Baroness Massey of Darwen
Main Page: Baroness Massey of Darwen (Labour - Life peer)(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To call attention to the case for government strategies to tackle human trafficking; and to move for papers.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am very pleased to have secured this debate today. The 18th of this month is Anti-slavery Day and human trafficking has been described as a modern form of slavery. Indeed, it has many of the features of slavery. Slavery is about power over individuals; it is about degradation and the removal of rights and dignity; it is about loss of personality and self-worth; it also often carries financial gain. All of this applies to the terrible practice of human trafficking.
I thank noble Lords—not only those in the Chamber today—for the support that they have given on this topic. There have been debates across the House and in another place on trafficking and we should today hope to build on those debates. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, recently held a useful meeting with representatives of organisations concerned with child trafficking; I am grateful to her for that and for her commitment in this area. I have received more briefings for this debate than I have ever received before. This shows the degree of concern about human trafficking and a commitment to improve systems to deal with this abuse. Many organisations—too many to mention, although I shall draw on their experiences—are doing a remarkable job in their advocacy for and support of trafficked people.
I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF and a patron of the University of Bedfordshire unit on trafficking. All the organisations, often working together, are totally dedicated, but they need recognition and support. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer that recognition and support today.
I shall begin by offering a few statistics on trafficking and I shall then focus on child trafficking in the UK, surely one of the most abusive and wicked of practices. I shall mention the proposed European directive; I know that many noble Lords are interested in this. I am also aware that noble Lords have a variety of issues that they want to raise and that there is great expertise around the Chamber. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, cannot be present today. She has particular concern and knowledge about the trafficking of children in London, highlighted in a recent Evening Standard report.
Here are a few statistics. Estimating the number of people trafficked is difficult due to the hidden nature of trafficking. It has been estimated that, globally, the number is 12.3 million, with prosecutions numbering barely more than 4,000 in 2009. In the UK, it is estimated that there are more than 5,000 victims of trafficking and between 100,000 and 800,000 victims in Europe. These were the findings of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in 2008-09. As we can see, the estimated numbers are diverse and unreliable. It has been estimated that the total economic and social cost of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the UK was as much as £l billion in 2003. We are talking about huge sums of money, second only to arms dealing. We are talking also about great human suffering and misery, particularly for women and children.
As I said, I shall focus mainly on the trafficking of children in the UK. This includes for sexual exploitation, including pornography, and for domestic or other employment purposes. These children are sometimes prosecuted through no fault of their own.
I shall cite a couple of real-life situations that illustrate some of my concerns. In Doncaster, a 15 year-old Vietnamese boy was recently jailed for a year after pleading guilty to helping farm £85,000-worth of cannabis. He was found on the stairs of a house during a police raid. He had been trafficked via France with the promise of a job in a nail factory. He had been working since he was 12. His family wanted him to have a better life in Europe. He had been beaten and threatened. He had realised that he was involved in criminal activity only nine days before his arrest. The magistrates were obliged to give him a custodial sentence of 12 months. The sentence would normally have been three years but was mitigated due to his age and good conduct. The new European directive on human trafficking, which I shall discuss later, contains provisions on the prosecution of victims.
Another example is a girl of 13 who arrived in the UK from Africa. She was used as an unpaid domestic worker by a couple who knew her family. She was assaulted by the couple on numerous occasions. A member of the public noticed her unusual behaviour and clothing and spoke to her, but the child’s story was not believed. She finally turned up at the offices of the local social services department for help. The investigation took a long time, but she was eventually taken into local authority care, with a designated social worker. She then found herself able to disclose the physical and sexual abuse that she had been subjected to. The couple who trafficked her have been prosecuted after a two-and-a-half-year investigation.
The report from the NSPCC and the University of Bedfordshire, Breaking the Wall of Silence, gives many such examples. I have met young people who have been trafficked and suffered abuse and who have had their passports—where there was a passport—taken from them. They have been prisoners, not allowed contact with the outside world. These young people often have no English and little education. There has been little support, except in enlightened cases, and inadequate accommodation.
There are provisions to tackle child trafficking in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2008, the UK lifted its reservation on Article 22, thus entitling asylum-seeking children the same protection and access to services as other children. The Council of Europe convention of 2008 was the first international treaty to oblige states to adopt minimum standards to assist trafficked persons and protect their rights. Supplementary guidance has been issued to local authorities in England to promote early identification and partnership approaches to the protection of trafficked children. Guidance for safeguarding children at risk from sexual exploitation was revised and published in 2009. The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 places a duty on the UK Border Agency to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Much has been done. There is awareness of the need to protect vulnerable children, but problems remain. Early identification is difficult. Prevention measures are difficult. There are legal entanglements. There is a need for advocacy and key workers. There is a need for visionary co-ordination of services at a local level.
Barnardo’s, which runs 22 services for children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation, found in its research that identification of child victims of trafficking is still very low. Authorities do not seem to have developed adequate procedures and guidelines to improve detection. Barnardo’s found a general lack of awareness of child trafficking and its indicators among practitioners. It recommends more specialist services for such young people and the provision of a safe and trusted environment where they could disclose abuse and be helped. That would include safe accommodation.
ECPAT, an umbrella organisation on trafficking, is running, with the Body Shop, a campaign to promote effective guardianship of trafficked children. It has identified gaps in independent monitoring, inadequate legal advice and representation, and a lack of people to co-ordinate the agencies working with children and understand the wishes and needs of children. The agency Stop the Traffik has launched many campaigns, one in conjunction with Cadbury, Nestlé and Mars, to improve education about trafficking and local initiatives such as work with the police.
Initiatives are happening. However, the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group report Wrong Kind of Victim? suggests that the UK’s anti-trafficking measures are not fully compliant with the Council of the Europe convention of 2008 in relation to child trafficking in its obligations of protection and prosecution. That needs investigation along with the proposed European directive. Organisations working in the field of human trafficking need a firm and sympathetic lead from the Government to underline their efforts. How will the Government do that? Who will examine the different facets of trafficking?
There is still much to tackle. All the reports that I have read make a series of clear recommendations, none of which seems to be impossible to implement. Many simply mean a change of practice, such as assessments based on the best interests of the child, benefit of the doubt about issues such as age assessment, safeguarding by the provision of a dedicated key worker, systems to support the child, adequate accommodation—not distant and often unsafe bed and breakfast accommodation—the storing and sharing of information in local authorities and the use of the national referral mechanism to ensure that different forms of trafficking are considered and that cases can be identified at different stages. As someone said, trafficking is a process, not an event. Adequate time is needed to allow for counselling of young people under the age of 18 to disclose their circumstances if they are seeking asylum. The prosecution of child victims such as the example that I gave needs to be reassessed.
The coalition Government have indicated that they will not opt in to signing the proposed European directive on trafficking in human beings. Will the Government reconsider? I know that there has been confusion about the directive and between the meanings of the various conventions. Rather than getting into that confusion here, I suggest a meeting between Ministers, interested NGOs and parliamentarians to get total clarity on these directives and conventions. The organisation CARE points out that the European directive would add support to trafficked persons in relation to the non-prosecution of victims, assistance and support for victims such as in medicine or accommodation, special representatives in court for children, mandatory review of the results of anti-trafficking policies and assessment of trends.
This is not a party-political issue but an issue of moral imperative. I know that the Minister is sympathetic, but what will he and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, do next? The problem of trafficking is complex, but we cannot stand by and see unaddressed inadequacies in our systems to convict perpetrators and protect victims. I look forward to the debate and the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. Diverse issues have been raised very passionately and with utter conviction, based on the experience of noble Lords around the Chamber. I hope that some useful follow-up will ensue from this short debate. It is an international and a domestic issue, and indeed there are questions about training, accommodation, identification, prosecutions and victim support.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for his forceful and perceptive summary, and I thank the Minister both for discussions before the debate and his response during it. I know that he is concerned about this problem, and I respect his view. However, I have to say that I still cannot accept his explanation for not opting in to the European directive. It is a puzzling statement that will send negative signals around the voluntary sector and the parliamentary world when it is clear that we have done so much in the past to defend and protect the victims of trafficking. Now we seem to be saying that that is not important any more, and I urge the Government to think again. However, I welcome the Minister’s confirmation that he will hold a meeting with those noble Lords who are interested in the directive, and I look forward to it. I also look forward to the completion of the NRM review and to future collaboration. Again, I thank noble Lords for their participation.