Modern Slavery Bill

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that it is open to Back Benchers to table amendments, and when they are discussed the Government will take a position on them.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary share my hope that the Bill will help Governments around the world to do something to tackle modern slavery in their own countries? As Opposition Members have said, this is a global business and if Britain can lead the way and help other countries to deal with it, that would be worth while.

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[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill and make clear the support of not only this side but both sides of the House for taking action against the horrific crime of modern day slavery and for the Bill’s passage through the House.

Last year, a 20-year-old woman was kidnapped from her rural home in Slovakia. She was trafficked out of the country and brought to the UK, to Bradford. She was kept captive for several weeks before being sold into a sham marriage. In her marriage, she was not allowed to leave her home and was raped repeatedly and beaten by five men, all of whom lived in the house. The barrister who prosecuted the case described her experience as like

“something from a 19th century novel by Dickens”,

and said that the victim

“was handled round the continent and this country like a commodity, a human slave.”

She was raped, beaten and enslaved and robbed of her most basic freedoms not in 19th-century Britain but in 21st-century Britain, which is why we need to act and why the Bill has such strong cross-party support and will be on the statute book soon.

I pay tribute, as the Home Secretary has done, to the members of the cross-party Joint Committee, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and the right hon. Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), who have worked so hard. I also pay tribute to the former Member for Totnes, Anthony Steen, who is the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation and has done so much work in this field.

The Bill builds on work carried out under the previous Government, including criminalising trafficking in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004; the introduction in 2009 of the offence of forced labour, slavery or servitude, which recognised that slavery is not just about international forced travel; the national referral mechanism, which we introduced in 2009; and, of course, the creation of the UK Human Trafficking Centre.

[Andrew Selous]

The shadow Home Secretary is absolutely right to mention the horrific case from Slovakia, but does she recognise that many British citizens are being trafficked around the UK and, indeed, from the UK to other countries, and that we must capture that element of this horrific crime as well?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In fact, I was just mentioning the original introduction of the offence of forced labour in 2009, because it was introduced exactly for the purpose of recognising that the issue is not just about people trafficked across international borders, but about the appalling abuse and enslavement of British citizens or of people within their countries. That is rightly covered by part 1 of the Bill.

I commend the Home Secretary for her work, which has built on many years of cross-party work and support for action against the horrors of modern slavery. Because there is such strong support for the Bill and for action against slavery, I believe that there is strong support for going further. As the Home Secretary heard in hon. Members’ many points and questions, there is consensus on going further than the measures in the Bill. We want to debate such points and to point out areas where amendments could be tabled as the Bill goes through this House and the other place.

Let me begin with the measures in the Bill which we support. The Home Secretary has made a powerful case for consolidating and strengthening the law to make it easier to prosecute those committing this vile crime, as she is rightly doing in part 1. Many hon. Members will remember the shocking case of Craig Kinsella, who was held captive by a family in Sheffield and forced to work from 7.30 am to midnight for no pay. He slept in a garage and was starved, and he was beaten with a spade, a crowbar and a pickaxe. As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has mentioned, such a victim was not trafficked into the country; he was a British national. He had even moved in voluntarily with the family who enslaved him, but he was still in slavery.

That is why it is vital that UK legislation should recognise the different forms of human trafficking and slavery, and should make it possible to prosecute those who enslave, abuse and exploit. It should not only cover those who have been moved across international borders, but recognise that consent can be complex. In complicated cases, the offence should not rely on a simple lack of consent, because people can be deeply vulnerable and slavery is complex in such circumstances.

The Home Secretary is right that the law should be strengthened and that penalties should be increased. We strongly welcome clause 5, which will give trafficking offences the maximum of a life sentence. Traffickers steal people’s lives and their humanity. It is the very worst abuse, so it should carry the most severe sentences. We also welcome the work on asset seizures and reparation orders, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) has called.

I commend the Home Office’s work to prevent enslavement and trafficking, including the work on prevention and risk orders. When there is evidence that someone is likely to commit an offence, we should be able to intervene in advance for the sake of the victims, rather than waiting until it is too late. We support the introduction of an anti-slavery commissioner to keep the pressure and focus on this dreadful crime. We welcome the statutory defence for victims, the concessions made so far by the Government on child guardians, and the duty to notify the National Crime Agency.

Measures on the presumption of age are extremely important, because we know of harrowing cases in which children end up being caught without the support they need simply because there is a dispute about their age. It is vital for the authorities to show some humanity in how they approach children in those cases. The Home Secretary is right that the Bill alone is not enough. It will of course need to be supported by much wider action in terms of training, co-ordinated action and leadership, and we support her determination to make sure that that happens.

I now want to set out the areas in which we hope the Home Secretary will go further. I know that she listened during the considerations of the Joint Committee, and I hope that she will now listen to the areas where we want to table amendments and to urge her to go further and take stronger action.

We want a stronger focus on victims. If we do not support the victims of human trafficking, we are leaving people to be abused and enslaved, and to be forced to work or forced into prostitution. Those who have been abused once by evil traffickers are at risk of being abused and betrayed again by authorities who either do not understand their experiences or simply ignore the abuse that they have experienced. That is why we need more work by border staff, the police, the criminal justice system, councils and voluntary organisations to identify the victims.

As part of that, the Bill should strengthen the national referral mechanism. In 2012, the UK Human Trafficking Centre identified 2,255 human trafficking victims, but the national referral mechanism identified only just over 1,000. At the moment, the national referral mechanism is an internal process of the Home Office—there is no transparency, and no appeal—but this is an opportunity to place it on a statutory footing to give it a greater ability and authority to support victims at the time they need it most.

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[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), and indeed all the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken so well in this important debate. It is truly shocking that more than 200 years after William Wilberforce abolished both the slave trade and slavery throughout the British empire, we are back in the House of Commons having to enact a Modern Slavery Bill, because not only has the job not been done, but slavery around the world is worse today than it has ever been. The issue is at one and the same time completely global and very local. We have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) talk about a shocking case in his constituency, and I will describe an example of modern slavery in my constituency later in my remarks.

When we consider how modern slavery is allowed to happen, we need to keep two words at the front of our minds: violence and fear. Wherever there is modern slavery, forced labour, domestic servitude or people caught in the sex trade, we find violence and fear. That is how the slave traders maintain their hold over their victims, often for many years and sometimes for many decades.

If we look at the global nature of this issue, we will see that, in the 400 years or so that the slave trade was in operation, some 11 million slaves were taken from Africa to be traded across the north Atlantic and elsewhere. Today there are a number of different estimates, but, given the nature of the issue, it is impossible to get accurate figures. In his book “The Locust Effect”, which was published this year, Gary Haugen, who heads up the International Justice Mission, estimates that some 27 million people are in slavery today around the world. That is well over twice the number of slaves taken out of Africa over a 400-year period. On the money made from this evil business, looking at forced labour alone, Mr Haugen estimates a profit of some £7 billion accruing to the slave traders.

We need to think about where slavery is most prevalent in our world, in order to get an idea of its scale not only in the United Kingdom, which is the focus of this Bill, but in a global context. “The Global Slavery Index 2013”, published by the Walk Free Foundation, which is well thought of by President Clinton and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others, estimates that there are 14 million slaves in India—by far the biggest figure—and 7 million in Pakistan, with 1 million in the brick factories of Pakistan alone. It names China and Nigeria in third and fourth positions respectively. Other countries are mentioned, including Mauritania, which is the country with the highest proportion of its population—about 4%—in slavery. That gives a bit of context.

Around the world—in India and elsewhere—very few investigations and prosecutions are taking place, which is what happens when a country does not have a properly functioning criminal justice and law enforcement system. We must never take such matters for granted in our country, and I do not think our own international development work will be successful unless we put more effort into helping those countries to which we are sending UK aid to develop their own criminal justice and law enforcement systems.

To return to the United Kingdom—as I know you want me to do, Mr Deputy Speaker—I welcome the Bill and commend the Home Secretary and the Minister for introducing it. The new prevention orders, the establishment of the anti-slavery commissioner and the protective measure of a statutory defence for victims of slavery or trafficking are all welcome, and the child trafficking advocates are also an important addition to our armoury.

I know that the Government will reflect in a mature and sensible way on what is said in Committee. In their response to the pre-legislative scrutiny, the Government said on the issue of supply chains:

“We intend to build on the existing legislative framework, and work with business to establish what more can be done…and develop an evidence base on best practice.”

That is an open and excellent attitude to take.

In my own constituency early one September morning in 2011, 200 police officers from Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire turned up at a Traveller site just south of Leighton Buzzard and liberated 24 people who had been kept in slavery. Some of them had been there for 15 years or more. The youngest—one of my constituents—was only 17; I think that the oldest was 57. Of those 24, 18 were British citizens.

The victims had been picked up in the most appalling and callous ways imaginable. Many of them had been in homeless shelters or soup kitchens, and one had been about to commit suicide. They were promised friendship, work, accommodation and food, but of course none of those things materialised. The regime was very brutal. When they arrived, their heads were shaved, just as happened in the concentration camps. They were made to get up at 5 am every morning, and they worked all day on block paving and other manual and construction work. Indeed, some of them were trafficked from the United Kingdom to work in Scandinavia.

I commend Bedfordshire police for the effort they put in—they assembled 200 officers on a Sunday morning, which no police force does lightly—but the effort was more than justified, and what it managed to achieve was excellent.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

After Bedfordshire police acted to take those people into safety, did they ensure that they had someone they could trust to look after them carefully, with their best interests in mind, because that is the real spirit of the Bill? Once we identify people in slavery, we have a real duty to look after them properly, care about them and put them back into society balanced and happy.

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. and gallant Friend is absolutely right. I can reassure him that the victims were placed in the very capable hands of the Salvation Army in Bedford, and they were very well looked after. I have since met several of the victims. Indeed, some of them came to this House and saw the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall organised by Anthony Steen and others. There are some good news stories, in that some of the victims are very well integrated back into society, and are free from the terrible experiences that they went through.

On the issue of reparation, which has been talked about today, I am pleased that the Government said in their response to the pre-legislative scrutiny report that they are committed to quicker and easier reparation. I want such reparations to go to the victims of crime, but I ask the Government to think about how we can get some of the money to the police forces that have undertaken major operations. It is not cheap to send in 200 police officers early on a Sunday morning, given the overtime costs involved. If we made sure that the police gained from slave traders’ illicit profits, that would encourage more chief constables and perhaps more police and crime commissioners to be more willing to commit significant numbers of officers to stamp out the appalling crime that we are all trying to get rid of.

Within Bedfordshire, we have Bedfordshire Against Modern Slavery, which was set up by an excellent councillor, Kristy Adams. I suggest that hon. Members try to encourage some form of grass-roots movement in their areas to combat modern slavery, working alongside the police, the courts, the local authority and central Government. We all have to be involved in this issue together, and the public need to be the eyes and ears of the police. For 15 years or so in my constituency, people worked openly in the community, block paving people’s drives. Did none of the customers of the block paving firm using these slaves think that something was wrong? I think that if people had been slightly more aware and had reported their suspicions to the police, we could have broken this evil slave ring much earlier. The public therefore have a role.

Businesses also have a role, and all decent businesses will of course want to make sure that their supply chains are free of any slave-traded products. The courts and the local authorities have a role to play. We have not heard much about police and crime commissioners, but they are key people up and down our country who have an important influence on how the police spend their time and what they prioritise. Perhaps the sad truth is that police and crime commissioners perceive that there may not be many votes in targeting resources at the issue. Perhaps organisations such as Bedfordshire Against Modern Slavery have a role in ensuring that police and crime commissioners know that the public, as well as Members of Parliament, care about the issue. We want the police to be fully involved.

I pay tribute to the many organisations outside the House that do amazing work to keep the subject on the agenda. The International Justice Mission does that amazing work around the world in mounting prosecutions in many countries where law enforcement is frankly not up to the mark. It has been responsible for liberating many people. Its UK chairman, Raj Parker, and Terry Tennens, its chief executive, deserve credit. Members of Hope for Justice were in the Palace of Westminster only last night, briefing MPs. They estimate that we have 10,000 victims of modern slavery here in the UK. Of course, it is incredibly difficult to get accurate figures—we simply do not know—but that is a shockingly large number, even though it is much smaller than in other countries. Finally, there is the Human Trafficking Foundation and Anthony Steen, who has been mentioned. To me, he is a modern, mini Wilberforce. Many of us are grateful to him for his continued efforts in this campaign, in which we are all united.