Child Slavery

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on a moving speech—perhaps the most moving that I have ever heard in this Chamber. I think we all share an abhorrence of child slavery.

I, too, started by reading the Save the Children report “The Small Hands of Slavery”—it is an emotive title—and came across the disturbing statistics involving such large numbers. That was back in 2007. What progress are we making? As the hon. Gentleman said, the report states that 8.4 million children are trapped in the worst forms of illegal, degrading and dangerous work. It also identified the eight most prevalent forms of child slavery: child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, bonded child labour, forced work in mines, forced agricultural labour, child soldiers and combatants, forced child marriage and domestic slavery.

The hon. Gentleman provided many tragic examples from around the globe. It is, of course, a tragedy that there is such a variety. Our children are our most precious asset, and it brings tears to the eyes to think of children suffering in such ways. More recently, Save the Children published the report “Children on the Move”. We must remember that in high-profile conflict situations, such as in the middle east, children are particularly vulnerable to certain practices.

There is so much to be done. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must consider the problem from the UK’s perspective, looking outwards as well as inwards and across Departments. Clearly, in order to tackle it, we need national, international and strong local action. We need to consider poverty reduction. This Government’s commitment to increasing the proportion of GDP spent on aid must be welcome, as it is well targeted to reduce poverty. We need education, legislation—legislation must be appropriate, but it is also important that it is put into practice—and resources for prevention and rehabilitation. Those principles can easily be applied to tackling problems in the UK. In my brief contribution, I will concentrate on trafficking, but I recognise fully the scale of the issue.

Research by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre discovered that at least 287 children in this country were identified as potential victims of trafficking between March 2009 and February 2010. More than one third were brought to Britain for the sex trade. Amazingly, 18% were made to cultivate cannabis. I must admit that I have learned a great deal from reading ECPAT UK’s representations about the use of child labour in cannabis cultivation in this country. It makes us realise that we can tackle such issues. It must be possible to track them down and take suitable action.

[Dr McCrea]

Has the hon. Lady seen the CEOP study on strategic threat assessment? It states:

“There are only a handful of UK police forces which have units designated and trained in running investigations into trafficking.”

Does she believe that more should be done initially to change that?

[Annette Brooke]

I certainly believe that more must be done on a range of issues. I will address the hon. Gentleman’s point shortly.

Sadly, many of the victims identified go missing again and are obviously re-trafficked. We must bear that in mind. We need, of course, to think about what is happening in the countries sending these people. We need international co-operation.

It is interesting that, under the Labour Government, we finally signed up to the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, which came into force in April 2009. There had been questions over a long period from both sides of the House about when we were going to ratify the convention, but we did do so.

I hope that we will have some better news about the EU directive on human trafficking, which the European Parliament approved in 2010. So far, the Government have decided not to opt into it, which I find really difficult to understand. The UK and Denmark are the only EU states not to have opted in, even though we are told that everything we do complies. As I understand it, the directive improves existing EU legislation and provides better protection for trafficking victims, more rigorous protection measures and tougher penalties for traffickers. Signing up to the directive would make a clear statement about our Government’s support for trafficked women and Ministers’ willingness to provide protection and secure convictions.

An organisation called Care claims that this country is not really doing everything it could and that it is not doing everything in the directive. It says that forced begging is also trafficking. It says that we cannot prosecute crimes outside Britain. It says that Britain fails to provide universal access to safe accommodation and medical treatment for victims, fails to investigate cases after a victim withdraws a statement and does not always offer proper protection of victims in criminal proceedings. Those are all things that I believe we should be able to do.

As I understand it, the directive has a specific focus on child victims, so it is very relevant. It provides them with greater care and protection. It also directly calls for the UK to introduce a system of guardianship for trafficked children. I wonder whether that is the problem preventing us from signing up to the directive. Again, I want to be fair to both Governments. I have long argued for a system of guardianship for children who are unaccompanied asylum seekers, and I have tabled many amendments in Committees dealing with Bills on children, always to be defeated. We should not see this as a political issue, because we all need to work together.

[Mr Dodds]

On the EU trafficking directive, I agree entirely with the hon. Lady. However, given that we should all be working together and erring on the side of the caution in the protection of children and vulnerable people, does she understand the irony that even Eurosceptics—I include myself among them—have no problem with the Government opting in on this issue, although, of course, they opt in on a whole lot of other issues with which we do have problems? On this issue, however, there is a bit of agreement, so why not err on the side of caution, even if the Government are saying that they are doing these things already?

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He makes a valid point. It is a strength of the EU that we can have co-operation over a large number of countries when crimes are being committed that are clearly not retained within the boundaries of an individual nation.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent speech. Although the Government claim we are meeting all the requirements, what message does it send to those looking at countries to target if we do not sign up?

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, but I think he has answered himself. What he says is very true. The main thing is that we must be seen to be fighting this problem on all fronts, but there is a feeling that we are not.

I would be really interested to know whether guardianship is the issue that is holding us back from signing the directive. I strongly believe in the advantages of someone taking parental responsibility, and that has been alluded to. In a recent answer to a parliamentary question, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), said that responsibility for child trafficking victims lies with local authorities, but that can co-exist with parental responsibility. When it comes to children in care, for example, we are aware that we have not done enough about the concept of corporate responsibility. We are talking here about children who have been through so much, and it is not a big ask to ensure that there will be not only some corporate body, but an individual to whom children can relate and from whom they can get support.

At present, a number of organisations are being closed. That is a concern in itself, but I hope that the Minister can reassure us, perhaps by setting out an alternative way of doing things. I am by no means arguing that we must carry on doing things in exactly the same way as we have in the past, and I would very much welcome a brand new approach, but I just have to raise concerns. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority faces closure. We no longer have the Metropolitan police’s human trafficking unit and Operation Golf, which were particularly focused on child trafficking. The UK Human Trafficking Centre has been absorbed into another organisation. We are not clear whether all the POPPY project’s funding will be protected. CEOP itself will be absorbed into another organisation. That need not all be negative news—perhaps the news about the POPPY project is—if the Minister can assure us that we will do things better. In addition to those cuts, the voluntary sector, like all of us, is facing cuts, but the problem we are talking about needs resources as a matter of priority. The hon. Member for Upper Bann has shown us that it should be a high priority.

The key issues for me include preventing these problems in the first place. That has to involve working on a wider international scale. Another key issue is identification, which this country is not very good at. We do not really know how many sex workers or child victims there are in this country; we come up with numbers, but they are probably just the tip of iceberg. How can we have the right priorities and the right policies unless we have the knowledge? I hope that identification and raising awareness will be given priority in the national strategy on trafficking, which is due to be announced.

Local strategies are important, and I would like to be reassured about how they will be worked through. Our local safeguarding children boards have a lot to do on identification, raising awareness and making sure that the right services are developed and supplied locally. We all need to be aware of the dreadful issues around us.

Whether a person is under 18 is still a big issue. Representations have long been made to me to the effect that the immigration age assessment dispute process is often used to divert young people into the immigration system, rather than to protect them. Obviously, it is very difficult to determine the age of a child. We must have effective intervention, and I am sure that we can do so much more on that. We must have safe and appropriate accommodation, so that once children are rescued, they stay rescued.

We need better evidence. We need all agencies to share information and to work together. We need better prosecution procedures. We need to support victims so that they give evidence. I am a little concerned about the period of reflection allowed by the UK Border Agency. The time for deciding whether a person is trafficked is to be reduced from 45 to 30 days. In Italy, it is six months, which I have always felt gives people—particularly young women—time to build up their strength and the courage to bear witness against the perpetrators. It is very difficult for someone who has just been pulled away from a horrific situation to give evidence at that time.

We have been around the globe in the debate and finally I want to stop off in Dorset. I commend the work of Poole Soroptimists, who have done a great deal to highlight trafficking, through supporting the purple teardrop campaign. I went to a very well attended meeting in Dorset organised by the Soroptimists, and people there were deeply shocked. In Dorset we do not necessarily think that we have trafficked children in our midst; but we do—and we do all over the country. That is why awareness-raising is so important for me.

It is also important that there should be specialist police units. As with most areas, cutbacks in the number of police in Dorset are proposed. It has been suggested to me, although I have not had it confirmed, that one thing that might disappear is specialist police work on trafficking. That would be very sad, particularly in the light of my final point: we are all looking forward to the Olympic games, but we must fear what might happen in our country at that time. The evidence is that a major international sporting event causes an increase in sex exploitation, forced child begging and child labour. We are blessed to have the water sports in Dorset, but we are concerned that there should be adequate policing. Because we are a safe part of the country we naturally do not have the highest level of police funding, but we shall need adequate policing in the light of the issues associated with the Olympic games.

Like the hon. Member for Upper Bann I can say only that the problem is so serious that we would be very remiss as politicians if we were not to commit to work together and do our very best for children in such incredibly awful situations as he described.