Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Lord James of Blackheath and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill

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.