Modern Slavery Bill

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I would like to inject a cautionary note to this debate. Like everyone else in this House, I clearly support the concept that children should not be held in slavery, forced into labour or any other of the ways in which they may be either trafficked, using the English definition of trafficking and not, as has just been said, the European definition of trafficking, which does not require movement.

However, I am not satisfied that any of these amendments is necessary. The two illustrations given by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, were, of course, under the old law. In my view, government Amendments 4 and 7, already approved by this Committee, and government Amendment 13, which I would be astonished if the Committee did not approve, already carry Clauses 1 and 2 along the road to including children with adults—none of whom require consent. The idea that the standard for children should be different from that for adults is, if I may respectfully say so, wrong. Neither children nor adults who are enslaved or held in compulsory labour or servitude are required to consent. The government amendment to that effect has already been passed. Children and adults are in the same position.

We should also bear in mind the fact that the sentence for traffickers and those who enslave is already up to life, so there will not necessarily be a longer sentence because children are involved. The judge will have the opportunity to say, “This is a sentence for life”. He or she can say, because an adult is involved and the circumstances are not so serious, “I will give 14 years”, or, because a child is involved, “I will give life”. So there is no need for a different provision for children.

There are dangers with the word “exploitation”, which—despite the admirable subsection (4) of the proposed new clause—is capable of being taken too broadly. What the cases we have heard about, both at Second Reading and today, show is an appalling lack of good practice—and what we need to do is improve the practice of dealing with children. That requires training but it does not require extra legislation. To add that to what is already in Clauses 1 and 2 would be repetitive. I believe that the Government have gone far enough, with the amendments that they have tabled, to cover all sorts of slavery and exploitation that happens to children as well as adults.

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

I shall speak to Amendment 29. First, I should declare my interests. I am the son of a couple who met as children in an orphanage, and my father was put to work as an unpaid kitchen boy for 11 years at Quaglino’s nightclub in London, in return for the orphanage being paid £1 a month for his services. That seems to me to fulfil a pretty good definition of slavery. But if he was standing here instead of me, he would say, “No, it was the best thing that ever happened to me—because I got fed better there, in the restaurant, than I did in the orphanage”. But it was slavery, and that sort of thing does not get a reference anywhere, because we are talking so much about sexual and perversion issues, not about that simple level of labour. But it was so, and it was wrong. I am assuming that we are safe in thinking nothing like that could happen today, so we do not need to cover it—but I do not think that it should pass without at least a thought and recognition, in memory of my father.

Secondly, I want to explain why Amendment 29 is here at all. It is outrageous that any Government should introduce a Bill that criminalises a whole sector of wrongdoers, while not accepting that the same strictures should apply to themselves and their own performance and behaviour. People would respond to that idea by saying, “But the Government don’t traffick children”. In fact, we have been serial offenders for the past 233 years. The first instance occurred in 1678 when, at the request of the Quaker colony in Maryland, we sent 82 children taken directly off the streets of Shoreditch as a gift to the colony, which had lost all its children in a raid by the Native American Indians. This consignment was put together by the mayor and aldermen of London, and shipped out from Rotherhithe. The instructions to the captain of the boat were that he had to bring back a cargo of tobacco to pay for the whole expedition; they were not doing it for free.

In the late 1780s, with the threat of Napoleon coming up, we moved to a position of systematic, government-sponsored trafficking of children to America on the grounds that, “If we are to be overrun by Napoleon, let’s send our children abroad”; and we did, in their thousands. Later, in the 19th century, we have the extraordinary episode of no less a person than Dr Thomas Barnardo, who enjoys near saintly status in this country, taking steps to ascertain how many children each of the Australian states would like if he could provide them. And provide them he did, in their thousands. It is hard to see where he got them from, but I suspect they were the overspill from his own institutional orphanages—in which case that was slavery to make space for more orphans, I suppose. But it was wrong and it was done without any authorisation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

It is an argument not so much for the amendment as for the Bill. The argument for the Bill bringing together in one place all the offences relating to modern slavery, trafficking and exploitation is something with which we all agree. We are discussing whether there should be a specific child exploitation offence, which, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, highlighted, raises particular issues in relation to the Bill, but the whole purpose of the Bill is very much what my noble friend seeks, which is to bring the offences into one place, to provide one strategy and then to make sure that those who are responsible get out there and go after the people who commit these appalling crimes.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I am prepared not to press my amendment provided that the Minister can confirm to me that he is satisfied—he may do it outside this meeting if he will—that the moral hazard of allowing any form of institution to sweep away the flotsam and jetsam by sending them abroad is outlawed by this Bill.

[Lord Bates]

Yes, I would be happy to do that. Perhaps the best way of doing so would be in writing to my noble friend. My noble friend has done a service to the Committee by reminding us of this country’s dark history regarding certain aspects of child exploitation, and it behoves us to have an element of humility when we look at other countries in that regard. I am happy to undertake to write to my noble friend.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

In view of that, I shall not press my amendment.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It is an emotive topic, which absolutely everyone around the Committee wants to get right. We are all on the same side; this is not a question of one person versus another.

I feel strongly that we need a child exploitation clause. I have no doubt about that but will deal with a couple of points. The Minister gave an example of where the CPS had prosecuted somebody who was begging. I can give the Minister a number of examples where the CPS has not prosecuted in the case of begging, because it was advised that it was not possible to do so. The Minister also said that bringing babies into this country from baby farms with a view to illegal adoption would, under our laws, be illegal. I do not think that anyone would disagree with that, but you would have to find the people who had adopted those children illegally, and unless you did, how on earth could you prosecute them? We need to stop it happening. The Minister also said that it would be necessary to encourage the police to prosecute, but I worked with the Metropolitan Police for eight years and do not believe that they need any encouragement to prosecute. What they need are the tools of their trade in order to do so.

I certainly would not consider trying to argue points of law with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and other noble and learned legal eagles, because I do not know the law. However, what I do know is that every single NGO that works on the ground with children says that what we have at the moment is not working. In this Bill, we have a cut-and-paste from lots of other Bills, putting it all in one place. But there is a major gap in the lack of a child exploitation clause, because it is not possible to prosecute somebody for exploiting a child under the Bill unless you can also prove that they were trafficked with a view to exploitation.