Children: Trafficking

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, this is one of those things where you cannot always be certain what you do not know. However, we believe that the figure for the last year was in the order of 325 children.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking. I assume that the Minister has read the report from the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, Wrong kind of victim?. In it, it appears that the national referral mechanism treats children who are trafficked as not in fact being victims for the purposes of the convention. What are the Government going to do about that?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I had not heard that the national referral mechanism was not treating children as it should. I shall certainly look into that. But I think it fair to say that observations made by that organisation are among the reasons why the Government have agreed to look at the functioning of the national referral mechanism.