Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

about stopping all claims full stop. We should think very carefully before we allow the Government to dismember their own Modern Slavery Act, which was passed to international acclaim. I beg to move.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to my Motion P, to which the Minister referred. I should refer to my interest as a deputy chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation. Perhaps it should be called not the Human Trafficking Foundation but the “modern slavery foundation”, because there is a difference with human trafficking, which is what I think stop the boats is all about. By dint of modern slavery, everybody who is enslaved and arrives in this country has come in illegally. Nobody comes in legally for modern slavery.

I am very disappointed with this Bill. However, I am a pragmatist. Years in retail taught me that sometimes you cannot have everything you want. So when my right honourable friend Theresa May spoke so eloquently and voted against the Government—and I can say as a former Deputy Chief Whip that that was only the second time she has ever voted against the Conservative Whip, which tells you something; you could not wish for a more loyal person—she did so because, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, just said, it is not a great Bill in respect of modern slavery.

However, my noble friend and my right honourable friend down the other end in the other place made some concessions about what they would put in the guidance. My Motion basically asks that those concessions, that guidance, be put in the Bill. I would have preferred my original words—I would have preferred all sorts of things—but in order to make sure that we can get something done for the victims of this horrendous, heinous crime, if the Minister does not have a damascene conversion, when the time comes, I will test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches, I cannot express strongly enough our huge disappointment about what is happening with the Modern Slavery Act. I very much agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said. The Minister talked about “opportunities to misuse”, when it is the Home Office which approves the first responders who have to get possible victims of slavery into the NRM in the first place. He talked about enabling co-operation but, with what most of the people in this situation will have gone through, 30 days is simply insufficient for them to be able to bring themselves to co-operate with an authority figure in a foreign country when they are still worried about what their trafficker might do when he finds them and about what they will do if they have to try to get away from the system. It is simply not enough.

To co-operate requires support. That, in turn, requires trust, and that, in turn, requires time. Statutory guidance will of course be welcome. But only today I and other noble Lords received a briefing from the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham on government commitments relating to Part 5 of the 2022 Act—the modern slavery part—analysing whether they had been met, partially met or not met at all. It did not make for very happy reading. It is a shame that one has to say that. We support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Randall. We wish that there were more coming before the House tonight that we could support too.

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Moved by

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 56B in lieu—

56B: Clause 21, page 26, leave out line 19 and insert—
“(3A) If the relevant exploitation took place in the United Kingdom subsection (2) also does not apply in relation to a person—
(a) for a period of 30 days following the making of the decision referred to in subsection (1)(b);
(b) for a further period if the Secretary of State deems it necessary for a victim to establish cooperation with a public authority in connection with an investigation or criminal proceedings in respect of the relevant exploitation; and
(c) on expiration of the period in paragraphs (a) and (b) if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the person is cooperating with a public authority in connection with an investigation or criminal proceedings in respect of the relevant exploitation for the duration of those criminal proceedings thereafter.
(3B) Where subsection (3) or (3A) applies in relation to a person the following do not apply in relation to the person—
(a) section 22,
(b) section 23, and
(c) section 24.
(4) In this section—””