Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

It really is, isn’t it, Mr Speaker? May I point out that Labour-run Croydon Council has just cut the graffiti cleaning team? Will the hon. Lady just give us some advice on how that has worked?

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

8. What recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Illegal Migration Bill on levels of (a) modern slavery and (b) sex trafficking.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Let me be clear: the UK Government are committed to tackling the heinous crime of modern slavery and to supporting victims. We continue to invest in the police to support them to improve the support they offer victims, and to drive up prosecutions. A total of £16.5 million has been provided by the Home Office since 2016, including £1.4 million last year for the modern slavery and organised crime unit.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

First, my thoughts and prayers are with my constituents the Gentle family, who lost their son Gordon during the Iraq war. We should remember all those military families who lost loved ones during that conflict.

Is the Salvation Army correct when it points out that detaining trafficking victims as they arrive and then removing them will simply deliver vulnerable people back into the hands of the criminal gangs that exploited them in the first place, and that that does nothing to break the cycle of exploitation but only further fuels the profits of these criminal gangs?

[Robert Jenrick]

No, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. The Illegal Migration Bill makes it clear that we want to break the cycle of the human traffickers. We will do that by carefully considering cases and returning those people who can be returned to their home country, where it is safe to do so. In cases such as Albania, we have worked closely with the Government to put in place the procedures necessary to ensure that those people are carefully looked after and not at risk of re-trafficking. If that is not the case, they will be taken to a safe third country such as Rwanda where, once again, their needs will be looked after.