Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to government Amendments 5, 7 and 8. As noble Lords will be aware, on Report the House agreed amendments which specified an initial list of public authorities which will be subject to the duty to co-operate with the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. During that debate the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, indicated that the Crown Prosecution Service and the College of Policing should perhaps be added to this list. On that occasion, I indicated that the Government would keep the list under review and consider, ahead of Third Reading, whether an ability to tailor the duty to individual public authorities would be helpful.

Our experience from working on the initial list of public authorities is that some authorities have existing remits or duties which could conflict with the duty to co-operate. In the case of NHS trusts, we needed to make it clear that patient confidentiality would be respected before they could become part of the duty. I want to ensure that it is possible to extend the list of bodies subject to the duty to co-operate in future, in light of that experience. Today, I am therefore putting forward amendments that will ensure that where we subject a public authority to the duty to co-operate by regulations, we can tailor the duty to co-operate to reflect the particular functions or legislative framework of that public authority.

The aim of this measure is to ensure that we can apply the duty to co-operate to more bodies relevant to the commissioner’s role in future. To assure Parliament that this duty will be used only appropriately, and will not inappropriately circumscribe the duty to co-operate in respect of a particular public authority, it will be subject to the affirmative procedure or the equivalent in the devolved legislatures. I hope that the House will feel able to support these amendments, which aim to ensure that the duty to co-operate can be extended practically to other public authorities. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I am delighted with those amendments.

Amendment 1 agreed.

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[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, it is not just trafficked people who need physical, psychological and social support when they arrive here; the same is true of many asylum seekers who have experienced torture, rape and imprisonment as well as arduous journeys to get here. Many Members of both Houses have pointed this out on successive immigration and asylum Bills. However, I am not sure that the Home Office yet fully reflects these points in its day-to-day practice, particularly as regards women asylum applicants. I strongly support the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, the points made in this amendment seem to me of considerable importance. However, if the Minister could go back to his department and be reasonably certain that these aspects will be reflected in the regulations, it would not be necessary to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I will make a few brief comments, largely in line with the views that have already been expressed. A number of noble Lords have already referred to the Minister’s comment on Report that the government amendments would,

“allow for regulations to be made about accommodation, financial assistance, assistance in obtaining healthcare … the provision of information, and translation and interpretation services where a person is a victim of modern slavery or there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are”.—[Official Report, 25/2/15; col. 1684.]

However, the indications that the Minister gave about what could be included in regulations did not appear in the enabling clause and are not in the Bill. That is precisely the point that the noble Lord, Lord McColl, made.

I assume that the Minister does not intend to accept the amendment—I think that he would already have indicated if it was his intention to do so. However, as has been pointed out, we are facing the prospect that victims of trafficking in England and Wales will have fewer statutory rights than victims in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where statutory support services are set out in detail in the relevant legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, said, the purpose of his amendment is to provide clarity at least about the fundamental principles of support.

I ask the Minister only to give a helpful response to the amendment. He has been asked in particular to commit to the various issues that he said the regulations could cover. Will he stand up now and say that they are not, in that sense, meaningless words and that the regulations will cover the specific issues to which he referred when he spoke on Report? Ideally, noble Lords would like to see this in the Bill—but if the Minister is not able to agree to that, I hope that he might at least be able to say something rather firmer that will leave people with a very clear view that these issues most certainly will be in the regulations when they come out.

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[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Alton. The Minister has referred several times to the California Act during the passage of this Bill. In both Houses it has often been cited as a sort of reference point or a benchmark. We should learn from that experience. As has already been said, the Californians are saying that this is the one aspect that they regret having missed out on. They see the work embodied in the two amendments as an essential tool. The essence of this part of the Bill is transparency. We cannot have full transparency without information and knowledge.

As I said at earlier stages, many young people in particular, in the wake of disasters in the clothing industry such as Rana Plaza, are keen to know about the provenance of their clothing. As my noble friend Lord Alton has already noted, the internet is a key tool, and many young people—and some older people, too—use social media to communicate about companies they see as not upholding their values. Pressure from consumers is something that the Government have said they are keen on. It is a way of holding businesses to account and a way of ensuring that they think about their reputations and how to protect them. Therefore, consumers have some power. However, while I argue that it is not solely down to consumers to keep a check on unscrupulous businesses, I accept that they have a role to play. Without the requisite knowledge and information it is hard to play any kind of role at all.

How could such a role be played without the kind of centralised information, the potential for which this amendment allows the Secretary of State to explore? Who, apart from specialist researchers, would even know which companies met the threshold for inclusion under the Bill, let alone find the required statements from those companies that would enable them to make their choices? I wish we could say that all companies are so concerned about reputational damage that they act in ethical and sustainable ways, but unfortunately they do not. That is one of the reasons why we need the Bill. Good businesses have said that transparency is an aid for them, not a burden. Given the widespread support for this measure in the House, from business, NGOs and, indeed consumers, I hope that the Minister, who, as everybody has said, has been so helpful in not just listening to what we have had to say but in acting on so many of the concerns expressed here and elsewhere, will take this opportunity to respond positively to the amendment and help the Government to become genuine world leaders on this aspect of the Bill.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I strongly support Part 6 of the Bill but, as the Minister knows very well, there is quite a big gap. If businesses are to produce reports, there is no point in having them if they are looked at only by their own people. They need to be subject to independent and transparent scrutiny. That has to go somewhere. It seems absolutely clear that there has to be a central, independent website.

During the Select Committee, a number of big businesses came to talk to us and made it clear that they wanted level playing fields. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I have been talking to big businesses recently which are very interested in and supportive of the idea of a website. I actually suggested to two big businesses to which I spoke—I will not refer to them by name because it would be unfair—that they, with other big businesses in the UK, might put forward the money to put up a website. So it would be not a government website but an independent one, and the businesses that want a level playing field should be prepared to pay for it. According to the sort of companies I have been talking to, it should be a very large sum of money.