Modern Slavery Bill

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness very much. We are talking about semantics and about circumstances, confusion and all the other words in the English dictionary. I would in fact be cheerful if there were some confusion, if it saved one child from being exploited. At the moment, I can see that there may be some modest confusion but I do not see that that weighs in any way with having specific legislation to protect the child. Are we saying that for fear of being confused, or of clashing or being repetitive, we desire to be in the middle, which I call sitting on the fence with the nails sticking in you where they should not? That is not enough; what we want is the best protection for the child.

I have not heard any Member of your Lordships’ House, on any side on this debate, say that they are not against the exploitation of children. I think we are all of a mind on that but what is not in agreement is whether this amendment is needed. I am not a lawyer and I shall not nitpick about confusion or circumstance, or any other such word in the dictionary. But having listened to the debate, to my mind we need a strengthening of Clause 4. I believe that this amendment would do that and that it is worth any confusion—any sitting on the fence, any clash or repetition—if it saves the exploitation of even one child.

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 6 is in the same group. I suspect that the followers of Amendment 5 are now well past number 11 and following on in the second innings, so I wonder if I could be forgiven for taking over to speak to my Amendment 6. It is the consequence of a long-running dialogue between the Minister and I, where we have failed to agree having had a long time together on the subject, so I have brought this amendment back from its first appearance in the early stages.

Your Lordships will recall that I first raised this subject when I was reminded of my experience in working for the Australian Civil Service in London. I recounted in Committee that I was deeply suspicious of the circumstances in which I was being required to herd small children on to boats at Tilbury for transportation to Australia. They did not have names; they did not know who their parents were, or where they came from, and they were completely terrified. I was suspicious that these children were improper migrants—that they did not have the proper authority to go—and it was a very strange position. Since then, I have done a lot more research and a lot of very interesting things have come to me in the post, including a little hate mail, which was actually very useful. Because of the fact that I had admitted overseeing the transportation of some 2,500 children, I was accused of being worse than Jimmy Savile. I think that Jimmy Savile might have been quite offended at that because he is being accused in relation to 300 children, whereas I have about 2,500 on my slate.

However, in the circumstances that was interesting because it raises two questions. First, was it illegal at the time that these children were being transported and, secondly, is it something which could occur again? My own belief is now, emphatically, that it was illegal and that there was no proper authority for the transportation of those children. It involved many tens of thousands of children over 15 years; we should be deeply ashamed of it, and make sure that the Bill cannot talk about controlling slavery without making it absolutely certain that we can never again repeat this dirty little secret of our history.

I need to give a bit more detail. I am going to quote the reference for a committee report that was brought to my attention by the Child Migrants Trust, and which I was initially told by the Library no longer existed. However, I am happy to say that our wonderful Library found the only copy that it thinks officially exists today. I will read its number into the record for the House: HC 755 I and II in volume XCVI, 1997-98. That report has now been found and is on the shelf behind the inquiry desk in the Library for any noble Lords who want to verify it. I have mentioned this at the start of what I am going to say because everything I will say is verifiable somewhere in that huge book. The committee in question was a Department of Health committee from 1997 to 1998. It was a rare committee because it was funded to travel to Australia to carry out its investigations on the ground for nine days. I am afraid we do not have committees like that any longer.

The story starts at Christmas 1944, when the Prime Minister of Australia contacted the coalition Government in England and said, “You’re getting towards the end of a war and you’re going to be overrun with orphans. We want to help you. We’d like to take 17,500 orphans from you every year for the next 15 years. We want at least 150,000”. The British Government thought about this for a while and said, “We’ll talk about it”. Then they brought in the orphanages and social services. Of course these were coalition times, so Herbert Morrison was in charge. By a quaint quirk of fate, I knew Herbert Morrison very well later on because he was president of a cricket club where I was the secretary, and I could not have asked for a man of greater integrity, personal charm or dedication. He was a very human being indeed, and I cannot believe that he would ever have done anything disreputable whatever. However, what happened under his hands was appalling.

They set about getting together a policy to find 17,500 children a year who could be given to the Australians. They brought in the heads of the orphanages and got Dr Barnardo’s to head the exercise. They got the local councils to get their heads of their child agencies, which I suspect was then an industry somewhat in its infancy compared with what it is now, and started to put the process together. Then came an election. The Labour Party won it with the very high promise of Beveridge’s social reforms, including the National Health Service. I do not remember anyone telling the electorate at that time that if they wanted a health service they would have to accept that we were going to dispose of 195,000 of our children to a foreign country without trace or record being kept, but that is in fact what happened. As the head of Barnardo’s says in a clear and precise statement at the opening of the committee, “It was an economic necessity. We couldn’t afford to look after the children we had. There were too many of them. We hadn’t got enough beds and couldn’t feed them. We had to do it. It was a Government-led initiative which we had to do”. That is an interesting comment and someone might want to look it up on the record one day.

So they did it. On the face of it, things were going to be fine because the Australian Government were falling over backwards to be helpful. They said, “You send the children to us. We will have prearranged adoption homes and domestic places for each of the children and we will ship them off directly as soon as they land, after giving them a medical check, and we will then give a maintenance cash allowance to every home that takes one to look after these children. Then we’ll get the adoption process carried through the courts”. So the British Government said, “Sounds fine to us”. However, Morrison said, “We will insist upon the British Home Office maintaining an oversight responsibility for their welfare afterwards”. We need to remember that because there is no evidence that it was ever done, and we need to see what happened to that.

A change of Government having taken place, Morrison steps aside and Chuter Ede becomes Home Secretary. There was nothing wrong with Chuter Ede but there might have been something wrong with a few of his servants. The process goes like this: the Labour Government take office on 26 July 1945, and on 16 September that year the first ship sails full of children, 2,000 of them. The 2,000 children set off into the blue and are the first of 155,000 who are sent between that date and the end of 1960. After 1960, another 120,000 are sent, bringing about a total in aggregate of 295,000 children, all from orphanages and local council overspills, which could not cope with them.

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[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, there is guidance as to the length of time noble Lords should address the House on Report. The noble Lord has very graphically illustrated the point he is trying to make, but I ask him to wind up this contribution on Report in the interests of the other Members present who want to hear the following business.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I can very easily move to the end. I quoted that last example because it indicates how, in the words of that fellow of 50, all migrant children are now regarded as the untouchables of Australian society. They have no place, no identity—nothing. When the Minister says that he does not think that we need to ban this once and for ever, I say that we do, because the reasons he gives for it being safe are the very reasons it happened at all. He says that it requires a court order, but it got a court order when it was done 50 years ago, relying on the fact that the order was endorsed or signed over by the orphanage or whatever local council had the authority. Therefore we cannot do that, as it is only the same situation. We have to stop the possibility of anybody doing this again in any circumstance. I want to see that point completely written into the Bill so that we ban this dreadful thing once and for all from ever happening in our society. We got it badly wrong last time; let us not even think of doing it again.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it might be helpful at this point if I first speak briefly to my noble friend’s Amendment 6 to put some remarks on the record, and then return to Amendment 5, on which a number of other Members of the House will probably wish to comment further or to listen to particular points I will make.

When this case was raised by my noble friend Lord James at Second Reading and in Committee, it was a new chapter of this country’s history that I had not been particularly aware of, and a very regrettable one too. We went into some detail of this in correspondence and at a number of meetings with my noble friend, as well as with my noble friend Lord Freeman. It was quite a harrowing experience, and I know that for my noble friend the recollection is personally very harrowing. At the conclusion of those meetings, I said that I would put some words on the record regarding the Government’s response and previous Governments’ responses to what had happened as an acknowledgement of our apology, which I will come to. I hope that that reassures him that we believe we now have in place the safeguard, chiefly through the courts, of a court order being required for any child being moved outside this country. That is a significant enhancement.

On 24 February 2010, the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made a formal apology in Parliament on behalf of the nation, expressing the nation’s regret for the misguided child migrant scheme. The Prime Minister spoke for all of us when he expressed his deep regret for those flawed policies and expressed sorrow that child migrants were allowed to be sent away when they were at their most vulnerable. Almost five years to the day since that apology was made, I am sure that noble Lords will join me and my noble friend Lord James in echoing that regret and that apology.

I want to take a little time to reassure your Lordships that the Government have taken action to support child migrants in regaining their true identities and reuniting them with their families and loved ones. We cannot undo the past but such action can go some way to repair the damage inflicted. I know that that is what my noble friend Lord James wants.

Alongside the formal national apology in 2010, the Government announced a £6 million child migrants’ family restoration fund to support travel and other costs for former child migrants who wish to be reunited with their families. Since its launch in 2010, the fund has provided more than 700 former child migrants and their families with support in travelling to be reunited. In September 2014, the Government announced that the fund will continue until March 2017. By then, the Government estimate that the fund will have helped around 1,000 former child migrants and many thousands of family members.

I also pay tribute at this point to the work of the Child Migrants Trust, which administers the fund. It is the key charity that focuses on family tracing, social work and counselling services for former child migrants and their families. I specifically pay tribute to the work of the trust’s director, Margaret Humphreys, who, like my noble friend Lord James, has done so much to raise awareness about this issue.

I reiterate that it is our belief that the legal guarantees are now in place to prevent any such activity ever happening again. Moreover, I believe that, together with the courageous apology made five years ago, the reparations and the work of the Child Migrants Trust, the guarantees go some way towards redressing the wicked wrong of the past. On behalf of this Government, I reiterate our apology for previous Governments’ involvement in that terrible episode.

It is right that chapters such as the one in 1944 but also those that went on until the late 1950s and even the early 1960s remind us to have an element of humility when we talk about child protection issues in this country. Therefore, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the issue. I very much hope that the remarks that I have again put on the record and the guarantees that I have underscored will allow him to draw not only a legislative line but a personal line under this very sad chapter.

I turn to the child exploitation offence, which has been the substantial part of a very interesting debate, as it was in the previous stages of this Bill considered in your Lordships' House. The catalyst for that has been my noble friend Lady Doocey, whose description as tenacious I can say, as the Minister involved in this matter, is probably a bit of an understatement. She has taken on, engaged in and championed this issue in the best traditions of parliamentary work. I pay tribute to her and to the work that she has done.

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Tabled by

[Lord James of Blackheath]

6: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Forced child migration
(1) A person commits an offence if the person arranges or facilitates the travel of a child (“C”) with a view to transferring C’s permanent residence unless the person reasonably believes that—
(a) C’s parent or guardian consents,(b) it is necessary for securing compliance with an order under section 8 of the Children Act 1989, or(c) it is necessary for securing compliance with an order of a court in a foreign jurisdiction.(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) “permanent residence” shall not include any detention under a sentence that is imposed by a court after a conviction for a criminal offence.
(3) A person may in particular arrange or facilitate C’s travel by transporting or transferring C, harbouring or receiving C, or transferring or exchanging control over C.
(4) A person arranges or facilitates C’s travel with a view to transferring C’s permanent residence only if the person knows or ought to know that C is travelling in order to live for a substantial or indeterminate period of time in a different location to the one in which C lived before the travel.
(5) “Travel” has the same meaning as in section 2.
(6) A person who is a UK national commits an offence under this section regardless of—
(a) where the arranging or facilitating takes place, or(b) where the travel takes place.(7) A person who is not a UK national commits an offence under this section if—
(a) any part of the arranging or facilitating takes place in the United Kingdom, or(b) the travel consists of arrival in or entry into, departure from, or travel within, the United Kingdom.(8) For the purposes of this section, a “person” shall include a public body.”

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[Lord James of Blackheath]

I thank the Minister for his response to my points, but may I just put two questions to him? I will wholly understand if he chooses to answer in writing afterwards. First, will he give consideration to a comment that appears in the great book in the Library, attributed to Herbert Morrison from early 1945, to the effect that in any case where an orphanage or local council alone authorised a migration, it should require the countersignature of the Secretary of State?

[Lord Bates]

Has the question been put?

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I am sorry, that was my first of two questions to the Minister. He stood up, so I thought he was going to answer me. The second question—

[Lord Bates]

Let me just say to my noble friend that we will continue this dialogue. That is absolutely certain. In this context, a far stronger guarantee for children in future is the existing body of law that now comes into place and into effect through the Children Act and other pieces of legislation since the 1950s. Crucially, any person seeking to take a child out of the United Kingdom requires a court order to do so. That is a much stronger guarantee than anything that can be given by the Home Secretary or anyone else.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I thank the noble Lord for that, but I must point out that they all had court orders last time. My second question is this—

[Lord Williams of Elvel (Lab)]

My Lords, one does have some respect for the Companion. Is there a question before the House? Has an amendment been moved? If not, why not? May we please have some order in the House?

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I apologise to the noble Lord if I caused offence, but I thought the situation was that you could reply to the answer you had had from a noble Lord.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The Minister has already replied and the question has now been put to my noble friend. We are requesting him, please, to withdraw his amendment.