Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I certainly hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is right about that. However, with the government position under Clauses 1 and 2, including with Amendment 4, you do not have to prove that the young person is 16, 17 or 18 in order to get a conviction. You will have an aggravated situation if you show that it is in fact a child, say of 14 or 15, and not a young woman of 20, and the judge’s sentence will no doubt be greater. However, the issue of age will not arise for the jury to try because, under Clause 1, you do not have to have an age—anybody who is treated in the way that Clause 1 describes can be found to be a victim. This seems to me to be something introduced by the Bill which has not come in before and which will, I certainly hope, make a very dramatic difference to the way in which prosecutions are dealt with.

Another point that Kevin Hyland made, which I think is of some interest, is about control and prevention orders, on which we have spent virtually no time at all in this House. He told me about a group of Roma—not all of whom are Romanian; some are from other parts of Europe—who apparently are camping at the moment in either Park Lane or Hyde Park. They are begging, and the children are no doubt thieving, in Edgware Road and Oxford Street. He says that when the control and prevention orders come into place, if you can find that these children are doing this, a control or prevention order can be made against the adult—many of whom, of course, are not the parents of these children—and that can last for up to five years and will protect the children, who can also be taken into care. He also made the point that this could be done at the border by the border police, who can get a magistrate’s order in order to protect these children well before you have to come to a prosecution because the children are being exploited. I thought that these were quite interesting points to relay to the House.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I am somewhat bemused about where we are in this debate. My view has always been quite clear: we already have enough legislation. I think that some of these cases are already appearing before the courts under general children’s legislation.

As I understand it, CAFCASS has recently been involved in a situation where a child was begging. We have to remember that very often the people who are exploiting children are the children’s own parents or relatives. This child was being exploited and selling the Big Issue 12 hours a day on the streets. She was exploited by her father, who went to prison. That seems to be just the sort of case we are talking about, but prosecuted under quite different legislation—the children’s legislation concerning neglect. Maybe that is where we should also look. We should see where else action is being taken.

I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, very carefully. I do not agree with her amendment but I am very much in sympathy with what she was saying in her speech. She identified some very important issues. One issue that perhaps we have missed throughout this debate is the one found in proposed new subsection (6) of the amendment, about vulnerable children who find themselves in difficulties because they do not understand what they are being expected to do, and even if they do, they have been so groomed or so frightened that they carry out whatever action is undertaken quite unconsciously; and even if it is consciously, they are in difficulties. We need to look at that and make absolutely sure that we are not going to be prosecuting children and young people when they are in those sorts of difficulties.

However, I am still of the belief that if we look at all the horrific incidents in the newspapers that have happened to children and young people recently—never mind all the ones that we in the profession know about: the thousands of children on child protection registers and the hundreds of cases that go through the courts every day—we know that there is legislation that could have protected those children. There is no doubt that the girls of Rotherham could have been protected by the legislation that is there. That is what the inquiry found: they could have been protected. So I disagree with my noble friend—

[Lord Patel]

Rarely.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I have huge respect for him, but I really do think that this is a question of practice and of training. We keep repeating those words like a sort of mantra. What happens is the real issue—what action is taken to make sure that not just the police and the prosecutors but the health workers, social workers and voluntary workers, not those in the specific field of action but those who come across children in different ways, understand what they are seeing. I fear that, certainly in my area, modern social work training is not as precise in helping people to understand what they are seeing and then giving them courage and a legal understanding of what they can do next.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that I stand somewhere in the middle on this issue. I have never been a great believer that more legislation will make a difference. My experience—and history—tells us that it does not. Some legislation will make a difference. The Government’s clause may well give a little jolt to the whole issue, but I hope that they will tell us what they are going to do to encourage all the professions to take this seriously. That goes not just for this area but for the whole range of child care and protection. We are at this time in this country in serious difficulties in making sure that our children are adequately cared for and protected.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I rise because I have been quoted both in judgments and in evidence that I have given, and if I sit here and do not say anything, some might think that I did not agree with what I said last time. Well, I do.

I am concerned about child exploitation. I think that there are cases—and we have certainly been aware of them in court—where children have been exploited in circumstances which it would be difficult to describe as slavery or servitude or forced labour or even human trafficking. Children are exploited in many different ways and I do not think, if I may say so with respect, that the law caters adequately for those who exploit children who are not under some kind of parental or guardian responsibilities.

For that reason, I support the amendment. One problem with this area of the law seems to be that although we can often find the child who has been exploited we do not seem to be very good at hunting down through the chain of exploitation. For instance, we are very concerned, and obviously so, with children who come from abroad and are left in charge of cannabis factories. So far, we prosecute the child. We do not wait to see who is bringing the food once a week that is thrown through the prison door—because the house is no more than a prison. Where are they going? Who are they looking at? Who are they talking to? Who is making the money from the cannabis plant that the child is looking after?

The other feature that I want to draw attention to is how we relate to the provision on the protection of victims—that is, the defence under Clause 45. We provide a defence, which I strongly support, for slavery or trafficking victims who have committed an offence in circumstances that are defined, but the Bill speaks in Clause 45(1)(c) of “relevant exploitation”. Relevant exploitation in the Bill cannot address child exploitation of the kind that the amendment is designed to address. I ask the Minister to look at that, too.