Domestic Violence

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 5th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We are reaching out to everybody. I cannot say for certain about faith groups, but I can certainly get him some information about that. One of the things that was first and foremost on my mind and that of other Ministers was the danger to women, mostly, and children who are locked up with their perpetrator for what has now been nearly seven weeks.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, as most cases of domestic violence are known to the neighbours, should we not encourage them to inform the police about repeated episodes in order to reduce this terrible crime?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally understand that point. This has been on our radar, and we have engaged with police and communities. Neighbours can set up silent codewords with potential victims, which is one way that people can communicate with each other in these very stifling times during lockdown. That will certainly help the police, who are engaging with high-risk victims and perpetrators during this time.

Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill [HL]

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, this Bill is an essential addition to the Modern Slavery Act, a measure which has already been a great success thanks to the support of many people, not least the Prime Minister herself. I shall begin with a brief overview of what my Bill does before moving on to explain why I believe these new measures are necessary.

My Bill would amend the Modern Slavery Act with two primary effects. First, proposed new Section 48A would put into law victims’ entitlement to support during the reflection and recovery period, while the competent authorities are deciding whether there is evidence that they have been a victim of modern slavery. Secondly, new Section 48B would create a statutory duty to provide confirmed victims of modern slavery with ongoing support and leave to remain for a period of 12 months. New Section 48C sets out the main types of assistance and support that would be provided to victims, and stipulates key aspects of how that support is to be provided.

In April, the Home Secretary wrote:

“We must be better at getting immediate support to victims when they are at their most vulnerable. Otherwise they just slip through the net, to be abused all over again, and we lose any opportunity to gain information on the criminals who exploited them in the first place … We also want to make sure that victims are able to rebuild their lives. Our aspiration to help these people is in the right place—but at present, the provision of support may yet not be”.


With this, I agree entirely. My Bill provides a way to make these aspirations a reality by putting the principles for victim support into legislation.

The UK is a signatory to the Council of Europe convention and EU directive which require us to provide support when a victim is first identified, during the so-called reflection and recovery period. My Bill ensures that there is no doubt that victims should receive these international rights by creating a legal framework with minimum standards. This will provide certainty for victims and for the organisations that support them.

The treaty-monitoring body for the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking, known as “GRETA”, urged the UK Government,

“to enshrine in law … the right to a recovery and reflection period”,

in its first report on the UK in 2012 and repeated this recommendation in October 2016.

Victim support rights are also included in the EU directive. Your Lordships will remember, possibly, that I was a strong proponent of the EU anti-trafficking directive when it was being developed. I was pleased when the Government opted into the directive, and more so when the Modern Slavery Bill was introduced. However, although the Modern Slavery Act has brought into national law most of the directive’s provisions, it does not include the measures which guarantee support for victims. It is uncertain at present what the status of the directive will be once the UK has left the EU; presumably, its provisions will no longer have effect. This lack of clarity creates risks for victims which should not be entertained.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have introduced a legal duty to provide support to victims while the NRM decision is being made. It cannot be right that victims in England and Wales have fewer protections than those in Scotland and Northern Ireland. My Bill will create equality of access by setting out a clear approach to caring for victims in England and Wales through Brexit and beyond.

My Bill will also ensure that we have consistent standards of support. New Section 48C sets out clearly what support and services victims should have access to and establishes standards for their provision. For example, assistance should be provided only with a person’s consent and should be based on the individual’s particular needs. These minimum levels of support are all drawn from our international obligations.

I turn now to an issue which has come to prominence over the past year: the support available to victims following a positive conclusive grounds decision. Front-line agencies are advising us that the current system is not meeting our objectives to recover victims and protect them from further exploitation. As the anti-slavery commissioner has said:

“Supporting a potential victim until the conclusive decision is made and then ceasing support so abruptly could be damaging for the victim and negatively affect their recovery”.


Ending support just 14 days after the NRM decision without establishing access to services and suitable housing for the following period puts victims at risk and interrupts their recovery. Research by the Human Trafficking Foundation found that,

“the current options for housing and support in the post safe house period are not sufficient for survivors of modern slavery. If there is no effective strategy to prevent re-victimisation then generational cycles of abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people may continue unabated.”

Front-line support agencies have highlighted cases where confirmed victims are destitute and sleeping on the streets, are refused access to welfare benefits or housing, and have then engaged in prostitution because they were not entitled to any form of support. The anti-slavery commissioner raised these concerns with the Work and Pensions Committee in another place last year. The committee inquiry report which followed highlighted that despite its other achievements, the Modern Slavery Act did not secure a pathway for the victims’ recovery. The committee went on to recommend that,

“all confirmed victims of modern slavery be given at least one year’s leave to remain with recourse to benefits and services … this would allow time for victims to receive advice and support, and give them time to plan their next steps. This would not prevent those who wish to return home from doing so”.

A similar recommendation has been made by the GRETA report, which urged the UK authorities to,

“make further efforts to ensure that all victims of trafficking are provided with adequate support and assistance, according to their individual needs, beyond the 45-day period covered by the NRM”.

The committee recognised that not only is there a moral case for providing longer support, but that doing so also benefits the criminal justice system, because providing support can help to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. The anti-slavery commissioner told the committee that victims are often the best source of intelligence and that they would be deterred from even coming forward and making accusations against their abusers if they believed they would not be supported.

Victims are vulnerable, often fearful of reprisals from their traffickers and anxious about the future. If they are not given guarantees of housing and food, and access to other support, how can we expect them to feel secure enough to provide information about the people who abuse them? Yet without their input, it may be impossible to bring successful prosecutions against the criminals who perpetrate these horrible crimes.

The Government will no doubt wish to highlight that there are options for longer-term support through the existing discretionary leave to remain, which I shall refer to as DLR, for which confirmed victims of modern slavery can apply. However, there is significant evidence that many victims are falling through the gaps of this scheme, because of three key problems.

First, DLR is available only in three narrowly defined circumstances, one of which, known as “compelling personal circumstances”, is given a much narrower interpretation than that in the Explanatory Note to the Council of Europe convention. In all, just 123 of the victims positively identified as victims of trafficking in 2016 were granted discretionary leave to remain.

Secondly, because DLR is not automatically available for every victim, a separate process must be instigated, which can begin only after the conclusive grounds decision. The anti-slavery commissioner has said:

“This significantly delays the process, and ultimately pushes victims onto the streets while they await a decision on their DL application”.


Although safe houses can ask for an extension to the victim’s stay pending this decision, that extension is not always granted. This cannot be acceptable.

Thirdly, the process of applying for DLR varies for different victims and in different circumstances, which leads to confusion, of course. Where the application is being made because a victim is helping police with their investigations, the police must make the application. Sadly, it seems not all police forces are aware of this responsibility. One charity told the Work and Pensions Committee:

“Investigating police forces are not well versed in immigration matters and often do not know what DL means let alone how to apply for it or that they are responsible for this application”.


Even if forces are aware, processing the application takes time away from the investigative role that the police are uniquely tasked with. I suggest to the Minister that we would do better to relieve the police of that responsibility by giving all victims the option of a limited period of leave automatically, as my Bill does.

I will take a moment here to stress that my Bill provides only a limited period of leave. It does not provide an automatic grant of indefinite leave to remain. Indeed, I would not support such an open-ended commitment. The Bill provides a 12-month period for victims’ rehabilitation, not permanent residency. The possibility and length of any extension is at the discretion of the Secretary of State.

I know the Government have expressed concern that giving all confirmed victims automatic DLR would create a “pull factor” for traffickers or false claims. However, the Work and Pensions Committee rightly said:

“It is not clear … how such a pull factor would operate”,


and that it is,

“unsubstantiated by evidence”.

Traffickers do not exploit people with the aim that they should escape and receive benefits.

Moreover, the NRM is designed to filter out such fraud, and it is expert at so doing. The suggestion that automatic DLR might lead to a greater number of false referrals to the NRM forgets that a victim cannot self-refer. It is not in the interests of the professional first responders who make NRM referrals to knowingly make false referrals. I do not believe making support available after the NRM period would lead to such unprofessional conduct.

The Government have also expressed concern that an automatic entitlement would lead to victims with criminal records being allowed to remain in the country. I share the Government’s concern to protect the public from anyone who poses a threat, which is why I have included an exception for such people in my Bill. However, we must be cautious about assuming that everyone with a criminal record poses a risk. A criminal record can be one of the factors that makes a victim vulnerable to exploitation. A balance needs to be struck between protecting the public and denying help to a vulnerable victim simply because they committed an offence in the past.

Yes, the Bill will increase the number of victims who receive DLR and access to benefits and housing, but it will also help more victims on to the path to recovery. Some will not want to take up the offer of longer support and will return home before the end of the 12 months. Most victims do not want to live on benefits but want to regain their place in society by accessing training, education or jobs. It is just that they need help to do so. Here I must make a brief mention of the Bright Future partnership between the Co-op and charity City Hearts, which is an example to businesses that want to offer work experience to victims.

I have set out the case for further reform to benefit the well-being of victims of modern slavery. In doing so, I remind your Lordships that the Government should be applauded for setting the foundations for this next step and commended for the great strides forward that have been taken in tackling this crime over the past few years. Today I offer my Bill as a next stage in the development of the Modern Slavery Act so that we can lead the world in addressing this crime. I very much hope the Government will see in the Bill a great opportunity, and that they will embrace it and make it their own. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I say a very big thank you to everyone who has taken part in the debate, which I found inspiring, moving and encouraging. I thank the Minister for her warm words and encouragement, and look forward to the publication of the evaluation of the NRM pilot scheme. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, for his gracious acceptance of my reassurances regarding the possibility of abuse of the provisions. I finish with a word of thanks to the many charities that have given me advice, information and encouragement, and which share the stories of some of the victims. I applaud the work they are doing, caring so diligently for these victims, including filling in the gaps in our publicly funded provision.

I commend the Bill to the House and ask your Lordships to give it a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Calais Jungle

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. We consider these children to be children, whether they are Dublin III or Dubs Immigration Act children. We now know that under the Dubs amendment 50 have been accepted for transfer and 35 are here. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right; it is vital to get children from either category over here as soon as we can.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, some years ago I was asked to chair a government inquiry into services for disabled people. We produced 30 recommendations and I was amazed at how difficult it was to change anything in this country and move things along. As I listened to the debate about the problems in Calais I began to wonder just how many obstructions we have to overcome, so I went round your Lordships’ House asking various people who I thought might know how many obstructions—forms, regulations, French and English laws—there are. No one could tell me. We ought to have some idea of exactly what the obstructions are before we are too critical of the Minister. Can she therefore tell us, not necessarily now but perhaps in writing, just how many forms, regulations, and French and English laws have to be overcome to get the children over? That would be helpful.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank my noble friend for that question. Certainly a large number of hoops have to be gone through in placing these children in the appropriate country of safety, and I will try to get a full list, with precise details, of the bureaucracy that has to be overcome. I hope that in the coming weeks some of that bureaucracy will be simplified so that we can expedite these cases. However, we have to abide by the laws of the countries that the children are coming from and we also have to be very mindful of the safeguarding arrangements in place in those countries. It is incredibly important that we verify that the children go to the right place to meet their needs but also that we verify that they are who we think they are. We have to avoid any awful unintended consequences of trying to rush things rather than doing them properly.

Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Report

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing the debate. I also pay tribute to her. It was a pleasure to serve under her chairmanship of the Select Committee for this inquiry.

It will not surprise noble Lords to know that, as a member of the committee, I agree with the noble Baroness. Quite simply, more must be done. As she mentioned, legislation to prevent disability discrimination has been on the statute book for more than 20 years. In spite of that, here we are in 2016 and many disabled people continue to be excluded from public buildings, public transport and other services. This is, frankly, unacceptable.

I will centre my contribution on access to transportation. For any person, access to transportation is essential to play a full role in society: to get to work, school or university; to attend community, cultural or sporting events; to attend medical, legal and other appointments; and so on. Yet, the evidence to our committee demonstrated that this was one of the areas in which disabled people face the most challenges—challenges that have significant wider consequences. As the evidence we received from the group Transport for All makes clear:

“The difficulties disabled people face using transport is one of the major factors behind our exclusion from work; from healthcare; from education and from public life in general”.

Unless we take seriously the need to make our transport systems accessible for all, we will never succeed in providing disabled people equal access to many sectors of public life.

I begin by examining the situation of access for disabled people to taxis. As was acknowledged by many who gave evidence to our committee, the door-to-door nature of the service provided by taxis and private hire vehicles makes them particularly attractive to those for whom public transport may not be suitable. The committee heard that two-thirds of wheelchair users say they have been refused a taxi. Others report having been charged extra. Back in 1995 Parliament passed provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act to prohibit both these actions, yet successive Governments have failed to bring those laws into force.

Fifteen years after passing the original laws, Parliament reiterated its commitment to the necessity of legal protections to ensure taxi services are made available for those who use wheelchairs by incorporating them into the Equality Act 2010. Yet, six years later, those provisions are still not in force. I therefore welcome wholeheartedly the Government’s commitment in their response to the committee’s report that they,

“will now proceed to bring the measures into force, aiming for commencement by the end of 2016”.

Today I ask the Minister not only for details of when we can expect the commencement of Sections 165 and 167 of the Equality Act 2010 but for her assurances that the Government will put into place clear guidance and structures to enforce these duties.

I accept that there may have been a need for a transition period to ensure that taxi businesses are able to meet the requirements but 20 years is far too long to wait. I hope the Minister will give the House an assurance today that the commencement timetable will ensure that the duty will be applied as soon as possible. As we said in our report, we do not see that taxi drivers,

“can complain about the burden of converting their taxis to be wheelchair-accessible, since they have known for 20 years that this might happen”.

For too long the interests of taxi businesses have been placed above those of disabled people. This was clearly demonstrated by the fact that the provision allowing for exemption was brought into force almost six years ago without any parallel introduction of the duty itself. This must change. I am hopeful that with the commencement of Section 165, the Government will begin to redress that approach.

Ensuring that taxis are available for wheelchair users requires more than just commencing Section 165. We need local authorities to take a lead in supporting and encouraging taxi drivers to be open and able to carry disabled passengers. Local authorities must use their licensing powers to nudge and, where necessary, require taxi businesses to make their vehicles accessible for disabled people, as well as ensure that drivers receive disability awareness training. We must make vehicle accessibility and disability awareness a part of licensing obligations. The past 20 years have shown that leaving it up to the good will of drivers, or expecting the purchasing power of disabled people to produce accessible taxis for all, simply does not work. I welcome the Government’s promise in their response to our report that they will be producing guidance for local authorities, and considering how licensing regimes should incorporate accessibility criteria. I hope the Minister can give us some good news about that process.

I shall now address some other key concerns relating to transportation which arose in the course of our inquiry. First, there is no doubt that wheelchair accessibility has improved since the first disability discrimination legislation, as evidence to the committee demonstrated. However, far too many buses, trains and stations are still not accessible by wheelchair. We heard the shocking story of Crossrail—it is scarcely believable that it was considered acceptable for a new piece of public transport infrastructure built in the 21st century to have seven stations without step-free access. Much more training, transparency and accountability are required to ensure that all future new-build public transport infrastructure has wheelchair access throughout.

Accessibility is also an issue in many bus stations around the country. That is why the committee has recommended that Network Rail, Transport for London, train operators and bus companies around the country should put more resources into making their stations and vehicles accessible for wheelchair users. There is particular need for improved services in rural areas, where public transport is already much less readily available than in larger towns and cities. Companies should not need the threat of enforcement proceedings before operators comply with existing regulations. The Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 2000 came into force for single-deck buses earlier this year and will do for all double-deck buses by 1 January 2017. It is essential that these regulations are enforced by the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency.

The evidence we received in the inquiry also highlighted that accessibility is not simply a matter of putting rules and infrastructure in place, though those are undoubtedly necessary. Stations and trains are accessible only if that infrastructure is maintained and the necessary equipment and staff are provided. We heard one terrible story of a lady who, despite her best efforts in communicating with the guard on the train, was completely forgotten, so she missed her stop not once but twice, which resulted in her being dumped at a completely different station and having to phone her husband to come and collect her. As the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee told our inquiry:

“Although much of the basic accessibility provision is now in place through the construction requirements for rail and bus ... there is little effort going into making sure that accessibility features are consistently in place and working”.

We need bus and train operators to put sufficient resources into maintaining as well as building this accessibility infrastructure.

Another form of physical infrastructure which is vitally needed is audio-visual annunciators. For passengers who are hearing or visually impaired, the making of announcements via both visual and audio media is essential for them to utilise the bus and rail network. Evidence to our committee highlighted the discrepancy between the regulations for trains, which include requirements for audio-visual information, and for buses, which do not. This lack of regulation seems to have led to a situation where very few bus companies outside London have installed audio-visual annunciators on their buses. The importance of annunciators was shown clearly by information from the organisation Guide Dogs, which showed that seven out of 10 bus passengers with sight loss have been forgotten by a bus driver who was asked to let them know when the bus reached their stop. As Guide Dogs told the committee:

“For a sighted person, missing a stop is an irritating experience; for somebody unable to see, it is distressing, disorientating and sometimes dangerous”.

It is clear that more resources should be devoted to providing annunciators. Particular attention must also be paid to the production of new buses. There are already requirements that no new trains be put into service without having audio-visual information systems and we need the same requirements for buses.

I was disappointed that the Government’s response to our committee’s report rejected our recommendation for the mandatory installation of annunciators in new buses via the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000. The evidence is that without such regulations, the industry will be slow to respond to the needs of visually and hearing-impaired passengers. While I appreciate that the Government are concerned about placing too onerous a burden on bus companies, I do not believe that our committee’s requirements are in fact onerous. We were told by Transport for All that these information systems form only 1% of the cost of a new bus—a minimal cost for such a facility. It would increase the ability and confidence not only of passengers with sight or hearing loss but of those with learning disabilities and any passengers making unfamiliar journeys. I ask the Minister to explain today the Government’s reasoning for determining that a requirement for new buses to be fitted with annunciators would be too burdensome and invite her to commit to reconsidering the committee’s recommendation relating to new buses specifically.

Fitting information systems to buses already in service may be more costly and our committee therefore did not recommend that such action should be mandatory, although we do urge bus companies to put more resources into fitting annunciators to all their vehicles. I also welcome the Government’s support for initiatives to develop lower-cost information systems and new technologies which may make it easier and cheaper to assist disabled passengers overcome these challenges in using buses, especially on older buses which do not have audio-visual annunciators fitted.

Finally, it is essential that staff operating public transport have adequate training on disability equality. There will always be individual staff who fail to act in accordance with the training and guidance they receive, but ensuring widespread, consistent delivery of training of a sufficient standard is an important factor in reducing incidents where staff fail to respond to disabled passengers in an appropriate way. If we are to see the standards of staff behaviour improve across the board then we need to have an agreed level of training for all bus, coach and rail staff. Without it, levels of training, and thus the quality of services, will remain patchy across the country and divergent between different companies. Training for front-line rail staff is already mandatory as a condition of the licensing regime. I fail to understand why a similar requirement cannot be placed on bus operators. I welcome the MacDonald review that the Government have commissioned into delivering disability awareness training in the transport industry and hope that the Government will seriously consider the recommendations of both that review and our committee. Too often we found in the course of our inquiry that, across many sectors, a desire to remove so-called red tape and to avoid burdening business has resulted in a failure to enforce or prioritise disability equality. We must take a longer, harder look at where we set our priorities.

I conclude by again welcoming the Government’s positive response to some of our committee’s recommendations but also by urging a reconsideration of the others I have mentioned.

Online Safety Bill [HL]

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Friday 11th December 2015 Lords Chamber

4: Clause 8, page 5, line 5, after “be” insert “—
(a) ”

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in support of Amendments 4 to 7 from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, to which my name is attached. No one can read the very important 2014 ATVOD report and not be convinced about the child safety imperative to provide some kind of regulatory framework for dealing with online pornography, which is projected into this country mainly from websites located abroad.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will tell us, that report demonstrated that 23 out of the 25 pornographic websites most frequently visited by people in this country are located outside of the UK. To this end, I am of course pleased that this year’s Conservative manifesto committed to introducing age-verification checks on all pornographic sites, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister when further details about this proposal will be published. We had been promised a consultation before the end of the year.

The Government are exceptionally well placed to rise to this challenge, having recently introduced the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 to regulate online gambling websites based beyond the United Kingdom. In the context of gambling, if someone does not have a licence and they seek to conduct transactions with people in the UK, they operate illegally, so financial transaction providers are happy to refuse to facilitate transactions.

ATVOD, however, reports that the same is not true of pornographic websites that service UK customers from other countries. At the moment, such sites break no law. Indeed, the financial transaction providers have pointed out that, if they refuse to conduct illegal transactions between such sites and people in the UK, they would be the ones likely to be taken to court. This difficulty, however, would not obtain if we introduced a licensing system similar to that pertaining to online gambling and the provider in question did not have a licence. The simple proposal in this Bill is that the providers of online pornography from outside the UK must get a licence, a condition of which would be the provision of robust age verification. I hope that the Government will adopt this Bill as it presents a timely means of fulfilling their manifesto pledge.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report took the view that it would be better if the body that heard appeals against decisions not to grant a licence or to revoke an existing licence, were not the same body that awarded the licences. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, through these amendments, has made provision for the designation of a separate body to hear appeals. The amendments, which the noble Baroness wisely asked the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, to assess, clearly have that effect. I hope the Committee will support them.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I apologise for the delay in finding my papers, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, who very kindly stepped in.

Amendments 4 to 7 form the second group of amendments that I tabled in response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report published on 20 July. They relate to my proposal under Clause 8 to introduce a licensing scheme for foreign pornographic websites in the absence of any robust regulation of these websites.

The Committee may remember that ATVOD, the Authority for Television on Demand, which I am sad to say will cease to exist at the end of the month, published a report in 2014 that found that 23 of the top 25 adult websites visited by UK internet users provide instant, free and unrestricted access to hardcore pornographic videos, some of which would not be available on a British high street.

ATVOD’s report explains that it has encouraged the UK payments industry—credit card companies, Paypal and so forth—not to process transactions involving websites showing hardcore pornography that is presented without robust age verification safety checks. However, it also explains that the transaction providers are unwilling to do so because,

“the absence of clear case law on the issue precludes such an initiative”.

In short, unless the provider of the material is breaking a law, a financial transaction provider could be taken to court for failing to process the transaction. Setting up a licensing scheme, however, as proposed by Clause 8, would set up clear case law. An organisation would have a licence, or it would not. If the organisation did not have a licence, there would be no legal obstacles if a financial transaction provider was minded not to process the transaction—something that Clause 10 crucially mandates.

Clause 8 would provide a regulatory framework to ensure that these websites are not available to children. Clause 9 makes it an offence not to have a licence and Clause 10 provides a means of ensuring that payments to unlicensed websites would cease—a matter I shall come back to when I speak on Amendments 8 to 13.

The committee was concerned that appeals against decisions on not granting a licence or having a licence revoked would be heard by the licensing body. That is a genuine concern, so I tabled Amendments 4 to 7 to ensure that an independent body be able to review any appeals.

Amendments 4 and 5 ensure that the powers under Clause 8(1) allow the Secretary of State to designate both a licensing body and a separate independent appeals body. Amendments 6 and 7 ensure that the Secretary of State is not able to designate a licensing body without knowing that the independent body has adequate arrangements for appeals. As I have already said, I sought the counsel of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, about whether these amendments deal with the problems highlighted by the committee and he assured me that they do. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Shields]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, and I state one more time that there is no ambiguity about the Government’s commitment to launch the consultation shortly after the new year, and to provide for a robust age verification system to ensure that no one under the age of 18 can access pornographic material in the UK. It is a process that has been going on. We have been seeking advice from experts since the manifesto commitment was announced and we are consulting early in the new year. We are 100% committed to that.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for his contributions and for his extraordinary work in leading the development of solutions that will in fact achieve our goal. Many elements of the Bill are incredibly well thought-out and well intentioned, and they will be taken on board in the resulting legislative approach that we take in the new year. This is about timing. This clause requires that the Secretary of State must identify a licensing authority for non UK-based pornographic services, and the noble Baroness’s amendment to the clause specifies that the Secretary of State needs a second independent body to conduct appeals. It is a very good suggestion, but it is a bit premature until we finish the consultation.

Regarding the Ofcom/ATVOD role, there is some confusion about the function of ATVOD continuing, but following an Ofcom review, it was publicly announced in October that from January next year Ofcom will take sole responsibility for regulating video on-demand programme services. As a result, it will not continue its co-regulatory arrangement with ATVOD. Let us be clear on this: it is continuing with the function and the obligation of ATVOD, but that is being brought into the Ofcom portfolio.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 4 withdrawn.

Advertising of Prostitution (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords will know, I have previously introduced a Private Member’s Bill to address human trafficking on two occasions. I am very pleased that, after many debates over a good number of years, this House played such an important part in changing the law to bring in new offences on human trafficking and new mechanisms to provide support for victims. The Bill that I am bringing forward today addresses similar concerns to those Bills—that is, how to prevent harm to those who are in vulnerable situations.

I had the privilege of listening to hours of evidence on human trafficking, including as a member of the Joint Committee that examined the draft Modern Slavery Bill and as part of the all-party parliamentary inquiry, which ran from 2013 to 2014, on the laws in England and Wales on prostitution. As I said when I spoke on a similar subject on 1 December, the group published our report, Shifting the Burden, in March 2014. I encourage noble Lords to review its findings.

The inquiry reinforced for me the concerns I have had about the negative impact on individuals involved in providing sexual services and the circumstances in which they find themselves. I recognise that this does not apply to all individuals, but, as I said in December, the evidence I have seen indicates that the majority of individuals in prostitution today are victims of exploitation and violence of one form or another. I set out some of that evidence in my speech then, and I hope the House will indulge me if I repeat some of the arguments again as they are very pertinent to my Bill.

Multiple academic studies, including data compiled for the Home Office, demonstrate that the majority of people who sell sex are incredibly vulnerable and subject to real exploitation. For example, research has shown that homelessness, living in care, and debt and substance abuse are all common experiences prior to a person entering prostitution, which is sometimes reflected in the evidence received by our all-party group inquiry.

Many of those in prostitution have suffered abuse and violence in the home. Dr Max Waltman of Stockholm University notes that international studies have consistently found that,

“the majority of prostituted persons—somewhere between 55% and 90% … were subjected to sexual abuse as children”.

The 2012 study, which was carried out for the charity Eaves, interviewed 114 women in prostitution in London both on the street and indoors. Of the women interviewed, 50% said that they had experienced some form of coercion from a partner, pimp or relative, or through trafficking. The same study found that 32% of those interviewed had entered the sex industry before the age of 18. Other studies have found higher numbers than this. For example, the 2004 UK study found a figure of 52% entering before the age of 18.

Numerous studies have found that between 50% and 95% of women in street prostitution are addicted to class A drugs. Professor Roger Matthews, an expert in prostitution law and policy has written:

“Street prostitutes frequently report that they work to support not only their own habit but also that of their boyfriend, pimp or partner. In some cases, male drug users/dealers will seek out female prostitutes as ‘partners’ since they make good customers and providers”.

The Eaves study I referred to also found that drug and alcohol misuse was not restricted to those in street prostitution, with 83% of their interviewees having a current or previous problem, which in a significant number of cases had begun or increased after entering prostitution. The evidence indicates not only that most people entering prostitution are vulnerable, but that the experience of prostitution compounds that vulnerability, putting them at risk of significant physical and mental harm. A comparative study of prostitution in nine countries, with more than 850 subjects, found that 73% had been physically assaulted. Some 61% of the women surveyed in 2012 by Eaves reported experiences of violence from buyers of sexual services.

Prostitution has also been shown to have a negative impact on people’s mental health. One comparative study in Glasgow looked at the mental health of female drug users, some engaged in prostitution and others not. The study found that those involved in prostitution experience more abusive incidents as adults and more mental health problems than those who are not. The authors concluded:

“Higher rates of adulthood abuse among prostitutes may explain the greater proportion of prostitutes than non-prostitutes meeting criteria for current depressive ideas and lifetime suicide attempts”.

The Council of Europe succinctly summarised my concerns in a parliamentary assembly resolution last year:

“Prostitution is a complex issue presenting various facets that should be taken into account. It affects the health of sex workers with consequences ranging from increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases to higher risks of drug and alcohol addiction, physical and mental traumas, depression and other mental illnesses”.

However, it is not only the statistics that persuade me that the harms of prostitution are such that it can be seen as a form of violence against women and a dehumanising practice damaging for individuals and society as a whole. It is the stories of individuals who I have met that have been the most compelling. Earlier this week I had the privilege to listen to the powerful account of a woman who had been through prostitution and who now campaigns against sexual exploitation. She said the following:

“When you are prostituted, however you arrived there, you sign a social contract that comes with the highest cost; for the small print of this contract, the terms and conditions are harsh, disturbing and unjustifiable. So it would appear to most that we stand free on the street and yet everywhere we are in chains”.

She went on to say:

“It is my firm belief that every human is entitled to live a dignified life, and prostitution is the systematic stripping of one’s human dignity and I know that because I have lived and witnessed it, and it must no longer be tolerated”.

I agree with her entirely. The dignity and value of every individual person must be our priority.

All these facts lead me to the conclusion that a reduction in the levels of prostitution is essential, and that this would positively impact not only those domestically but also individuals who might be trafficked into England and Wales in the future.

Noble Lords will remember that we have international obligations to reduce the demand for human trafficking in both Article 18 of the EU directive and Article 6 of the Council of Europe convention on this subject. Indeed, last year the European institutions advocated action to reduce demand for human trafficking and for prostitution. I am sure some noble Lords are thinking that we have covered all this in the Modern Slavery Act. That is, indeed, a fine piece of legislation but, as I said at the time, it did nothing to fundamentally address the demand for human trafficking for sexual exploitation—a very serious oversight given that, according to the NRM figures, sexual exploitation is consistently the most prevalent form of human trafficking in England and Wales.

My Bill before us today seeks to address some of that demand by preventing the advertising of prostitution. It does so by addressing an anomaly in the law on prostitution whereby it is currently illegal to organise or profit from prostitution by running a brothel or allowing premises to be used for prostitution and to cause, incite or control prostitution for gain, but it is not illegal to advertise those same services in newspapers or on the internet. As the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland, said to me yesterday, we would not accept adverts for a stolen bicycle or for illegal drugs and yet many prostitution adverts contain clear indications of other offences by referring to the availability of several women and, when combined with reference to ethnicity, should at least raise suspicions of trafficking.

I am not naive enough to think that if this Bill becomes law all advertising for prostitution will cease. That is not the criterion by which we should measure its success. My goal is twofold: first, that the law will help to reduce the amount of advertising and thereby help reduce the demand for paid sex, and all the attendant suffering and exploitation that comes with it, and help us fulfil our international obligations to address the demand for paid sex; and, secondly, that it will send a very clear message that we as a society reject the culture of prostitution advertising which commodifies and dehumanises women.

It is for those reasons that I am bringing this Bill before the House. In so doing, I would like to draw the attention of your Lordships’ House to the fact that this proposal is not without powerful international advocates. The European Parliament has noted that,

“advertisements for sexual services in newspapers and social media can be means of supporting trafficking and prostitution”.

This connection was poignantly highlighted by the case of a family in Bolton jailed last month for trafficking and exploiting two women in prostitution. According to the Guardian newspaper report, the court was told that one of the traffickers,

“set up profiles for the two women on adult websites, and when clients called he and his father would tell the women what to say. The victims, aged 30 and 21, were forced to see up to five clients a day and worked ‘whenever the phone rang’”.

The proposal to ban advertising of prostitution was recommended in a 2014 resolution of the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly. That resolution, which was passed by an overwhelming majority last year, states clearly that,

“trafficking in human beings and prostitution are closely linked … legislation and policies on prostitution are indispensable anti-trafficking tools”.

The resolution calls on Council of Europe member states to,

“ban the advertising of sexual services”.

My Bill meets that call.

The Purple Teardrop Campaign, the United Kingdom organisation committed to ending human trafficking, has a petition calling on Her Majesty’s Government to ban what it terms “sex for sale” advertisements, saying:

“Many ‘sex for sale’ advertisements are placed by traffickers and so contribute to the demand for sexually exploited women and children”.

I understand that more than 36,300 people have signed the petition to date.

My Bill is short and to the point. Clause 1 makes it an offence for a person to publish or cause to be published, or distribute or cause to be distributed, an advert for prostitution. Clause 4 ensures that the offence applies to a business as well as to an individual. Clause 5 defines an advert as,

“every form of advertising or promotion, whether in a publication or by the display of notices or posters or by the means of circulars, leaflets, pamphlets or cards or other documents or by way of radio, television, internet, telephone, facsimile transmission, photography or cinematography or other like means of communication”.

Clause 2 sets out that the punishment would be a fine, the level of which would be set by the Secretary of State. Clause 3 provides a defence that the person,

“did not know and had no reason to suspect that the advertisement related to a brothel”,

or prostitution.

This is a modest but important Bill and I urge noble Lords to give it a Second Reading. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by saying that I totally share the horror of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the whole House, at the ideas of violence, exploitation—I think that he had in mind living off immoral earnings—intimidation and, although he did not mention it, rape, having sexual intercourse without consent. These are real horrors. We have pretty strong laws against them with pretty strong penalties, but if the noble Lord can make out a case to strengthen the penalties or enforcement, I may well be with him. I do not think that he has made a case that the solution is to criminalise prostitution itself. I am quite certain that he has not made a case that the right way to criminalise prostitution is to do it on the back of this Bill, which is ostensibly about something else.

In my view, legislation should always be open, overt, frank and transparent. It should not be carried surreptitiously, casually on the back of some other Bill. It is very important that the whole House, the other place and the public have a chance to think through the long-term consequences of new legislation, particularly radical legislation of the kind that the noble Lord proposed in his introductory speech, which is criminalising prostitution itself. A lot of perverse consequences would flow from that. The noble Lord shakes his head, but we must be in a position to consider those consequences specifically in relation to the proposal that he has now made to the House to abolish prostitution, not the proposal in the paper that he has put forward, the Bill, which is simply to criminalise advertising for prostitution purposes. There is a lack of frankness in that approach of which I strongly disapprove.

My view about legalising or criminalising prostitution is, above all, based on a fundamental principle, which is that set out so lucidly by JS Mill 150 years ago, which I think is dear to the hearts of everybody who believes in freedom. That is that the state should not restrict the freedom of any citizen except to the extent required to protect the freedom of others. It flows directly from that that acts in private between consenting adults are no concern of the state or of the law. You violate that principle at your peril.

I recognise that virtuous and respectable people, in the interests of reforming society, as they see it, are always trying to encroach on that principle. The worst case was the introduction of the legislation in the 1880s criminalising homosexuality, which continued on our statute book for 80 years. In my view, we should never have violated that principle. I would be against it even if the pragmatic arguments ran in the other direction, but actually, I see several pragmatic arguments which run very much against the idea of criminalising prostitution. In the time I have, I will mention just three.

One is a definitional problem, whether it has to be dealt with by Parliament or by the judiciary in the courts. I fear that it does not sound very romantic or edifying to say so, but I suspect that quite a lot of relationships—far more than we like to think—have some element of material interest in them. It would be extremely difficult to decide whether the material or monetary interest was decisive in one particular case. The law would make an awful fool of itself if it specified that if you hire someone for sex for a night or a weekend, you are committing a criminal offence, but if the relationship, including the financial relationship, continued for months or years, you are not—in other words, that a crime, if continued long enough or repeated frequently enough, ceases to be a crime. That would be a novel jurisprudential notion.

Equally, the law would be pretty stupid if it ended up specifying that if you pay for sex with money—cash or specie—it is a criminal offence, but if you pay by means of a diamond brooch, it is not. The law would be held up to equal ridicule and there would be a considerable sense of injustice if you targeted the poor prostitute and perhaps the relatively poor client of the poor prostitute and left the wealthy man and the successful and wealthy courtesan to enjoy themselves without let or hindrance. That would be a mistake. So the definitional problems are real, and the noble Lord needs to address them, if he wants to take further his project of abolishing prostitution by law.

Then there is the issue of the strain on the criminal justice system and particularly the police. We know that the Government are cutting police numbers in drastic fashion, which I personally think is an utterly irresponsible policy that we and even they will ultimately regret. That aside, can you imagine what would happen if the police had responsibility for chasing up every act or alleged act of prostitution in this country? Here for once I do feel that I am not speaking alone. I should be very unamused if I was told by the police that they did not have time or resources to investigate the burglary of my house because they were launched on a much more exciting case, because Snooks was alleged to be having sex with Fifi and money might be changing hands. We want to think very carefully about that aspect as well.

Thirdly, there is the whole issue of the prohibition effects. We all know what prostitution is conceptually. The exchange of money for sex or sex for money is the confluence of two powerful forces in human nature: the desire for sex and the desire for money. If there are more powerful forces in human nature, I am not quite sure what they are, and if you try to dam the tide against them you may have some very perverse effects. The Americans did that with prohibition, but I fear that the two forces that I have just mentioned may be even more ubiquitous and powerful than the desire for alcohol. So you get the same effects; you create a whole new seam of rich potential profits for criminals involved in the intermediation which obviously would be necessary if you criminalised prostitution. It is quite easy to envisage all sorts of opportunities for criminal activity, racketeering and so forth, such as happened under prohibition.

If you prohibit by law something that has been going on for a long time and for which there is a structural demand and existing supply system—we are told that it is quite pervasive; I have not seen these websites myself but I have heard about them and I gather that there are an awful lot of them—you will force a raft of people overnight to change their habits or give up their livelihoods or become criminals. There are enormous social implications from doing that which have to be thought through. None of this has been thought through on this occasion.

Finally, there is one extraordinary anomaly—an ironic contradiction at the heart of the noble Lord’s Bill. He set out his intention essentially to defend women in this matter, and I have some sympathy with that: but he then brings forward a Bill that criminalises advertising. But advertising is always paid for by the supplier, not the customer, and the suppliers on these occasions are largely women. So the only people who would suffer criminal sanctions as a result of the Bill becoming law, if it ever did, would be the females involved in prostitution, and not the males. That seems to me an extraordinarily perverse outcome, and I hope that the noble Lord will think a little bit further about this Bill before taking it further.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

Before the noble Lord sits down, could it be by some unimaginable stretch of the imagination that he has come into the wrong debate? We are not talking about criminalising prostitution—we are talking about advertising.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord’s Bill, as I have just said, talks about advertising—but, as I have also said, it seems not to be his real agenda. He made it clear in his own introductory remarks that what he intended to do was to abolish prostitution, and that this was just one of several legislative instruments that he has had in mind with that particular intention. I do not think that he can get away from the fact that his introductory speech was all about criminalising prostitution and that that was his preferred solution to the problems of violence and exploitation which he started off with.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

The noble Lord reminds me very much of part of the Queen’s speech—I refer to the Queen’s speech in “Hamlet”, when she says:

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord has brought forward a Bill which is a bit of a false prospectus. If he had talked about advertising, we would all understand that we were simply limited to talking about advertising. In actual fact, every economic activity involves advertising, because every supplier has to have some way of communicating with his customers or potential customers. So you could say that if you ban advertising you ban the activity that is advertised, anyway. We did not get into any of that at all, and I think that—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this debate and the Minister for his kind remarks about me. However, I should like to draw attention to the amazing work that has been done by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow. A big team has been at work.

It has come through clearly in this debate that advertising facilitates the exploitation in prostitution of people who are trafficked and some who are not. I shall not respond directly to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, because they do not relate to this Bill. However, I should like to address briefly one point that he raised. He suggested that my Bill will further criminalise women who are placing adverts. The Bill was drafted with the intention, courtesy of Clause 1, to address those who facilitate and publish the advertising, such as newspapers and website operators. I shall certainly look into the question further and if I receive legal advice that Clause 1 could be interpreted to apply to an individual placing an advert rather than only to the entity publishing it, I shall certainly look into bringing an amendment in Committee.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I was guided in my remarks by the phrase in the first line of the noble Lord’s substantive Bill:

“A person who publishes or causes to be published”.

It seems to me that inevitably the supplier of prostitution services would be causing to be published any advertisements that appeared on her behalf.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

I shall certainly take legal advice about that and see whether we can tighten things up later on.

The Minister referred to the importance of minimising the harm of prostitution and I agree that we want to do all we can to reduce the harm experienced by people in prostitution. Indeed, that is the aim of reducing demand. By addressing the proliferation of advertising and reducing the demand it fuels, we can reduce levels of prostitution and thereby reduce the harm that is caused.

We should of course be working with the police, the courts system, the NHS and social services to try to prosecute those who commit acts of violence against people in prostitution and to help people access support to exit prostitution and build a new life for themselves. However, unless we address the demand, for each person who is assisted out of crisis, another will take their place. We need to look at the bigger picture.

I find myself in a rather difficult position because there is much I would like to respond to but we are out of time. I should like to put on record that I completely reject the suggestion that the Bill is unenforceable or that it will make life more dangerous for people in prostitution. I feel very frustrated that time does not allow me to explain why.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

2: Clause 50, page 39, line 34, at end insert—
“( ) Regulations under subsection (1) must set out—
(a) what services will be provided to meet international obligations for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims;(b) how the services will be provided to meet international obligations in respect of a victim’s consent, safety or other special needs;(c) that provision of services must not be made conditional on the victim assisting with a criminal investigation or prosecution; and(d) how the services will be monitored and audited.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 2 is in my name and would clarify the content of regulations that may be introduced under Clause 50 for the provision of support and assistance to victims. I have spoken both in Committee and on Report about the importance of putting support and assistance provision into legislation and, in particular, the benefit of setting out the minimum range of support and assistance to be provided. There are three key reasons why I continue to think that this is important.

First, it will give confidence to victims and support workers that they will receive support and therefore it will encourage more victims to come forward to seek help. This point of view has been expressed by victims’ organisations and the pre-legislative evidence review, chaired by Mr Frank Field MP. Secondly, putting the basic principles of support and assistance into legislation will provide a strong framework to ensure consistent standards and availability of care across the country, strengthened by monitoring and auditing mechanisms.

The third reason for putting details of support and assistance into legislation is that it will ensure that provision will meet our obligations by allowing parliamentary scrutiny in a way which policy provision alone cannot. The review of the NRM was extremely welcome, although it was disappointing that it found many of the same problems identified by the evaluation report of the Council of Europe group of experts known as GRETA when it visited four years earlier in 2011. Putting support and assistance provisions into domestic law will focus the attention of the Government in a way that international obligations have not.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I will be able to say something further on the record today, which I hope will go some way towards reassuring my noble friend and other noble Lords on this important matter.

It might be helpful for the House to reflect on where we have come on this particular part of the Bill’s journey, which relates to identification and support. We had Jeremy Oppenheim’s review of the NRM, which was widely welcomed and appreciated on all sides of the House. It is important to remember that Jeremy Oppenheim stopped short of suggesting that there ought to be a statutory footing for this. He said that he felt that would take away from the flexibility of tailoring support to the needs of potential victims. He argued that it would be better not to put it on a statutory footing. We had that debate in Committee, with the very helpful support of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee, as I recall.

We then came forward with this enabling clause to say that we could enable the Government to bring forward regulations under the Bill. We then said that we would ensure that the services are working as effectively as possible and that we would have two pilot schemes, which will be set up in the next few weeks. They will test out the recommendations that have been put forward on identification and care in the Oppenheim review, along with other recommendations that have been made. We then said that, following those pilots, the guidance that will be produced will be subject to a public consultation.

I am going to some length to spell this out because someone looking at this amendment in isolation might think that the subject matter we are talking about, namely what services and care we provide to the victims of these crimes and how, which is of fundamental importance, is not stated anywhere—that it is somehow in the ether. The point I made in the past, and which I will make again, is that Her Majesty’s Government currently comply with all our international obligations under the EU directives and the convention. All we are talking about in this clause is what more we will do to go even further than our obligations require us to do. The idea that we are somehow going to drop below that threshold is simply not there.

When it comes to the amendment, we have some very specific difficulties with one or two of its provisions. I say to my noble friend, who has played such a pivotal role in bringing this legislation forward, that this has not been passed off lightly. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, talked about the words which I used at Report and then asked whether the Government would be bringing forward their own amendment in respect of this. We have gone through this painstakingly to see whether we can do this, but we feel that to do so would be effectively to prejudge all the very good stages of consultation, pilots and testing which we have put in place. That is the only reason why we are not in a position to support the amendment in its current form. However, I want to put some additional remarks on the record and to answer the very clear questions which were made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, so I will seek to do that.

The quality of identification and support for victims is a critical issue. As I have said before, the victim is at the heart of the Government’s approach to tackling modern slavery. Given the importance of ensuring appropriate assistance and support for victims, I entirely understand the sentiment behind this amendment and I believe I can put on the record some remarks today which will give the noble Lord and the House reassurance on this issue. The Government are fully committed to meeting our international obligations in respect of support for victims. In fact, we provide more than the minimum set out in our international obligations. I want to be clear about the intention of the new enabling power in respect of identifying and supporting victims which is that any regulations made under this clause will be fully in line with our international obligations.

The amendment also raises the important issue of the monitoring and auditing of standards of care, which the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, mentioned. Standards of care are integral to the victim care contract and the lead contractor—currently the Salvation Army—will ensure that it and any subcontractor comply with the requirements set out in the contract. These include safe accommodation, access to interpretation services, which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked me to repeat, and all other international obligations relating to support provisions. All service providers must be registered with the Care Quality Commission, which monitors, inspects and regulates care services to ensure that they provide people with safe, effective and high-quality care based on their needs and encourages providers to make improvements.

We want to see further improvements in identification and support of victims. That is why we are piloting the transformational recommendations of the national referral mechanism review to ensure that we get it right. It is also why we have committed to a formal public consultation to develop statutory guidance, under Clause 49, on victim identification and support. This will ensure that non-governmental organisations and others with expertise can help the Government to further improve the identification and support of victims.

I have some specific concerns. Given the period of major change that the NRM is currently going through, I would caution against specifying what the regulations must contain before the results of the pilots and the consultation on the guidance have helped us to frame future regulations. I also have concerns about the potential implications of the wording of the amendment, which could, for example, arguably conflict with the UK’s current policy of providing discretionary leave to victims where they are supporting a police investigation under our international obligations.

The regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure, so Parliament will have an opportunity to comment on them before they are passed. Given that we have already come a long way on the issue by including an enabling power in the Bill and given the assurances I have provided about our international obligations, I ask my noble friend to reflect further on his amendment.

I will just deal with a couple of other issues. The first one is the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who asked whether the regulations will include information about our international obligations. The answer is, yes, the regulations will include the international obligations we have discussed, including the type of victim support set out in the Council of Europe conventions. To distil this down to a fine point, which my noble friend was eager to ensure: when the guidance comes forward in statutory form, will it spell out what is going to be provided? I can say unequivocally that the answer to that is yes. That is reinforced on page 62 of the Modern Slavery Strategy document. It is further cross-referenced in the NRM review, which on page 38 makes many recommendations about the nature of the identification and support which should be given for this. The Government have stated categorically that we support in principle all the recommendations which have been made in the NRM review.

I am grateful to my noble friend for seeking those reassurances. I hope that he will see that we have been genuine in our desire to find a way in which we can address his concerns. We have not been able to do it by accepting this amendment, but I hope that the additional words which I have been able to put on the record from the Dispatch Box today will give him the reassurance he seeks and enable him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, not only on this occasion but over many months. I thank the Minister for coming some way to allay our worries. I am very grateful to him for all the trouble he has taken and for the very gracious way in which he has coped with the conduct of this Bill. I thank him very much and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 53, 56, 58, 59 and 71. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I have fought a battle with two separate Governments over the past six years or so to be able to create a situation in which child victims of human trafficking, from overseas, in particular, have someone as a mentor, or to monitor them, outside social services. We fought that battle—it took a long time—and I am absolutely delighted to be able to say that I strongly support Amendment 61, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bates. It is for that reason that I think, for the first time, that the battle the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I have fought has achieved, with the existing part of Clause 48 together with these amendments, nearly everything that we both want—certainly that I want. However, it would be helpful, when regulations and guidance are given, if the other matters in various amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and with my name on them, were to be found somewhere, in secondary legislation or guidance. But for the time being I am delighted with the result that has been achieved.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely pleased that Clause 48 is part of the Bill. It recognises that trafficked children have particular needs and experiences that make them especially vulnerable. It has been a great pleasure to work with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, over these years and it is great that the Minister has been so co-operative and helpful. I am also particularly grateful that he arranged the very helpful meeting with officials from the Home Office and Barnardo’s, which operates the child trafficking advocacy scheme.

The Minister’s amendments to Clause 48 deal precisely with the key areas of concern that we raised in Committee, and they are a testament to the Minister’s willingness to engage constructively on those issues—and I am very pleased to speak today in support of the majority of his amendments. I shall not go into great detail on matters contained in the amendments, trusting that my views are well known to your Lordships, and I shall focus my remarks on areas on which I would appreciate further clarification from the Minister.

Amendments 62 and 64 address the power to make regulations about details of the advocate scheme and will now require that regulations are made and cover the functions and appointment of the advocate. I strongly urge your Lordships to support Amendments 62 and 64, which will require the creation of regulations ensuring a robust statutory foundation for child trafficking advocates.

I have one question for the Minister. In previous amendments that I have brought to the House on this issue, I have always ensured that the functions of the role were based on internationally recognised best practice guidance from UNICEF and, more recently, from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Can the Minister assure me that such international guidance and recommendations from other British studies such as the Still At Risk report will be considered in drawing up the functions in the regulations, as well as from the trials currently being undertaken?

I particularly welcome Amendment 61, in the name of the Minister, which gives child trafficking advocates the power to assist the child in obtaining the legal advice and power to appoint and instruct legal representatives. As I mentioned in Committee, I have met a number of lawyers who represent trafficked children and who have all told me that they have great difficulty in taking instructions from trafficked children. They have therefore recommended that the advocate should have the power to fill that gap.

I welcome the Minister’s Amendment 72, which states that regulations about the advocates will require public authorities to,

“recognise, and pay due regard to, the advocate’s functions, and … provide the advocate with access to such information … to carry out those functions”.

We have heard in the past various stories from organisations such as Barnardo’s where advice from charity workers supporting trafficked children has not been heeded by a local authority, resulting in a child going missing and no longer receiving the help that they need.

Amendment 72 would help to prevent this happening. I have one question for the Minister about that amendment: which bodies and agencies will have this duty? During the meeting with Barnardo’s arranged for Peers by the Minister, I was disappointed to hear the story of a child whose college did not accept the child’s valid reason for missing classes, which had been to attend official immigration appointments. It was frustrating to hear that the advocate had had to make repeated representations to the college explaining the child’s situation before it heeded her advice and removed the negative attendance report from the child’s records. I hope that such a scenario would not be possible in the future, as a result of Amendment 72.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

62: Clause 48, page 37, line 34, leave out “may” and insert “must”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

74: Clause 49, page 38, line 5, after “guidance” insert “, in conjunction with the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner,”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

I speak to amendments to Clause 49. First, I have tabled Amendment 74 because I am keen to ensure that there is joined-up thinking between different sections of the Bill. Part 4 has created the position of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner and has charged the commissioner with encouraging good practice in the identification of victims. It seems logical, therefore, that the commissioner be involved in the production of statutory guidance directly relevant to promoting good practice in the identifying of victims—namely, the indicators of trafficking and the process of deciding that a person is a victim of trafficking and entitled to receive assistance.

The commissioner will have a great deal of expertise and will gather a lot of information from front-line professionals about the challenges and good practice in identifying victims in the course of carrying out his work. That expertise and information will be key to determining what the guidance produced under Clause 49 needs to cover. We must ensure that the commissioner’s knowledge and findings are incorporated into the development process for the guidance. Amendment 74 would make that a requirement of the guidance provision. I urge the Minister to accept Amendment 74 to guarantee a role for the commissioner in drawing up the statutory guidance. Can the Minister also confirm that the guidance produced under Clause 49 will go through public consultation processes to enable NGOs and other groups with relevant expertise to make an input into the guidance?

I am pleased to introduce Amendment 74 in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Morrow. I am extremely thankful to the Minister for the new measures that he has introduced on Report to strengthen protection for child victims and bring victim support into the consideration of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. However, I feel that there is still a gap in the centre of the Bill: the lack of a guarantee of assistance and support for victims. Amendment 82 creates a power for the Secretary of State to introduce regulations about providing assistance and support to victims, which I welcome as far as it goes—but I do not believe it goes far enough. An enabling power provides no assurance to victims and makes no commitments about what victims are entitled to. Amendment 78 is a better way forward. My Amendments 75, 79 and 80 are consequential on Amendment 78.

It has been noted by the Minister and others that the Bill before us today has vastly more measures to address the needs of victims than the draft Bill. This is undoubtedly true, and I welcome all the improvements that have occurred here and in another place, but on the specific matter of victim support, the Modern Slavery Bill comes up very short when we compare it with the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which was steered though the Assembly by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill proposed by the Scottish Government. Amendment 78 would insert a new subsection (1A) which would require support to be provided and a new subsection (1B) which would require the Secretary of State to provide guidance on the provision of support and assistance.

There are three key elements in Amendment 78 which echo the provisions of the Northern Ireland Act and the Scottish Bill but are missing from both Clause 49 and the amendments proposed by the Minister. The first is putting in statute a basic duty for the state to provide victims with,

“support and assistance for physical, psychological and social recovery”.

Setting out in the Bill that victims are entitled to a period of support and assistance will help give them confidence to come forward and seek help. It should also give them confidence to engage with police officers and talk about what has happened to them—and perhaps even to give testimony in court against the perpetrators of these horrible crimes.

During the very helpful meeting with Peers arranged by the Minister, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner spoke about the many victims he had encountered in his time as a police officer who were too fearful to speak to officers. It was only after they had been brought to a place of safety in the care of people outside the law enforcement apparatus that they felt confident to speak. In Committee, the Minister drew attention to the assistance provided under the victim care contract, which is a very positive thing. However, unless we establish in law a duty to provide that assistance, I fear that the victim care programme will not be protected for the long term when budgets become squeezed or departmental priorities change. In Committee, I mentioned that GRETA, the Council of Europe’s group of experts, recommended in 2012 that the convention right to a recovery and reflection period for victims should be enshrined in British law, and my amendment would do exactly that.

Establishing victim support in law will also provide a basis for achieving a greater level of consistency in the support provided to victims across the care programme. Paragraph (d) of new subsection (1B) inserted by Amendment 78 additionally promotes this by requiring the establishment of minimum standards for victim support, while paragraph (g) of that new subsection requires the service to be audited, as recommended by the NRM review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I always slightly quake in my boots when my noble and learned friend asks me a question, because if I think I have actually understood the question, I am probably overreaching myself in terms of my understanding of it. I think that we are talking about the individual—the noble Lord, Lord Morrow can respond, should he wish, on the specifics of Northern Ireland—and making it clear that the support to be provided is through the care contract, which is currently provided through the national referral mechanism. In addition, there are particular statutory duties, of course, on the part of local authorities to provide social care for vulnerable individuals. I will, again, reflect on that and if there are any changes I will certainly write and clarify the remarks that I have made.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contribution, and I especially thank the Minister for his and for many of the explanations that he has given. I also thank him again for the many ways in which he has accommodated us. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 74.

Amendment 74 withdrawn.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 34, 35 and 37.

It has been said by many during debates on this Bill—but it is worth repeating—that victims must be at the heart of all our actions to address modern slavery, whether in this Bill, in other policies and strategies or in the everyday front-line work of police officers, prosecutors, support workers, local authorities and so on. When a victim escapes from a situation of modern slavery they are likely to be interviewed by the police, they may enter the national referral mechanism process, or they may be placed in a specialist shelter through a victim care programme or be cared for by other charities. They might apply for asylum and have to deal with immigration officers and the whole asylum process. As they move between all these scenarios, victims do not change: they remain the same person. Their experience cannot be compartmentalised. For them it is a seamless whole.

The commissioner-designate has stated the importance of taking a victim-focused approach to this crime. Indeed, he told Peers during our informative meeting that he has made improving victim care one of his five priority areas of work. If the commissioner, a man of great experience in the front line of addressing modern slavery, believes that engagement and oversight of victim care and support is a vital function for his role, I am sure noble Lords will agree that we should be listening. I am pleased, therefore, that the Minister has introduced Amendment 37, which clarifies that the commissioner should have regard to the provision of assistance and support to victims in carrying out his functions.

I confess that I had some concerns following a meeting with the commissioner- designate that, without this amendment, bringing victim care into the concerns of the commissioner involves a creative interpretation of the current functions set out in Clause 41(1) which might not be endorsed by future Home Secretaries. During our debate in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Deben, highlighted the importance of getting the commissioner’s statutory mandate right. He said:

“Unless the commissioner can point to the Act and say, ‘I do this because …’, there will be those who will use every possible opportunity to try to trip him up and make the kind of legal arguments that hide the fact that what they are really about is stopping him being effective. That is why it is so important that we should be absolutely sure that we get it right”.—[Official Report, 8/12/14; col. 1629.]

I agree entirely. Amendment 37 will ensure that the text of the statute matches our intentions so that in a number of years, when the memories of our debates on the Bill have faded, the commissioner will still be able to look at all aspects of a victim’s experience and make recommendations to see victim care and support improve and develop, based on the letter of the law. I therefore firmly endorse Amendment 37 and commend it to your Lordships.

However, I have some questions of clarification that I would like to raise with the Minister about Amendments 34 and 35, which specifically suggest that the commissioner may consult, co-operate and work jointly with the noble Baroness the Victims’ Commissioner. I support the noble Lord’s proposal for co-operation and consultation between the anti-slavery commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner. I believe this will ensure good oversight and joined-up thinking on all issues in a far more effective way than trying to separate into silos matters which are, on the ground, interlocked and interdependent.

My concerns stem from the fact that specific reference is made to the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales only, and I am not sure whether the Minister dealt with this. I would have thought that similar co-operation and consultation would be needed with other commissioners such as the children’s commissioners—and those of all the four nations now that the role extends across the whole of the UK. I imagine that co-operation will also be required with other commissioners or inspectors such as the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. I recognise that the amendment allows for a wider class of other persons, but I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate the reasoning for specifically mentioning the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales and how we can ensure consultation with bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland which have responsibilities regarding victims. I would also be grateful if the Minister could explain what consideration had been given to including a reference in the clause to other commissioners or bodies.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I support government Amendments 34, 35 and 37 spoken to by the noble Baroness the Minister. I first make my apologies to your Lordships for not having been present during the earlier debates on this Bill. My absence on those occasions was however directly connected to the matters before us today, as I was engaged in debates on my human trafficking and exploitation Bill in the Northern Ireland Assembly on those days—a Bill which, I am pleased to say, received Royal Assent in January.

I have a particular perspective on the role of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner since the role has now been extended to cover Northern Ireland. This means that the commissioner will need to work to promote good practice in the prosecution and investigation of offences and the identification of victims, all with regard to the legislation we have enacted in Northern Ireland, as well as to the Modern Slavery Bill.

I had the opportunity to meet the commissioner-designate during a visit he made to Northern Ireland and I was most impressed by his plans and his passion to tackle this terrible crime head on. I was encouraged by his commitment to visit Northern Ireland regularly and his awareness of the particular challenges and opportunities that arise from our land border with the Irish Republic. It seems likely that he will do an excellent job. I was also particularly impressed with his clear understanding that victims’ needs must be central to any strategy to deal with modern-day slavery and, moreover, with his determination to make sure that all our systems and agencies across the UK recognise this and reflect it in how they work.

I had some reservations that the ambitious victim-centred plans set out by the commissioner are not clearly reflected in the mandate provided by the Bill. It concerned me that if a new Home Secretary came into office, he or she may not approve a future strategic plan that extends as widely as that proposed by the present commissioner. Indeed, it is possible that an organisation receiving unwanted recommendations from the commissioner could argue that victim support is outside the commissioner’s remit and reject his recommendations on that basis. I therefore welcome government Amendment 37, which expressly gives the commissioner the mandate to look into matters of victim support.

Modern slavery is the exploitation of individual human beings. Any effective anti-slavery commissioner will need to look at how we improve our systems to better protect and support those individuals, whether in investigations or other environments. The Bill must support and empower him to do that. I urge your Lordships to support Amendment 37 in the name of the Minister.

I referred earlier to my particular perspective in relation to the commissioner’s work in Northern Ireland. I have one area of concern about government Amendments 34 and 35 that stems from this perspective. I have no doubt that it will be important for the anti-slavery commissioner to consult and work together with a wide variety of groups and organisations, and I welcome the fact that these amendments specifically highlight the importance of the voluntary sector. The advice, constructive criticism and on-the-ground evidence from NGOs was of vital assistance to me as I prepared and refined my human trafficking Bill through its passage in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I dare say that the Minister would say the same about the contributions made in the development of this Bill from its draft form right up to the amendments proposed this evening.

I also echo what has been said in respect of the need for the anti-slavery commissioner to co-ordinate with the Victims’ Commissioner, as a way to maximise benefit and avoid duplication of work. I have some concerns, however, that victims in Northern Ireland, and indeed Scotland, will not benefit from this co-operation. I suggest to the Minister that we need to ensure that the commissioner is careful to take account of efforts to improve victim care and to work with bodies involved in supporting victims in other parts of the UK as well. I hope very much that she can assure me that reference to consultation with the Victims’ Commissioner will not create a hierarchy of victims, with victims in England and Wales receiving greater attention from the commissioner than victims in the rest of the UK.

Modern Slavery Bill

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

28: Clause 40, page 30, line 43, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) The Secretary of State—
(a) must before the beginning of each financial year specify a maximum sum which the Commissioner may spend that year,(b) may permit that to be exceeded for a specified purpose, and(c) subject to paragraphs (a) and (b), must defray the Commissioner’s expenditure for each financial year.(4A) In this Part, “financial year” means—
(a) the period beginning with the day on which the first Commissioner takes office and ending with the following 31 March, and(b) each successive period of 12 months.“(4B) The Commissioner may appoint staff.”

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I support Amendment 28. Before I set out why I think the independence of the commissioner is of central importance, I want to place on record my thanks to the Minister for hosting so many meetings between Committee and Report to hear the views of Peers and to help to update us with the latest thinking from the Home Office. In relation to the clauses that we are discussing, I thank the Minister for arranging a helpful meeting with the commissioner-designate.

I welcome the amendment, because it will provide a solid foundation for the independence of the commissioner, not only in fact but in appearance. I commend the Minister for listening and responding to concerns expressed by your Lordships during the debate and for taking on board the recommendation of our Joint Committee on the draft Bill with regard to this central issue of the statutory safeguards for the commissioner’s independence. Indeed, I believe that I recognise the text of the amendment from our committee’s alternative Bill. I was pleased to hear from the commissioner himself about his vigorous determination to be an independent voice and to challenge, on the basis of evidence, those who were not meeting the necessary standards of action. I am also pleased to know that he had been involved in appointing his staff team.

The amendment will protect the independence of the commissioner for the long term, beyond the tenure of the present commissioner or the present Home Secretary. The amendment establishes clearly that although the commissioner, his office and activities are funded by the Home Office, that funding is through a budget allocation which the commissioner can apportion as he sees fit. The original text creates a dependency for the commissioner on the Secretary of State for the most basic equipment, and suggests that his office is embedded in the Home Office. That is no different from any other unit within that department, and it gives the Secretary of State the power to determine what office accommodation, equipment and facilities he or she considers necessary for the commissioner’s functions, with the only requirement being to consult the commissioner. This creates the possibility for pressure to be applied to the commissioner, influencing what he is able to do through providing or not providing certain resources. The amendment removes this possibility by empowering the commissioner himself to determine how his budget is allocated within limits set by the Secretary of State.

When the Joint Committee on the draft Bill considered these questions, we were particularly concerned not only about actual undue influence on the commissioner’s activities but about the need for the commissioner to have credibility with the many different groups, agencies and partners that he will have to engage with in his work. A degree of financial independence is key to establishing a clear separation between the commissioner and the Home Office, which the amendment accomplishes.

The amendment also gives the commissioner the power to appoint his own staff. This power is also central to establishing the independence vital to the commissioner’s reputation and effectiveness. It ensures that the commissioner will be able to gather a team with the requisite skills to fulfil his plans and objectives, rather than depending only on staff available from within the Home Office. The ability to appoint staff will also strengthen the credibility of the commissioner’s team as there will be less concern about the ability of staff members with loyalty to the Home Office to offer critical analysis of the Government’s policy.

If the commissioner is not able to demonstrate clear distance between his office and the Home Office policy machinery, the resulting damage to his credibility, and by extension to his reports and recommendations, could be paralysing. Amendment 28 will ensure that this will not be the case by creating a statutory framework that creates and protects that independence. Vis-à-vis the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that the commissioner should have access to Parliament, the commissioner—he is a very strong man indeed—can readily ask MPs or Members of this House to ask questions in the House and to initiate appropriate debates.

To protect the independence of the commissioner for the long term, we must ensure that the statute that creates the post lives up to our aspirations of independence. Amendment 28 does this. I offer the Minister my wholehearted support for this amendment.

[Lord Bates]

I am tempted to say very briefly that I of course agree with every word that my noble friend has said. He comes to this with great authority and respect, having been, as I said before, one of the people who generated the whole idea for the Bill. I know he is passionate about getting this right. I think that Amendment 28 goes a long way to address and meet some of the concerns that were legitimately raised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in the previous debate and which I understand.

I am glad that Amendment 28 will be made, because it is vital that everyone out there in the NGO community, and police officers, law enforcement and everyone else involved in this work, recognises that the commissioner’s independence is unwavering, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, put it—and, as Kevin Hyland himself put it, that he has absolute credibility in his background, having been a police officer leading on the prosecution of these areas. None the less, he wants to have a very strong working relationship with the many parliamentarians in both Houses who care passionately about this subject. Amendment 28 will ensure that that happens.