International Women's Day

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, it is with great pleasure and pride that I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, in the batting order. I congratulate her on her sparkling maiden speech and welcome her to your Lordships’ House.

She and I met years ago on a cricket pitch—Lancashire v Warwickshire—and I have admired her sporting achievements for years. She is involved not only in international cricket but in international hockey, and she is a keen golfer and squash player. She is vice-president of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, a board member of the England and Wales Cricket Board—one of the first two women—and was elected to the MCC general committee in 2004, the first women in the 217 years of the club’s history. She has been and still is involved with many charities, and was an outstanding president of the Lady Taverner, which raises money for disabled children to do sport and in which I declare an interest as a member of that organisation. She was the first female TV presenter. She has won the Guild of Professional Toastmasters award for after-dinner speaking. She has trodden for years where women have not been accepted. How appropriate for this debate today.

Let me turn to her cricket. She captained England when women played for the first time at Lord's in 1976. At the Oval that year she scored 179 against the Australians. She has 30 test centuries. Of the great cricketers elevated to your Lordship's House, their averages were as follow: Lord Hawke seven, Lord Constantine 19, Lord Harris 29, Lord Sheppard 37, Lord Cowdrey 44 and the noble Baroness 46. Resolute in defence, aggressive as a bat, she is a remarkable woman and a great friend who will bring a great deal of humour and common sense to your Lordship's House and will be a real asset in so many ways.

Turning to the global and domestic challenges for women, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Gould on yet again leading this debate. I will focus on some of those women who are truly challenged—those who have no voice to speak for themselves. Women suffer in wars they have not created, where they suffer violence and rape. Women are trafficked both in this country and abroad and are rendered powerless and degraded. Women suffer torture and genital mutilation. It is trafficked women I shall focus on today, and I shall ask the Minister to update the House on government policy on trafficking and on what progress has been made on the signing of the European directive.

Let me start with a case study which typifies the horror and shame of trafficking. Take the young woman from Romania trafficked at the age of 17. She was given a fake passport and promised a job cleaning in hotels. She was forced into prostitution, sometimes being obliged to have sex with men 12 times a day. The relationships were often violent. Her earnings were kept by the trafficking ring. She was arrested for prostitution, and then taken into custody where she was safe. Eventually the trafficking team was arrested and given the longest sentence for trafficking in UK history. Sadly, some women are never found once they are trafficked. It is reckoned that up to one in seven sex workers in Europe may have been forced into it through trafficking and that 84 per cent of victims of trafficking in Europe are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Some European estimates suggest that between 1990 and 1998 more than a massive 253,000 women and girls were trafficked for the sex industry in the then 12 European Union countries. Sexual exploitation is not the only exploitation. Domestic servitude is also a reason for trafficking.

The joint project between the European Women's Lobby and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women recommends that the focus should be not only on the victims of trafficking but on the responsibility of those who buy women into prostitution and on taking specific action on women's human rights. They call for Governments to address the political will to create measures against trafficking and sexual exploitation and to implement effective sanctions, so I am eager to know what we in the UK propose. Trafficking of helpless victims should be treated as a serious criminal offence. Criminal gangs must be sought and punished. I ask the Minister how far the Government accept this and what will be done.