Home Affairs

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate. Often in this House we debate matters that self-evidently divide us, but I wish to focus my remarks on two aspects of Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech that are likely to unite us.

The Modern Slavery Bill represents the first of its kind across Europe and it sends a strong message internationally that the UK is leading the way in putting an end to modern slavery. Others in the House and outside have been far more involved than me in the journey to bring this important legislation before the House. I see sitting across the House the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and I would also mention the former Member of Parliament Anthony Steen. Both of them are notable individuals who have done so much in this area. The matter goes right through Government—from the Minister for modern slavery who has been appointed, to the Home Secretary. The Prime Minister himself feels strongly and passionately about the importance of progressing this Bill. It is a credit to all that we see it included in the Queen’s Speech.

It is, of course, impossible for any of us here to imagine how deeply traumatic the experiences must be for the many victims of modern slavery and what they have endured. I have read accounts, as I am sure many others have, of young women and children being drugged, beaten and forced into prostitution and taken to a land a long way from their home. Those stories are compelling and deeply moving.

Turning to the details of the Bill, which I warmly welcome, I think that progress has been made since it was published in December 2013. The first development is that slavery victims who are vulnerable witnesses will automatically have access to support in giving evidence. There is a wider debate about how victims more broadly are supported when giving evidence in criminal cases, and the passage of this Bill will be very timely and enable us further to explore that important aspect. The last thing anybody wants is for a victim of slavery, who has already been through so much, to find the trauma of giving evidence any more difficult than it needs to be.

The second point is about ensuring that victims get reparations from the trafficker or from their slavemaster for the abuse they have suffered. The justice that we all seek in the case of traffickers must, in a modern, compassionate society, be balanced by the need to help victims rebuild their lives. Obviously, that is not just a financial point—far from it—but we need to stand up as a country and a society and support those victims in the difficult passage they will have in rebuilding their lives and moving on.

Thirdly, there must be connections between agencies in the work that will be required. The Bill now includes a requirement for public authorities to notify any information they have about potential victims of modern slavery. That responsibility to share information is very appropriate and takes us further along the path towards improved contributions by and work across agencies. Finally, the creation of an anti-slavery commissioner has to be right. It is an important development and will ensure that investigations and prosecutions are as effective and progressive as possible. It creates the leadership necessary to implement these changes.

With world leaders having gathered on the beaches of Normandy last week to commemorate the D-day landings and mark the bravery and sacrifice of so many for future generations, it is worth reflecting that the whole purpose of the landings was to ensure the future freedom of this country, so it is quite poignant that, in the Queen’s Speech debate, we seek to support and bring freedom to those victims in our society who are held against their will and who suffer so much at the hands of others. The Modern Slavery Bill is legislation of which the Home Secretary and the whole House will in time, I am sure, be extremely proud.

I turn now to the proposed changes to the law on child neglect. I disclose my interest as a family law barrister who has spent over 12 years representing and working with vulnerable families, often at times of crisis. It has been a sad feature of the family and civil courts that, until now, when severe neglect and emotional harm suffered by children is an aspect of a case there has been no prospect of the perpetrators being pursued in the criminal courts. Once the changes come into effect, that will change. Society has moved on a great deal since the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and the law needs to reflect that. I have no doubt that by extending the criminal law to cover not only physical but emotional harm to children, we will not reduce the seriousness of the crime. It is the just and right thing to do.

To clarify, this is not about children who are a bit unhappy or who have fallen out with their mum and dad. Child neglect is far more serious and has to do with a long-term emotional impact on children living in an environment where they have been subjected to physical violence, perhaps sexual violence or suffered extreme neglect, such as malnutrition, inadequate living conditions or a lack of medical care. Many MPs and charities have campaigned for the change. I note, in particular, the work of Action for Children, a charity with which I have worked for many years on different topics and which has led the campaign extremely effectively.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a very thoughtful and interesting speech. Will she put it on the record that she shares our disappointment, as I am sure she does, that the number of convictions for child cruelty has fallen in recent years? It was 720 in 2009 and only 553 in 2013. Although, of course, the changes are to be welcomed, the overall conviction rate has gone down.

[Jessica Lee]

I am grateful for that intervention. What we have before us is the means to change things and at last bring criminal law into line with civil law—a change that is due and that will be effective, and I have no doubt that prosecution rates will reflect that.

The proposed changes do two important things. First, as I said in response to the hon. Lady, it allows the criminal law to catch up, if I can put it that way, with civil law, where the definition of emotional harm is well accepted, and the test of significant harm includes emotional abuse. Secondly, there will be consistency between our civil law and criminal law as to the definition of child neglect, which is of great importance. Society’s understanding of child development and the impact on children of harm by those who care for them has come on leaps and bounds since the 1933 Act. By implementing this change in the months ahead we can be confident we are taking a positive step to assist vulnerable children across our country.

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[Mr Field]

I am immensely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I would take his argument a stage further. I think that the Prime Minister has a duty to protect British business men and women from undertaking activities that are deemed to be heinous crimes. I think that the Prime Minister needs to develop a level playing field, so that not just the good businesses ensure that their products are not tainted by slavery; those that are slower in coming up to the plate must also make their contribution.

[Emily Thornberry]

My right hon. Friend was not here when the shadow Home Secretary raised her concerns about the new domestic workers visa and the fact that 60% of people on it have no salary at all. Will he comment on that?

[Mr Field]

All the Joint Committee’s recommendations were unanimous, and they certainly were on that. However, to be honest, in listing the things that I hoped the Government would do, I did not think that they would jump to attention on that one, given that they deliberately made a change in policy. We did not include it in the Bill because changing it does not actually require an Act of Parliament; it requires the will of the Home Secretary. If this Home Secretary does not see her way to changing it, I hope that a future Home Secretary will.

One of the impacts of the evidence review on the Joint Committee has been for the Government to include in the Bill a section on victims. It is morally right that the Bill will be victim-focused. However, even if we cannot do it for the right reasons, we ought to do it for another reason: that the Government are serious about escalating the number of successful prosecutions. We will not increase the number of successful prosecutions unless those victims of slavery feel that they are secure in this country. I am immensely grateful to the Government for listening to the arguments put on that front and for including a major section of the Bill that transforms the position of victims of slavery in this country. I commend them for doing so.

For all the good measures in the Bill, it is still incomplete. Victims of slavery came to give evidence to us at all our evidence sessions before and during the Joint Committee. It is impossible for any of us in the Chamber to describe the horrors that people go through when they realise they have been trapped and now have a slave existence. How anyone recovers from that train of events, God only knows, but many do so, and we wish many more to do so. This crime is probably one of the most heinous in the world today. We now have an opportunity to make this not just a good Bill, because it is already good, but the very best in the world—a world leader. I hope that that will ring in all our ears when we start the parliamentary process in this place and, perhaps more importantly, in the other place, where it is easier for reason to prevail on a Government than it is here.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

We have had a very interesting debate this afternoon. I have been sitting here for most of it and have learnt a great deal and been very glad of the opportunity to hear the contributions.

The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) put it on record that he is not a creep, something that Members in all parts of the House know in any event and which he really did not need to do. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) gave a very interesting analysis of UKIP in which he talked about the financial meltdown, saying that many people felt there was no control of such major issues by traditional politics. He felt that the public are looking for answers and that that had a lot to do with the rise of UKIP. He put some interesting matters before us, including a discussion of the biography of Jenkins.

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) made a bold speech on the benefits of immigration and started listing all the things that the Liberal Democrats would like to have done if the Tories had not stopped them. In doing so, he ran the gauntlet of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and his friends, but he kept going. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the pressure on services created by immigration and the fact that Dr Clare Gerada had said that doctors should not be a type of border agency, a sentiment that he supported. He was concerned about how we can ensure access to services for the right people.

The hon. Member for Peterborough seemed to be unclear about whether he believed there should be a limit on the number of Brits going to Spain, and he accused the Scottish National party of narrow chauvinistic attitudes. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) gave us the benefit of his 22 years’ experience and told us that no matter how slim the Queen’s Speech is, even those who find it bordering on anorexic may find something worth welcoming. However, he regretted the fact, as did many Members, that the Government seem to have dropped the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill, as it was not included in the Queen’s Speech, although legislation on plastic bags was.

The hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) gave a very thoughtful speech about the Modern Slavery Bill. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) treated us to one of his best “Braveheart” speeches. It seems that the rest of us in Westminster are picking on him. The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) spoke knowledgably about energy policy and in favour of fracking, telling us that the rest of the world was doing it and that we need to do it to be competitive. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) paid a worthy tribute to Anthony Steen and the work he has put into the Modern Slavery Bill. I know that Members of the House would want to thank Anthony Steen and all those who have put so much work into the thinking behind the Bill.

The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) spoke about police cuts and a great deal about immigration. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) talked about crime rates and how reported crime is going up but conviction rates are not matching that, which has a particular impact on women. He spoke very movingly about his relative, Agnes, who was murdered, and how the rest of his family remain to this day victims of that crime. He talked about the Modern Slavery Bill and his thinking on it, listing what he had been expecting, or hoping, to find in the Bill and explaining how it fell short of expectations by saying what was missing. I commend to the Home Secretary the Hansard report of many of the contributions about what else should be included in the Bill.

The hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made a welcome appeal for political leadership on immigration, asking that we do not fan the flames of prejudice. He also gave the very powerful example of a 92-year-old constituent who had struggled to get a passport to go back to the Normandy beaches that he had fought on as a 21-year-old. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) talked about job insecurity, low wages and the house crisis in the south-west, and asked where the measures were to address those core problems for her constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) made an intelligent and thoughtful contribution to the immigration debate and expressed concern that the Home Secretary seems not to be taking seriously the concerns expressed by many Members about backlogs at the Passport Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) spoke with great passion about a case which she believes has been a travesty of justice, and showed her real campaigning zeal on that matter.

We then heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and for Corby (Andy Sawford) who made important speeches, particularly on immigration issues. They had clearly listened to the concerns that their constituents have expressed over the past few weeks and months when my hon. Friends have been knocking on doors and standing on doorsteps listening. They had given the issues thoughtful consideration, particularly in relation to what we should do about gangmasters, problems with housing and undercutting of wages. They proposed solutions and again drew the comparison between the ideas that are bubbling under among Labour Members and the lack of any solutions in the Queen’s Speech.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) made a passionate speech about prison overcrowding and penal policy. He showed himself to be a consummate professional, and despite being heckled by rattling speakers, kept going and silenced them. Finally, we heard from the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), who talked about data gathering and about gang and violent crime. She said that the daily suffering of girls who were on the edges of crime seemed to go unmentioned and ignored. It is important that she raised the issue in the House, and that girls who are the victims of crime and are on the edges of these gangs are not ignored. We need to address the relevant policy issues.

The Queen’s Speech contains a number of Bills relating to home affairs which are linked by themes. My concern is that although they sound marvellous and can be talked up beautifully in the press, the Bills often disappoint when we look at the nitty-gritty. For example, on the confiscation of criminal profits, the National Audit Office report was a call to arms as it showed that only 26p of every £100 of profits a criminal makes is confiscated. Some £1.5 billion has eluded the authorities because the assets have been hidden, siphoned away overseas or eroded by third-party claims.

The report focused our minds as never before on what we should do. Labour has pledged to introduce a raft of measures which would strengthen the confiscation regime. Although on the whole we welcome the Serious Crime Bill, we wonder whether it will deliver everything that is promised. Will it live up to its rhetoric or will it ultimately be disappointing? We will look carefully at whether there are serious measures in relation to the disclosure of third-party claims. We particularly believe that they should be at the restraint order stage and not too late. We are quite happy to share our ideas if Ministers will listen to, for example, our proposals that costs should be recoverable by defendants in freezing order applications, and that when defendants ask for their costs in freezing order applications, the amount they get back should be only at legal aid rates. We are happy to share our ideas on how to put pressure on defendants to bring their assets back to the United Kingdom.

The Home Secretary was so busy fighting with the Secretary of State for Education that she may not have noticed all the details that I put into my speech at the Proceeds of Crime Lawyers Association annual general meeting. If she has not seen the speech, I would be happy to send it to her. It went into some detail about what we believe should be done so that criminal assets can be confiscated properly. We wish to give the Home Secretary some advice. One of the most important ways of seizing the profits of crime is to foster better relations with overseas jurisdictions, because once those assets are overseas, they are very difficult to get back. We need to foster better relations to ensure that overseas jurisdictions will co-operate with us.

It is extraordinary that since 2008, £200 million-worth of assets have been frozen by the UK courts in response to overseas requests for legal assistance, but not a single penny of that money has been repatriated to the countries that asked us to seize and freeze those assets. If we do not co-operate with overseas jurisdictions, how can we expect them to co-operate with us? This is not something that requires legislation, but it needs clear policy drivers and it needs to be led on.

On professional organised crime, we will be watching carefully to see whether the measures announced with such trump will be a rehashing of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. We are concerned that David Thomas, the former head of the Home Office financial intelligence unit, recently told journalists that too often the Government dragged their feet in responding to foreign freezing requests, if they responded to them at all, because they consider them too much of a headache. We really need to be serious about reciprocity if we want to seize criminal assets.

As for the child abuse provisions, the extension of the definition of child cruelty is welcome, but it must be seen against the background of child cruelty conviction rates having fallen. In 2009, the rate was 720, and in 2013 it fell to 553. It is important to extend the offence, but it is also important to use the current law and ensure that there are proper prosecutions and convictions. With regard to the law on female genital mutilation, we ask the Government to consider the call from the Director of Public Prosecutions for anonymity of victims. We do not believe that that is in the current legislation, but it needs to be considered.

The Bill that has perhaps been praised the most is the Modern Slavery Bill. It is generally to be welcomed, but, again, we must look at the enforcement record. We know that the law on human trafficking has a bad enforcement record. In 2013, there were just 28 prosecutions for trafficking for sexual exploitation, and only 11 convictions. In relation to child protection, 300 children who had been trafficked were rescued from their traffickers and placed in care but then went missing. We have been calling since 2010 for legal guardians, and we are impatient that the legislation contains only enabling powers and that we must await the results of trials. We welcome statutory defence of victims of trafficking to ensure that they are not prosecuted for crimes that they are forced into, and we welcome the fact that there will be statutory guidance on victim ID and victim services, but we are concerned that the national referral mechanism is not working properly and needs review. Again, I discovered recently in a freedom of information request from the Crown Prosecution Service that it usually does not go to the national referral mechanism until after someone has been prosecuted and sentenced. In those circumstances, the data base is hardly doing the job it is supposed to be doing.

[Nicola Blackwood]

As I understand it, the NRM has been under review since April, and it is well known that that was a necessary process. Does the hon. Lady not welcome the prevention orders that are proposed in the Modern Slavery Bill, which will be a key tool for police in disrupting the very trafficking networks that she is talking about?

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[Emily Thornberry]

There are measures in the proposed legislation that will work, but it does not go far enough. We are quite happy to work with the Government to ensure that it does. For example, on supply chains, we do not want products in our country that are the result of slavery. We are concerned that the Bill will not address that specific issue. There may be some disruption, but it will not happen to the extent that is necessary, so we need to work together on this. We give a partial welcome to the legislation, but we cannot welcome it wholeheartedly because it does not go far enough. We are also concerned that the domestic workers visa means that 60% of those on the new visa have no salary at all.

The worst piece of legislation, however—the one that seems to promise so much but really we do not know what on earth it means—is the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill. According to the Lord Chancellor, it will protect

“the responsible employer who puts in place proper training for staff, who has sensible safety procedures, and tries to do the right thing.”

When

“someone injures themselves doing something stupid or something that no reasonable person would ever have expected to be a risk”,

that employer is sued. I have some news for the Lord Chancellor. Under the present law the employer would not be sued. A person would be sued only if there had been negligence. Our concern is that the Bill may be only a piece of fatuous and confused legislation, which will waste parliamentary time. If that is all it is, fine, but our concern is, to coin a phrase, that it may be a Trojan horse. And it may be a Trojan horse that will in fact be yet another attempt to limit access to justice. This Government have form on that. It may be a piece of legislation that claims to do one thing, but in fact it will mean that people injured at work through no fault of their own end up being unable to take their case to court, and yet again it will be another piece of assistance to the insurance industry. We are concerned that it will be sold on one basis while the nitty-gritty of the legislation will show something else.

In the end, the part of the Queen’s Speech on home affairs will be about what we all believe—that is, it will be about the difference between Labour and the Government in terms of what are British values and what are not British values. We believe that we should do more than simply try to legislate by way of headlines. In this country, there is still a great deal of unfairness and injustice. We have legislation that needs to be passed urgently, but it needs to have real substance and it should be more than simply spin.

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[Damian Green]

As the right hon. Gentleman would expect, the Justice Secretary and the prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), take a close interest in what is happening on the ground. I hope the right hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that the purpose of the changes in probation, as I explained to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), is to make rehabilitation more effective than it has been in the past. Reoffending rates have not fallen despite the great efforts made by the National Offender Management Service and those who work in the probation service. We need change to get those reoffending rates down. The vast majority of crime is committed by a very small number of people, so if we can get the reoffending rates down, we can continue to get overall crime down. That is the most effective thing we can do.

As I said, this is a carry-over Bill. I am grateful for the work the House has done to progress this important piece of legislation. There has been very thorough and lively scrutiny of the Bill during its Commons stages, and I am sure that the quality of debate will continue as it completes its second day on Report. I should inform the House that we have today tabled an amendment to introduce an offence of police corruption, because it is untenable that we should be relying on an 18th-century common law offence of misconduct in public office to deal with serious issues of compliance in modern policing. We tabled the amendment to establish a statutory offence of police corruption to supplement the common law offence and to focus on those who hold police powers.

A number of references have been made to the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for his speech, not least because he was reporting from the front line as a first responder and, as he told us, a regular snow clearer in his constituency. He knows what these situations are like, and he said precisely why this Bill is necessary. [Interruption.] The shadow Attorney-General is expressing some cynicism—or, to be fair, scepticism—about the Bill. My hon. Friend knows that legislation is necessary, because people are worried about doing something that their conscience wants them to do. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) is chuntering from a sedentary position.

[Emily Thornberry]

He’s yelling!

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman is yelling rather than chuntering—I shall take the shadow Attorney-General’s word for it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should talk to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, who knows what he is talking about, whereas the hon. Gentleman does not, as is, regrettably, so often the case.