Modern-day Slavery

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

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

Centuries after Wilberforce abolished the slave trade, it is a disgrace that around the world today some 27 million people are in modern slavery. I have had three big instances of it in my constituency on Traveller sites. In the first, 24 people were released from slavery. Some of them had been there for a decade or more, and 19 of them were British citizens. It is horrendous.

The NHS in particular can do a lot more—it is not as good as it should be at spotting victims of modern slavery. The all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery met the parents of a young, English learning-disabled man who was taken to a Welsh hospital to have his leg reset after he had fallen off a horse while being held captive. He was taken back again, and no one thought to ask any questions about why he was brought in with a group of Irish people who were not speaking with the same accent as him.

Good work is going on in some Welsh academic institutions to ensure that training on modern slavery becomes compulsory in undergraduate and postgraduate settings and for all healthcare staff. It should have the same priority as child protection training within the NHS. That would make a huge difference, because the “Provider Responses Treatment and Care for Trafficked People” report by King’s College London showed that one in five victims of modern slavery comes into contact with healthcare professionals.

Last month, the Australian House of Representatives passed a modern slavery Bill that recognised orphanage trafficking, which has been defined as

“the active recruitment of children from families and communities into residential care institutions in overseas countries for the purposes of foreign funding and voluntourism.”

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is right to raise this point. We need to be world-leading and to take on what the Australians have demonstrated.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. Perhaps this is the new model for how we should do business in this House—we have had incisive and effective speeches in two minutes.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I thank him and all the members of the all-party parliamentary group who are here today, as well as those who are not with us but are dedicated in their wish to help us all tackle this terrible crime. I also pay tribute to the Bishop of Derby, who retired in the summer, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), and thank him very much for all the work that he has done on this important cause, not just in recent years but when the Bill was taken through the House. I am told that there is an application for a Backbench Business Committee debate on this subject. The Committee has not yet confirmed that there will be a debate, but I suspect after today that there will be. I do not want to prejudge the Committee, but I think the House has shown how important it views this issue as being.

I hope the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central and other colleagues will forgive me if I do not manage to answer every point in the time I have, because I want to leave time at the end for him to sum up. If I have not responded to some points, I will of course write to him and place a copy in the Library.

We have heard today the cross-party understanding in the House of the horrors presented by modern slavery. This terrible crime can be committed in various ways, yet every time we are told of another case of slavery I am surprised by the range of offences and the ability of human beings to be evil to one another. We saw the case this week of the gentleman who was found in Cumbria. It is beyond my comprehension, and everyone else’s, I am sure, how that person could have been treated in that way.

The Government are really proud of our introducing the Modern Slavery Act 2015, with the consent of Parliament. We are determined to ensure that that legislation remains world-leading in the face of the evolving threat, which is why we have commissioned an independent review of the Act to examine what is working well and what more can be done to improve its implementation. I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and Baroness Butler-Sloss for leading that work.

On the support that we give victims, I hope hon. Members will forgive me for taking this opportunity to announce that the independent child trafficking advocate service will be extended to children in the west midlands next week, on Anti-slavery Day. These advocates provide invaluable specialist support to child victims of modern slavery, and new regional co-ordinators will help local areas to identify and support UK victims. That will be followed by a further roll-out in the east midlands in January and in the London borough of Croydon in April, meaning that advocates will be available in one third of all local authorities in England and Wales.

Next week, I will launch the UK’s day of action for the AMINA project, which aims to safeguard children from being trafficked across European borders. The project, in partnership with End Child Prostitution and Trafficking UK and Missing Children Europe, is a joint initiative between law enforcement, civil society and Government, and brings together agencies from across six countries to keep safe children on the move.

We continue to make significant progress in reforming the national referral mechanism, about which colleagues have expressed concerns today and in the past. The reforms will make a tangible difference to the experience of victims. We are already working with six local authorities to test ways to improve the pathways from central support into local communities, increasing victims’ resilience to future exploitation.

Victims get a minimum of 45 days of assistance before a conclusive grounds decision. The extended move-on period after a conclusive grounds decision—from 14 days to 45 days—will begin in early 2019. By April 2019, the new expert caseworking unit will manage all NRM cases, with independent multi-agency assurance panels reviewing its negative conclusive grounds decisions, and a new digital referral and caseworking system will underpin the improved decision-making process to make it easier for those who work on the frontline.

[Andrew Selous]

I welcome the fact that child advocates are coming to some areas of the country, but I find it curious that the Government seem to roll out a range of public services in only some areas of the country. We should evaluate the roll-out and, if it is worth doing, we should do it everywhere.