Convention on Domestic Workers

Debate between Andrew Selous and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for securing the debate.

May I start by telling a story? We need to bring alive the human face of what we are talking about. It is about a young Nigerian woman who was deserted by her father when she was five, went to live in Benin and came to this country as a domestic servant. She told, in her own words, of her experience:

“I would wake up at 7 am to start the work, bring the 2 children to school and the youngest at 11.30 then picked them altogether at 3.00 pm. I did the general housework while the children at school. At night, I had to wait for my employer to open the door even at midnight though she had a key. I didn’t remember any single moment that she wasn’t angry, the moment I saw her, I felt very scared already.”

She then talks about how her employer effectively held her captive:

“She took my suitcase, kept my passport. Bank card and National Insurance card and did not give my salary for 2 months which was £250 per month only. My employer shouted non stop at me and pulled me out of the house. As I had nowhere to go, I knocked and knocked the door but for three days and three nights, my employer never opened the door. It was raining and winter, I was cold, hungry and scared in the dark.”

The teacher of the two young children then advised the young woman to escape from such a form of modern-day slavery. In her words:

“I had nowhere to go so I went to the Park and slept there for nights. I was very scared but there’s nothing I could do, I was all alone in the dark, I thought of my mother and sisters. How I wish they were just near me that at least I could hug them. The sky was very dark, I could see the beasts coming out from the dark, they were wild and heartless creature living in a beautiful Rose Garden”—

she was hallucinating—

“they would come out and attack helpless life wandering around like me. I couldn’t see any hope but I prayed and prayed, this was all I could do.”

The young woman went to that admirable organisation, Kalayaan. She was then supported—I am proud to say this—by my former union, of which I was deputy general secretary; for many years, the old Transport and General Workers Union, now Unite, has championed the cause of domestic servants in this country.

I will cite figures from a union survey of hundreds of domestic servants in London, whose length of service varies, but whose answers reveal a depressing pattern. Fewer than half of them were issued with written terms and conditions of employment. Almost half received itemised payslips with their wages and, typically, they worked long hours, aggregating well beneath the national minimum wage. In terms of treatment in the home in which they are working, fewer than a third received sick pay, with the majority forced to work when they were unwell, and a third of them were injured in that workplace, their employer’s home.

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Gentleman has read out an appalling list of employer abuses, but does he not agree that they are already illegal? He went through a list, but we have legislation dealing with almost every issue that he read out. What we need is greater enforcement and vigilance to apply the law that we already have.

[Jack Dromey]

The law is not properly enforced but nor are our Government giving leadership. What message does it send if we are in a sorry minority worldwide in not signing up to the convention? I will come to the point made by the hon. Gentleman in a moment but, if we look at the grounds cited by the Government for refusing to sign the convention, they include objections on the basis of working time and health and safety, yet the evidence is absolutely clear: most individuals concerned work unacceptably long hours for less than the minimum wage and often in unsafe conditions, given the injuries they sustain.

All of this has a depressing pattern. In relation to the convention, the Government have failed to give moral leadership—that is what is necessary—or to show determination to enforce the law. They also dragged their heels over the European Union directive on sexual trafficking, and took a minimalist approach even when finally accepting their responsibilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) is in the Chamber. He led on bringing the Gangmasters Licensing Authority into being but, sadly, the effectiveness of another organisation with an outstanding track record in combating modern-day slavery is being watered down by the Government. Now, it is the ILO convention.

When the convention was debated, one of the TUC representatives was a woman called Marissa Begonia, who is a member of Unite. She and the other worker representatives hoped that our Government would accept their responsibilities, as had, she said, virtually all the other employer and governmental representatives. She thought, “Surely, our Government must share in this consensus that there must be effective action internationally and nationally.” She was utterly dismayed that the country to which she is devoted failed to sign up.

In conclusion, it is utterly extraordinary that our Government, led by our Prime Minister, who quite rightly last week told China that it needed to accept its human rights responsibilities, did not sign up to the ILO convention, but China, America and virtually every other Government in the world did. We are in a sorry minority of those failing to accept their responsibilities. We are talking about desperate circumstances facing good women, of whom I have met many over the years. I remember a particular meeting, with 30 of them. They were people with bright eyes and hope on their faces, who had come here often to support their families or villages back home. They thought that coming to and working in this country would be a brave new world, but they came here and were treated utterly shamefully. This Government and this House should be on the side of such people. What this Government have done is to abrogate completely their moral responsibility.