Modern Slavery Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, one of the most important aims of the Bill is undoubtedly to better protect children from the scourge of slavery and trafficking. I have welcomed from the outset the enabling provision for specific child trafficking advocates but have also joined other noble Lords in pushing for such advocates to be given greater clout and full independence in working to protect the children they are assigned to. To that end, I am heartened by the Government’s proposed amendments which seek to do this.

At Second Reading I was also clear about the need to assign full and proper legal powers to advocates. Again, I welcome that the power to appoint and instruct legal representation on behalf of the child is now being proposed by the Government in Amendment 61.

I would, however, emphasise the importance of the constructive working relationships between the advocates and other professionals working with the child. It is important that this should be a fundamental part of their roles. I am still a little concerned that there is not enough clarification on the definition of their responsibilities. Perhaps the Minister would comment on this when he responds.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the government amendments and Amendment 60, which stands in my name and that of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. At the outset, I, too, pay tribute to the battles, as the noble and learned Baroness put it, fought by her and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, to bring about child trafficking advocates with the appropriate powers. I have always been pleased to support their powerful advocacy.

As noble Lords have said, we are grateful for the Minister’s efforts in securing these important amendments, which significantly strengthen the role of child advocates in the Bill. In Committee, we pushed for changes to be made to Clause 48, and specifically to give advocates the legal powers that they would require in order to carry out their role effectively. This is the purpose of Amendment 60—but, of course, I am delighted to see that the same powers are outlined in government Amendment 61. Alongside the legal powers, we are pleased that government Amendment 72 gives child trafficking advocates the ability to co-operate and work for public authorities. These are important steps in securing the protection of vulnerable children who have been, and are, the victims of the most heinous crimes.

Guardians will be able to effectively and successfully act in a child’s interests only if they have the appropriate powers to instruct solicitors and have access to the required information from public authorities. Evidence from members of the Refugee Children’s Consortium, the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council demonstrates that local authorities have, unfortunately, failed on many occasions to respond adequately to the needs of the trafficked child.

While I give the Minister the warmest thanks for the amendments that he has brought forward today, I am rather disappointed that between Committee and Report we were not given sufficient information on the interim outcomes of the pilots that are being undertaken. I am grateful for the letter sent out by the Minister on Monday evening, but there is not quite enough detail to tell us clearly what needs to be improved, what is working in the current trials and what is not. The trials started in September 2014 and it would have been helpful if, five months on, we could have had more details and information to inform our debate today. So I have a few questions for the noble Lord.

It would be helpful if he could tell us how many children each advocate represents at a time, what services are available to help with any potential language barriers the children may have, and—as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said—what the difference is between the role of the advocate and that of the social worker. Do the trials demonstrate that there is a clear enough definition between those two very specific roles? Have any areas been identified thus far where more work needs to be done or where there are potential problems? I wonder, for example, why there has been a slower rate of uptake than may have been expected.

With that, I say again that I am very grateful to the Minister for all that he has done on these issues, and I look forward to his response.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, while welcoming very much the enormous progress that has been made—I have no doubt that a lot of that is due to the Minister’s personal efforts—I have two points that I should like to raise. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, was going to ask about independent reviewing officers, but I suppose that that is subsumed within the question of accountability.

My first point, highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, concerns the use of the term “reasonable grounds to believe” which the government amendments apply in place of “reason to believe”. On Monday when we discussed legal aid, the Minister said that he thought it was important that no one should be deterred from applying to be referred to the national referral mechanism, and therefore that it would be better to have “reasonable grounds to believe” as the catalyst or prompt for various things to follow. It would be ironic if that were to be a reason for the change today in the case of child trafficking advocates.

I wonder whether there is in fact any difference between the terms. Is one more subjective than the other, or is one a harder test than the other? I ask this because if they mean the same, would it not be better to retain a non-technical term in order to anticipate any change there may be in the arrangements for the national referral mechanism? We know that consideration is being given to having a single stage going straight to conclusive grounds. Are we constraining a change which a lot of NGOs are calling for by including a technical term in the legislation? This is a question that goes to quite a number of the amendments that we will be considering today.

My second point is about legal representation. I think that on pretty much every occasion when we have discussed this issue I have argued for its importance. I did wonder whether the instruction should be given by the child or by the advocate. Is it the advocate’s role to assist, which is the Government’s amendment? I think that perhaps it is. The lawyer needs to hear from the child, but I am not even sure whether a child—I hesitate to ask this question in the presence of the noble and learned Baroness—has the capacity to give instructions to a legal representative. Should they instead be given by someone on the child’s behalf? However, that is not the main thrust of my question.

Government Amendment 61 states:

“The advocate may (where appropriate) assist the child to obtain legal or other advice”,

and so on. Can the Minister flesh that out? If a lawyer is approached and asked for advice, but legal advice is not appropriate in the circumstances, the lawyer is going to say so. We do not need legislation to put a block in the way—and, indeed, there should not be a block in the way of that approach.

I would not want to think that the advocate would be in a position to stop the question to a lawyer: “Is this a legal issue that you can help sort out?”. I would not want to think that the term “appropriate” in this context is because it is appropriate to the trafficked position of the child—because a child victim may have much wider needs than those which are directly related to his or her having been trafficked. Again, I think it would be a great pity if those who are involved are made to question whether seeking legal advice is the right thing to do.

If the Minister can flesh out and get rid of my concerns about Amendment 61, it would be very helpful to have that on the record. If he cannot, I will really wish that I had not raised them, because I would not want the negative points to be on the record, either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I support Amendment 90, which would end the unacceptable situation regarding the current visa system for overseas domestic workers. In Committee we heard many passionate speeches. Since then, the Minister has announced a review and a package of other changes that the Government will be bringing forward to ameliorate the situation. As helpful as these may be, they do not tackle head-on the current desperate plight of many domestic workers who are subject to exploitation, slavery and forced labour.

The Government have had nearly a year since the pre-legislative scrutiny committee published its report in April 2014 to look into this and review the visa system for ODWs. So I have to ask why they have left it so late to commission a review. I have no doubt that James Ewins, who will undertake the review, will do a splendid job: he is superbly qualified. However, the review is both too late and, I believe, unnecessary. Time and again we have been told by the Government that there is insufficient evidence and that the numbers do not show that the 2012 visa changes have had any effect on the abuse that some overseas domestic workers have had to endure. I beg to differ. Indeed, I have had no contact with any organisation or any individual who shares the Government’s view. Kalayaan, which has been leading the way in advocating and representing these workers, has first-hand experience and the case studies of numerous workers whom it has helped to escape. Human Rights Watch has carried out an independent review which took over a year to complete. One therefore has to wonder how the Government’s review can be completed by the end of July this year. As the noble Lord himself said, by that time this piece of legislation, excellent though it is, will be done and dusted.

The Joint Committee on the draft Bill said that since the tied visa was introduced there have been high levels of abuse among migrant domestic workers entering the UK. They said that the current bondage arrangement has,

“unintentionally strengthened the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery”.

The committee, together with the Joint Committee on Human Rights and numerous NGOs, has called on the UK Government to reverse the relevant changes to the Immigration Rules and to reinstate the pre-2012 protections in the Bill. They all base their views on evidence. How much more evidence do we need? How many more cases do we need to uncover to reach the threshold where a change will happen? Clearly, getting more evidence will be particularly hard if workers are imprisoned and then driven underground.

In his letter of 9 February, the Minister outlined some actions that the Government have committed to taking immediately. Some of these are welcome but, frankly, they are woefully inadequate and do not remedy the root of the problem—that is, untying the visas. The pilot visa interview programme in Africa might sound superficially attractive, but realistically these overseas domestic workers are not going to admit that their employer does not treat them well. Indeed, they might not even be aware of the real horrors that await them until they start work in this country. Their employer is hardly going to tell them beforehand that they are going to work 19 hours a day, sleep on a floor, have little food, no pay and no access to their passport. In any case, workers are already meant to be interviewed separately from their employers, so this is not a new measure. Likewise, an employer is hardly going to provide a contract giving the truthful details. Indeed, contracts are required currently, yet Kalayaan frequently finds cases where domestic workers’ terms and conditions of employment, including salary, are not in accordance with their contract. To be effective, contracts of employment must be easily enforceable in the UK; but as the noble Lord himself has said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said so forcefully in Committee, this is way out of the bounds of reality.

I welcome the reintegration plan with the FCO which will support overseas domestic workers who wish to return to their home country and rebuild their lives, but it does not help those who are currently enslaved. In the case of domestic workers employed by diplomats, diplomatic immunity makes it particularly hard for them to access justice. Earlier this month the Court of Appeal found that diplomatic immunity trumped trafficking when it refused the claim of two domestic workers found by the UK’s national referral mechanism to have been conclusively trafficked by their diplomatic employers.

We are now on the last day of Report on this landmark Bill. In this amendment we are not talking about huge numbers of people; we are talking about a few miserable, poor, abused people—usually women—who often have dependants relying on their support, who have been lured to employment here by ruthless and exploitative employers. These workers need a change in the law, and Peers today have an opportunity to make that a reality. As Kalayaan said in one of its excellent briefings, we need to protect, not to review. Today we have an opportunity to do that by passing this amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Carlisle]

My Lords, several of the amendments to this important Bill have been introduced as filling a gap in the legislation. That is especially true of Amendment 90. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, have said, it will assist all private and diplomatic domestic workers by providing a measure of protection and flexibility otherwise lacking in the Bill. It will also enable those who have been victims of modern slavery to remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period while seeking alternative employment. That is why I am glad to have my name attached to the amendment.

On Monday my noble friend Lord Judd, when speaking about the global dimension of modern slavery, referred to a crisis of values suggested by the recent bishops’ pastoral letter entitled Who is My Neighbour? In this amendment we have one interesting example of a relatively small number of people who are our neighbours—namely, overseas domestic workers—as well as one means of taking a principled and value-based stand by offering them this modest help. The humane and sensible rationale for this amendment has already been so well argued that I have no need to detain your Lordships further, except to say that I am happy to be associated with it and to offer it my enthusiastic support.