision be taken to extend the GLA remit. We have not, therefore, focused the government amendment in this area. Any significant change to the GLA would be likely to require both reform of the Gangmasters Licensing Act 2004 and substantive changes to wider primary legislation related to how the labour market is regulated, such as the Employment Agencies Act 1973. A focus on how the remit of the GLA is set out in legislation in isolation fails to consider the need to make sure that our legislation provide for a coherent enforcement landscape that can be used by the police, the National Crime Agency, HMRC, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and others.

I assure the House that the Government welcome and share the commitment expressed in this House to considering how best the GLA can tackle and punish those that abuse, coerce and mistreat their workers. Our proposal for a full and speedy public consultation reflects that commitment.

I add one other thing, on the subject of consultation. I know that we have had many consultations, but that in itself is part of the strategy. The more that we engage with organisations and individuals about different aspects of how this Bill is going to work in practice, the more awareness there will be of the problem and of the new, robust legislative landscape that is there to tackle this abuse. I hope that noble Lords will support this amendment to ensure a comprehensive consultation. Again, I particularly thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for his work in this important area.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. This is another excellent example of listening, learning and working together and taking seriously what was said at Report. On Monday, I was privileged to be at the GLA national conference, which was in Derby, where the Minister, Karen Bradley, who I see is present, was the keynote speaker. I was privileged to speak, along with the new independent commissioner designate. The GLA is alive and well and thinking creatively, but it will be very important for it to use its expertise in a targeted way and negotiate how that expertise is employed alongside other inspectorates. I welcome this proposal.

At the event on Monday, there was the launch of an academy by Derby University in partnership with the GLA to help businesses to learn good practice at a professional benchmarked standard to enable them to comply with the spirit and direction of the Bill and for there to be proper professional training of those employed in businesses to administer supply chains and employment.

The GLA is fulfilling all the expectations that it raised with the Select Committee and Members of this House. It is very important that we undertake this work. I am grateful that the amendment contains the word “must” because it is important to do this scoping out and I thank the Minister for tabling it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, from the Liberal Democrat Benches I also thank all those who have already been mentioned. It is only so as not to be tedious that I will not go through the list again but my thanks are sincere.

This has been such a good example of how Parliament can work well across parties, with people of no parties and with organisations outside this House, as the noble Lord said. I have been particularly struck, which I am sure is in no small part thanks to the efforts of both Minsters present, that even at this last stage, with the last of the substantive amendments on the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, the Minister came forward with an amendment which he did not need to make. I do not think there would have been complaints. We would have taken the good faith of what he had said about the work that the Government were going to be doing on this. I know that he will agree that this is the end of the beginning rather than anything further, including at a personal level. I do not know whether the Bill team has counted up for him the number of commitments to extra meetings that he has made following the passing of what will soon be an Act but I know that we will all want to continue to be involved in making sure that the Bill, as implemented, fulfils its promises.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I want to very briefly say from these Benches what a privilege it has been to participate. My colleague, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, had to get special permission for me to sit on the Select Committee. It has been a wonderful opportunity for the church to contribute and, through me, for the voluntary sector to be involved both with the crafting of the legislation and with working further afield on grass-roots responses and the wider cultural and learning changes that need to happen in our society. I also want to say a final “thank you” to the Minister whose leadership of this whole process has been exemplary, as other colleagues have said.

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

92: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Enforcement agencies
(1) The Secretary of State shall consult on ways to strengthen and improve the resources of enforcement agencies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate using confiscated assets and proceeds of crime recovered under the provisions of section 7.
(2) A consultation under subsection (1) shall end no later than 1 January 2016.
(3) The Secretary of State may by order amend section 3 of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 to include other areas of work where the Secretary of State believes abuse and exploitation of workers or modern slavery or trafficking may be taking place.
(4) An order under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing it has been laid before each House of Parliament and been approved by a resolution in each House.”

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I thank my colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for their support for this amendment. I also place on record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bates. With others, we have been extremely grateful for the patient and kind way he has listened to us, engaged with us and put on special meetings on various subjects. The point of this amendment is to highlight the fact that both the Government and many of us involved in this issue are learning a great deal as we go along. Therefore, there is a proper space for consultation, review and further learning to be done.

The point of this amendment is to seek authorisation for further consultation around two particular things. One is resources for some of the key agencies which will be in the forefront of putting this legislation into practice. There will be an enormous challenge and the resourcing issue, with tight budgets, will be enormous. We have discussed in previous debates the potential for using confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to help resource the work of some of the agencies that will be putting this legislation into practice and can deliver what the Bill requires. This was discussed by the Select Committee and I hope the Minister will endorse further consultation about the potential for using confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to help resource the implementation of the Bill.

The second area that the amendment explores is to help us ensure that the agencies which are in place at the moment can develop appropriately and be fit for purpose. I refer in particular to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which needs to have a realistic remit. It has enormous expertise, but it will need resourcing, as I have said, for further engagement in the new context, including how it links with bodies such as the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. We need to see how those bodies are going to work together: that needs exploring further if the Bill is going to be implemented effectively. The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate will, of course, have a key role in helping us reach out to those areas where slavery operates through small-scale operations, not just the large businesses we are looking at in those parts of the Bill covering the formal supply chain.

So the amendment covers those two simple things. It explores how best we can use confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to give resources to key agencies such as the GLA and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and it looks at how those agencies might co-operate so that we can do educational, proactive work so that the requirements of the Bill get disseminated through those agencies into their constituencies, and so that they co-operate most fully between themselves and cover as many bases as possible. This very simple amendment will build on the work of the Joint Committee and ensure that the principles of the Bill are delivered most effectively. It is about resourcing the agencies and about how they can best work together. It asks for authorisation for that consultation to happen so that we can pursue those two objectives. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for having moved the amendment. He has been an integral part of the cross-party team that has been working so constructively on the Bill and taken us to where we are now. I particularly note, and offer my respect for, the work that he has done in the diocese of Derby in tackling the issues of modern-day slavery. It is an example of what could be done elsewhere as well.

Let me put on record the two difficulties that we have with the amendment. I do not think that, on the general principle, we are a million miles apart. What we had was a Gangmasters Licensing Authority, after the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, introduced legislation in this House in the wake of the awful tragedy that we saw—and it was working rather well. It was targeted at a particular group, where there was a real problem in the food processing industries and that sector of agriculture and fisheries. About 1,200 businesses a year are regulated, and there is a cost to that. They have to get their licence and pay between £1,000 and £2,000 a year, and when they are regularly inspected they also have to pay a fee for the inspection.

There is a discussion about this. I am sure that when the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was introducing the Gangmasters Licensing Authority legislation, he was thinking that we did not want to impose this on everyone unless it were strongly proven that it was absolutely necessary to cover everyone, because there are some serious burdens placed on small and micro-businesses. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, made about resources. Resources are scarce at present: there is a big debate, which I am sure my predecessors had when they were trying to secure the necessary resources for the changes being made in the national referral mechanism. That would account for a significant amount, and resources also have to follow the child trafficking advocates, the extension of legal aid and the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner-designate. I accept that.

Let me explain the difficulties to the right reverend Prelate. There are two difficulties with an enabling power on the GLA remit. First, such a power assumes that the main issue is with the GLA’s remit, and may not consider the broader landscape in terms of how we tackle abuse of workers. Secondly, even if we concluded that the answer to the problem was an extension of the remit, the enabling power would almost certainly not achieve its aim of avoiding the need for further primary legislation.

As has been mentioned, it has also been enormously helpful that we have been able to have discussions outside the Chamber, and build our mutual understanding of these issues. It is important that we look at the GLA’s role in the context of our overall approach to tackling abuse in the labour market.

The House will note that sectors not covered by the GLA are already regulated. Last year more than 53,000 callers were helped by the pay and work rights helpline, and more than 23,000 workers were helped to recover wage arrears by the national minimum wage enforcement team. In addition, employment agencies not covered by the GLA are regulated by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, which between 31 March and 1 April 2014 brought seven prosecutions in the magistrates’ courts and in five cases secured convictions. The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate also has a unique power to apply to ban those who have shown themselves to be unfit to run any employment agency, and there are currently 16 people on the list of people banned from running an employment agency. We need to make sure, through consultation, that we come to a coherent position and that these bodies work in a co-ordinated way to prevent and stop abuse.

I understand why an enabling power might appear attractive as a way of potentially avoiding the need for future primary legislation after a consultation, but such a power simply would not achieve the objective of avoiding the need for primary legislation. Any significant change to the GLA would be likely to require both reform of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 and substantive changes to wider primary legislation related to how the labour market is regulated, such as the Employment Agencies Act 1973.

The enabling power would be limited to changes in the remit. I accept that it would be hard to justify a delegated power wide enough to allow for the types of enforcement powers the GLA might need in future. But a truly open and evidence-based consultation might well highlight the need for changes in the powers of the GLA that do not relate to the remit.

The amendment also focuses on the use by the GLA and others of the Proceeds of Crime Act. I should point out that the GLA already uses that legislation to identify proceeds of crime—a subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Indeed, since 2010 the GLA has identified over £1.5 million in criminal assets through that route. I am sure that, like me, noble Lords will all applaud the GLA for its achievements in this regard. The GLA already receives a share of the assets recovered under the asset recovery incentivisation scheme: it has received £118,000 since 2010.

I acknowledge the points that have been made. When we prepare the consultation document we will reflect on today’s debate and see whether there are ways in which we can make greater use of the Proceeds of Crime Act, alongside increasing and making better use of our existing resources devoted to worker protection.

I shall now deal with one or two of the points raised in the debate. I have highlighted the problems we have with the amendment, which are technical rather than substantive in terms of the issue that the right reverend Prelate has raised. If he felt able to withdraw his amendment now, I would certainly give an undertaking to reflect further on it and consider whether we should look at this subject again before Third Reading. There are some drafting issues. What the amendment proposes is a review of one area under one Act, whereas we would like to see a wider consultation covering many areas and many Acts. To do that we need an approach different from that taken in the amendment. If the right reverend Prelate will take that into account, we shall be happy to come back to the subject.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

I thank the Minister for what I take to be an encouraging response. I do not know a lot of the details about delegated powers and primary legislation, and, as he said, there are possible technical issues with our proposals. However, I take heart from the fact that we are in the same direction of travel. We want to increase the resource potential for this work and to look carefully at how agencies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority can best perform. On that basis, and in the hope of further thought being given to this matter before the next stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 92 withdrawn.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

I appreciate that the first regulations are now to be subject to the affirmative procedure, but they will be unamendable, as all regulations are, so it seems appropriate for me to air this point now. A commercial organisation, for this purpose, is defined as a body corporate or a partnership. As I understand it, a body corporate does not include its subsidiaries. They are bodies corporate in their own right. So my question—a simple one, I hope—is: is the reference to the determination sufficient to prescribe what is in effect deemed turnover? In other words, is it sufficient to ensure that a body corporate is treated as if it were the group of companies of which it is the parent? Finally, is it planned that the guidance on this subject will cover how companies within a group should each deal with a statement?

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I support this group of amendments. I, too, welcome government Amendment 97, because we need a framework that people can inhabit flexibly and that sets out the framework very clearly but gives room for manoeuvre.

As for Amendment 98A, the modern tool for transparency is the website. A website is accessible to everybody in a very equal way. The Bill needs to balance two kinds of transparency. We are looking for transparency where there is bad practice—we want to shine a light on the oppression and abuse of people. We are also looking for transparency where there is good practice, especially good business practice in terms of employment and working conditions. We have to get both sides of the transparency issue up and running.

There is a serious point about resourcing the website. If it is located in the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, that will give a clear message about what it is for. With a website, we can imagine that if people do not find what they want, or do not think that something has happened after it has gone up, they will send in their requests or their complaints, and that will be a big resourcing task to monitor, to respond to and to manage. Therefore, if it is to be run by the anti-slavery commissioner—I can see the value of that—it will, as others have said, need proper targeted resourcing, having measured the task. There may be other models for providing such a website. Whether one can have some equivalent of the Salvation Army and find someone to designate and manage it, there must be a public space that is accessible to everyone, which looks at what is going on and being achieved, shares good practice and exposes those who are falling short.

Finally, I again endorse use of the Companies Act 2006 because that gets into the DNA of how we expect companies to operate good practice.

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 98A of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. If the requirement for those companies in the category whereby they are obliged to prepare and submit a slavery and human trafficking statement for each financial year of the organisation is to be meaningful and effective, a central repository for statements makes infinite sense. The office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner—the commissioner-designate, Kevin Hyland—is fully supportive of this proposal. A central repository for companies to be able to upload a human trafficking and slavery statement would be an effective way in which to assist with monitoring compliance and public accountability, and it is to be welcomed.

In order for leadership in companies to take this seriously, this amendment is important. It would require companies to include a fair summary of the statement and the web address of the full statement to be included within the directors’ report. This would not be unduly onerous for companies. The upside for companies is that such a duty would prove their due diligence and that it is a matter of real ethical concern to them. That makes for a more attractive proposition to investors and encourages a healthy competition to eradicate the blight of modern-day slavery, which can only be a good thing.

I hope that the Minister, my noble friend Lord Bates, who we all know has been working tirelessly on the Bill for many weeks, will be able to accept this amendment. It enjoys cross-party support as well as support from wider civil society and the commissioner-designate.