Human Trafficking (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill [HL]

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, for introducing this Bill, which proposes some significant changes and much needed improvements on the current system. Clause 9, which provides for the appointment of a legal advocate for child victims of human trafficking, is sensible and in line with the ECPAT proposals. It would also fulfil the UK’s obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I should like to focus my remarks on the problem of the international trafficking of children through our airports, ports and railway stations. I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

An unfortunate side-effect of the globalisation of the economy is the globalisation of crime. The trafficking of people into slavery, although reprehensible, is nothing new and has been going on in one form or another for many centuries. But the increasing ease of international travel has brought fresh challenges and the law must keep up with these changes because the current system is not adequately equipped to deal with the problem. The greatest challenge is the large number of children brought into Britain as domestic slaves. The number of unaccompanied children entering Heathrow Airport gives some indication of the scale of the problem.

Some years ago, the Metropolitan Police and the UK Border Agency jointly set up a pilot project at Heathrow called Operation Paladin Child. In just three months, it found that 1,800 unaccompanied children came through the airport. Of these, it judged that 600 were vulnerable and almost half were under the age of 11.

Children are trafficked for a variety of reasons. Many are put to work as domestic slaves or childminders. Some, like Oliver Twist, are forced into street crime. Others are used for benefit fraud and, when they come of age, many are sexually exploited. Criminal gangs make very big money out of children. The Metropolitan Police estimates that each child forced into street crime makes £100,000 a year for their gangmasters. Benefit fraud is also hugely profitable, particularly the widespread practice of passing one baby from one gang to another so that gang members posing as the child’s relatives can make multiple benefit claims in many different parts of the country. Often, the children’s parents are tricked into sending them to the UK with a promise of a good education but, instead, their children are condemned to a life of slavery. Perhaps the most notorious case is that of Victoria Climbié, who was brought into Britain by her aunt to be used for benefit fraud.

Let me give two examples of the pain and suffering that these children often endure. A 14 year-old boy from South Africa was smuggled here on a containership with a number of other boys. By day, they were locked into the containers; by night, they were taken out and gang-raped by the crew. When the ship docked in the UK, one of the boys was put to work in a London factory by his uncle. After a while, he could not cope with it much longer. When he complained, his uncle showed him a photograph of his mother, dead from gunshot wounds, and gave him a choice: he could either continue to work in the factory or he would receive another photograph of the rest of his family who would suffer the same fate.

My second example is an eastern European woman accompanied by three children who was stopped at a regional airport in the UK. After much questioning, she finally admitted that the children were not hers—she did not know them; she had just met them; and she had been paid to deliver them to a central London address. More shocking still was her admission that this was her third such trip. Each time, she had been accompanied by three children. Who knows what fate awaited these children?

The team at Heathrow is very successful and has made it much more difficult for child traffickers, so the gangs have simply moved to easier points of entry such as the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International railway station. Entry to the UK by train does not have such rigorous standards of security as air travel. Children of 12 and above may travel unaccompanied provided they have a form signed by their parent or guardian. However, there are no checks on the authenticity of the parent or guardian who signed the form, so the whole procedure is less than useless. Unaccompanied minors are on their own from the time they get on the train until the time they get off at St Pancras. To make matters worse, there are no dedicated child protection measures in place at St Pancras, so children can just get off the train and simply disappear into the ether.

The way we treat our children defines us as a society. It is totally unacceptable that, in the 21st century, children are still being trafficked into this country. This Bill will go a long way towards helping stamp out this evil trade.