Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt]

I shall take the remaining minute and a half simply to make the point that the authoritarian, moralistic and un-evidenced potential catastrophe that presents itself as new clause 6 must be opposed. In proposing these provisions, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) complained about the fact that she got on television programmes and then found that her statistics were under dispute. That is hardly surprising, because all the academic evidence is on the other side of the argument.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Crispin Blunt]

No, I will not. It takes the scion of a couple of baronetcies with the education of Cheltenham Ladies’ college to produce such a moralistic sense that can define sex work as exploitation—without ever having listened to the sex workers themselves. It is a pity, given the trouble the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) took to draw attention to this group of people, that the hon. Lady did not take the trouble to listen to them. Had she done so, I cannot believe that she would have come to this view because the unintended consequence of her proposal would be to put the people whom she is trying to help in peril. That is a serious mistake.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I recently met David Ahern, the chief executive of the Shannon Trust, and I assured him that we will continue to support his excellent scheme. I would be surprised if the new arrangements we have put in place for getting the commissioning of offender learning much closer to prisons and the institutions themselves did not see a much greater take-up of schemes such as toe-by-toe.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

In view of the very poor performance in Ofsted inspections of provision by A4e, which provides much of the education in prisons, what conversations has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills about how, when the contract is re-let, the quality of provision and the achievements of the prisoners will be at the fore of decision making about who should provide it?

[Mr Blunt]

I understand that a written ministerial statement has been made today by the Department for Work and Pensions in respect of A4e, which will be of interest to the hon. Lady and the House. In addition, a review of offender learning has been undertaken by the Skills Funding Agency. It was organised by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and I am happy to say that its findings have been positive as far as A4e is concerned—I know that will be of interest to the House. As for the future provision of offender learning, we are going through a re-tendering process, whereby prison governors involved in clusters of prisons that represent the offender’s journey through the system are able to ensure that they are satisfied with what is being commissioned into their prisons. That will mean a much more satisfactory state of affairs than we have had before.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

John Anslow is the first category A prisoner to escape for 17 years. Does the Secretary of State know why?

[Mr Blunt]

The matter is understandably being inquired into, and in due course we will report back.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

My hon. Friend will have realised, given the number of pilots we are conducting—I am sorry, Mr Speaker, that the list was too long for me to deliver satisfactorily—that we are testing the different elements of the system to identify the best and most effective way to deliver payment by results. I hope that, in the end, we can deliver the offender-centric process on which my hon. Friend relies, once we have identified which part of the system makes offenders best respond to effective rehabilitation measures.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Do any of those projects help to test whether providing housing for people leaving prison helps them to be less likely to reoffend?

[Mr Blunt]

Housing—having a home to go to—is plainly a key crime desistance factor, but an awful lot of other key factors, such as work and drug addiction, are well-documented. We want to get out of the business of identifying exactly what inputs people must deliver to offenders, but make all sorts of institutions responsible for focusing on the outputs and let them take the decisions about which are the appropriate desistance factors to address for the offenders whom they are treating.

Trafficking in Human Beings

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That is what the contract requires of the new organisation. I did not make any criticism of it because I wish it well. It has the job now, although I am sad that POPPY’s talent might be lost as it had powerful experience to bring to bear on the problem. I asked for a specific assurance that the new organisation will be allowed to challenge—and provided with the finance, perhaps retrospectively—in cases where its advisers and support staff believe that a decision by the NRM has been inaccurate. I put that question to the Minister and I am sure he will come back to it in his reply.

I accept that we need value-for-money services. Personally, I thought POPPY provided pretty good value for money for the women victims whom it supported and I hope that the new arrangements will provide a similar quality of support for women, which is gender sensitive and so forth. I know that part of the ambition was to extend it beyond trafficked women to male victims of trafficking—an initiative that I welcome—but I hope we will continue to have the gender sensitivity that is required in the directive and that POPPY so exemplarily displayed.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

As the Minister who announced the result of the competition this morning, I want to make it clear that although the Salvation Army, which won the contract, will expect to administer directly about 25% of the funds made available by the Ministry of Justice, 75%—£1.5 million a year—will remain available to organisations such as POPPY so that they can provide the services that they have provided in the past. Although the Salvation Army has taken over the leading role, it will not do all the work itself, and we will need to use the expertise of organisations such as POPPY.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

As the Minister knows—because we have discussed the matter before—POPPY did bid for the provision and his system did not approve the bid. It is quite possible that the requirements that the Salvation Army will lay on the organisation to which it subcontracts will not be appropriate for POPPY. As the Minister knows, POPPY had to bite its tongue a bit to make the bid in the first place, and I encouraged it to do so. We cannot be certain that it will be able to continue—or afford to continue—to provide a service of this kind.

The Minister for Immigration referred to the rapporteur requirement in article 19. I welcome his recognition that—notwithstanding the memorandum that he supplied to the Committee, according to which this was provided by the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre and the inter-ministerial group on human trafficking—there is a question to be asked about whether some more independent mechanism might be appropriate. I strongly urge him to adopt that route, and I am glad that he has left the door open.

I believe that the inter-ministerial group has met once since the election of the present Government. I do not think that that suggests a great degree of oversight. It also worries me that UKHTC does not provide public reports of its work or accessible statistics. In contrast, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which is part of the same mechanism, provides detailed figures and reports which enable it to hold the body to account. I think that we need a body which will report to this Parliament, and which will provide it with the necessary figures and details.

I talked recently to representatives of ECPAT, an exemplary organisation that supports child victims of trafficking. They said that the most recent figures they could get out of UKHTC did not break down the details of victims of trafficking—even children—according to nationality and age, which would have enabled them properly to understand how that ghastly phenomenon operates. I urge the Minister to establish a mechanism which can report to Parliament, and which recognises that the job of a rapporteur is not to administer but to find information and report it. At present, the bodies to which he refers in his memorandum do not go in for much reporting.

Finally, let me deal with the issue of child victims. Shortly before the debate, a number of members of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking heard an excellent presentation by Barnardo’s about its work with children who have been sexually exploited. Some have been trafficked, and some are victims of a sexual exploitation of a kind that has parallels with child trafficking. Barnardo’s estimates that there are 1,000 sexually exploited children in Britain today, and that the experience of those children, when they come into contact with the criminal justice system, is of being criminalised rather than treated as victims. I believe that Members on both sides of the House feel shame about that.

There is an urgent need for us to provide proper protection mechanisms for child victims of trafficking, and that will require, among other things, a proper guardianship system. We know that although, in theory, local authorities take responsibility for the welfare of children, that is not always the case in practice. The Minister mentioned some good practice in Hertfordshire, which we welcome, but, as he is aware, that is the exception rather than the rule. We know that trafficked children disappear from local authority care every week, and that, rather than being found a few weeks later, they are never found. It is horrific that those most vulnerable, most exploited children are not being protected. It is not just a question of protecting them against an uncle, or whoever is trying to instruct a lawyer on their behalf when it comes to criminal proceedings; it is also a question of protecting them against continuing re-trafficking, which, as is fairly clear, is unfortunately what is happening to many children in Britain today.

Signing the directive would give Britain an opportunity to make a real difference, but we need a practical strategy to implement its proposals. We were promised that in the spring, and the Minister referred to it again tonight, but progress seems to be at best confused, and at worst even more confused. It is slow and a bit muddled. I have been told by voluntary organisations that have been consulted about what the strategy might include that different Home Office civil servants have been put in charge of it, that meetings keep being arranged and then cancelled, that people are not given papers before meetings, and that the timing of a meeting that was due to happen the following day is changed and no agenda is circulated.

I believe that the increasing number of voluntary organisations that deal with human trafficking—including the excellent Human Trafficking Foundation, which was created by a former Member of Parliament for Totnes—are beginning to feel that the Government are trying to use them as a free research resource without listening to their concerns. We want the strategy, and we want it to be as specific as the last strategy—which, I note, has disappeared from the Home Office website, and which had the benefit of specific targets.

I hope that the Minister for Immigration will be able to reassure us that there will be proper consultation about the strategy, that voluntary civil society organisations will be involved as is required by the directive, that they will be properly involved and not asked to attend meetings without an agenda, and that the strategy will be not merely a high-level document with no specific facts and figures enabling people to be held to account, but a concrete set of promises. It is time that we had such a strategy. It was promised for the spring, and my gardening practice tells me that the spring is very nearly over.

Let me end by welcoming today’s decision, which I am sure the whole House will support, and by urging the Minister to do more to make the provision work well in practice. He has some of the necessary ideas, but we need to ensure that they are implemented.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

15. What plans he has to implement the recommendations of the Corston report on women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Our plans are set out in our Green Paper on sentencing and rehabilitation, which was published in December, and they include identifying individuals with mental health problems at an early stage in the criminal justice process. The aim is to ensure that liaison and diversion services are available in police custody suites and at courts by 2014. We continue to develop our approach to meet the distinct and complex needs of women in the criminal justice system.

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[Fiona Mactaggart]

On that note, the Minister told the House on 20 July that

“a network of women-only community provision is being developed to support…community sentences.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 163.]

Can he tell the House now what that community provision consists of, where it is and how secure is its financial future?

[Mr Blunt]

I fear that I will not be able to explain the whole network without irritating you, Mr Speaker, but the Ministry of Justice has funded 44 separate projects in conjunction with the Corston independent funders. I have already answered the question about what will happen to the funding after March. We will continue a degree of funding—not on the scale that has happened before, but we are identifying the projects that are working best, which we will wish to continue to support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Unfortunately for my hon. Friend, I am afraid that that agreement does not come into force until December 2011. I note that the Irish apparently have an opt-out on it and that it will take five years for the Poles to make it fully applicable, but with those exceptions aside, I assure him that we will implement that agreement absolutely as soon as it comes into force.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with the retiring chief inspector of prisons Dame Anne Owers that a reason for the reduction in young people coming into the criminal justice system is the effect of Sure Start? If he does agree with her, will he speak to colleagues across the Government about investing in Sure Start, rather than in youth jails, because it is cheaper and works better?

Rape Defendants (Anonymity)

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Complainant anonymity was introduced against a background of public concern about the lurid reporting of the cross-examination of complainants in rape trials. Of course, the protection from reporting provides the inducement to complainants to come forward. The underlying problem of exposure to publicity applies to defendants and complainants alike, and I want to make it clear that we have no plans to withdraw in any way the rights of complainants to anonymity. Our proposals are based on sound precedents. Defendant anonymity was the norm in rape cases for many years, and, of course, defendant anonymity continues to be the rule in all criminal proceedings in the youth court.

Let me address some of the points that the right hon. Lady made. She said this morning on the radio, in The Independent and repeated this evening that we know from the evidence that many rapists are serial offenders. I feel this to be true, but when I asked for evidence of how many rapists were serial offenders, and what proportion of convicted or charged rapists might fall into that category, there appeared to be insufficient data to form a reliable evidential picture.

Furthermore, in trying to acquire accurate detail on the number of times that convictions have been obtained because the identity of the defendant was known and further complainants came forward who were crucial to securing a conviction, I have again been unable to get a reliable picture or—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Blunt]

Let me continue.

I have again been unable to get a reliable picture or, indeed, any firm evidence at all in the time available. I would welcome help from the right hon. Member for Don Valley, and those of her right hon. and hon. Friends who are supporting her this evening, in identifying serious analysis that can help us to discuss these issues on the basis of evidence rather than supposition.

The right hon. Lady referred this morning on the radio, in her article in The Independent and again this evening to the Worboys case. The facts of that case are that it was the police who finally identified a mode of behaviour from several different complainants, identifying 12 offences. It was that mode of behaviour which led to the charging and subsequent conviction of John Worboys on 19 counts. The police were criticised for the length of time it took them to identify Worboys, but that name would have meant no more to the complainants than it did to the police. It was the manner of the offences that led to his conviction.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Blunt]

No.

Shortly before John Worboys’ trial, the police appealed, with the assistance of the media, for further victims to come forward. The appeal identified 70 to 85 further complainants—to use the right hon. Lady’s numbers; it is 81 according to the briefing that I have received—who recognised his modus operandi. However, none of those was central to his conviction as the police already had sufficient evidence, and had he been granted anonymity until conviction, it would still have been possible to identify those further complainants, and he would still have been convicted. So to understand the issues as perfectly as possible, if the right hon. Lady, and all those who have helped her to prepare, can identify cases where anonymity until conviction would have prevented an initial conviction being secured, I would be anxious to learn of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way before he concludes?

[Mr Blunt]

In conclusion, the Government want informed contributions on the basis of evidence which will help us to bring forward proposals that will command the confidence of the House. The right hon. Lady has contributed to that process today; I rather regret that one or two of her right hon. and hon. Friends have not conducted themselves in the manner that this subject merits. [Interruption.] I am inviting the right hon. Lady, and other right hon. and hon. Members, to contribute evidence properly and sensibly rather than simply proceed on the basis of supposition. [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady has contributed to that process, and I am grateful to her. The Government have the interests both of victims and of unconvicted defendants fully at heart, and the Government will proceed upon the evidence.