Modern-day Slavery

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important debate, and I congratulate the Government on proposing a modern day slavery Bill. I will focus many of my comments on young girls who are enslaved for sexual exploitation, both in the UK and globally, and emphasise that, as many Members have said, this is a global trend, just as slavery was in Wilberforce’s day.

Young girls are brought to the UK from other countries, often under duplicitous arrangements and in the belief that they are coming to be a hairdresser or a beautician. They are then imprisoned in rooms and suffer terrible atrocities, brutally abused by several men until they are basically broken down. Often they are abused for many years. In addition, there are people, mainly men, who travel from this country for so-called sex tourism—a terrible phrase. Who would go on holiday specifically to abuse and rape a child? Indeed, many of the victims are children; according to UNICEF, 20% of the victims of sex tourism are children who effectively are not consenting at all.

About 2 million children a year are exploited in the global sex trade. As we have heard, a drug can be sold only once, but a woman can be sold many times and a child even more. There are the most appalling stories—I will refer in a little more detail to the child sex trade in Mumbai—even of babies being sold. One baby was rescued just as she was about to be sold into the Mumbai prostitute area for £150. She is now in safekeeping.

Shamefully, while many sex tourists are from the UK, and despite the fact that we already have legislation in place to investigate and prosecute British nationals committing sexual offences against children abroad, including extraterritorial legislation, we are—according to the International Justice Mission’s most recent campaign—yet to see meaningful prosecutions. That should serve as a real lesson, because it is critical that any new modern slavery Bill is not just passed into law but has the capacity to be enforced afterwards. Without that capacity, the Bill will be meaningless.

[Andrew Selous]

I support what my hon. Friend says. The House has done the right thing in passing the relevant legislation, but we have not seen the follow-up prosecutions. Many of us are aware of British citizens, sometimes in Asia, running horrendous establishments where children are regularly mistreated. I strongly support her point and join her in asking the Minister for more action in this area.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I commend him for his excellent speech and his work in this area.

Just as we have realised in this country that we need to have more joined-up thinking between different authorities—the border forces, the police, local authorities, social services and education services—to combat this terrible trade, we also need considerably more joined-up work internationally if we are to combat it effectively. We need to work with law enforcement agencies, other Governments, the private sector, the voluntary sector, front-line professionals and members of the public if we are to support victims and see a diminution in what is an increasing trade, not a decreasing trade. We need to expand prevention efforts in source countries to alert victims and disrupt the work of the traffickers. We need to work with foreign Governments to strengthen their knowledge and understanding of this issue.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Was the hon. Lady as concerned as I was to learn that after the 2004 tsunami a number of children and young girls were trafficked into slavery and the concern is that the same may happen to children orphaned as a result of the typhoon in the Philippines? I agree with her that an international effort is needed.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point and I hope that the Department for International Development will take note of it.

Tragically, behind the global sexualisation of young children lies increasing demand. One of the reasons for this is online pornography. A brothel owner in South Africa explained how men visiting from across the globe increasingly demand younger girls. The men want to re-enact fantasies developed by watching online pornography and are making ever more violent and sadistic requests of girls. I ask the Minister to encourage the National Crime Agency to be vigilant and do what it can to stop this illegal pornographic content. I realise how difficult that is, but we need to be aware of it as a root cause of some of the increasing sex tourism and abuse of young children globally.

Another possible answer is to look at the mainstream media’s attitude to prostitution. On the surface many, if not most, people would say that a man visiting a prostitute is socially unacceptable, but under the surface films such as “Pretty Woman” and television programmes suggest an inexplicable social acceptability of such actions. Society’s attitude needs to shift on this issue.

Grooming can lead to terrible abuse and for those at risk education is key. Education is also important for the general public both here and abroad, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said. If people travel abroad and are aware of abuse, they have as much a duty to report it to the authorities there as they do here. If people, particularly UK nationals, are guilty of this offence here, they are equally guilty abroad.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

People should report such matters in this country, as well as to the authorities abroad.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that excellent point—I fully agree.

I commend the work of Sandbach high school in my constituency, where a group of young students, led by an inspirational teacher, have for several years been encouraged to educate their peers in school about the dangers of grooming and what it can lead to. They have conducted a national campaign, which has been recognised by the Red Cross, to raise awareness of the terrible plight of trafficked and abused young women in enforced prostitution. I encourage Ministers to look at a Nordic model that seeks to educate young people through schools, and by other means, to understand better this terrible trade, and to understand that in paying for sex they may be paying to rape a victim of human trafficking who is enslaved.

Our police forces need more education, too. I was pleased to receive a reply to an inquiry I made a short time ago to the Cheshire constabulary, stating that it now has a specifically appointed member responsible for human trafficking. However, I understand that he has had no formal training. That again means that we have no teeth to enforce legislation in our county. As hon. Members have said, this trade can happen anywhere, anytime and in any part of our country. It is therefore vital that the Home Secretary, as part of the modern slavery Bill, ensures that training is given to our police forces, so they are fully aware of the new provisions and powers. It is no good having legislation if there is not the capacity to enforce it.

It is important that, within DFID funding programmes to educate girls in the countries that we support through our funding, there is an awareness of the dangers of trafficking. We have gone to enormous lengths in this country to promote the education of young girls. It is accepted that if we can give girls an education, we can transform a community. We need to ensure that this issue is part of that education programme. A few months ago, as a member of the Select Committee on International Development, I visited Ethiopia. We inspected excellent work to reduce child marriage. Traditionally, hundreds of thousands of young girls in many communities have been married at a very early age, often as young as six or a little older. Their families think that this will secure their future. In fact, it does the opposite, because they lose their education, often suffer terrible internal injuries through early sex, die in childbirth and so forth.

The Government have done an amazing amount of work to reduce the prevalence of child marriage in Ethiopia, but when we went into one school in Ethiopia and asked the head teacher, “What are your problems with child marriage?”, she said, “We have almost none, but we have a major problem with our young girls simply disappearing. We believe they are being taken to adjoining countries.” We must address that through our aid provision.

[Bob Stewart]

I am bound to speak because my wife saw such children being dragged across South Sudan when she was a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were slave trains of people taking mainly Africans across towards the middle east. She told me it was quite dreadful.

[Fiona Bruce]

Again, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that example.

Sex tourism is also prevalent in Mumbai. I alert hon. Members to an excellent e-book campaign that, as vice-chair of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern day slavery, I had the privilege to launch. The campaign is called “Taken: Exposing Sex Trafficking and Slavery in India”. It is organised by a remarkable woman called Hazel Thompson, who spent 11 years in the red-light district of Mumbai. This e-book can be purchased for the price of a glass of wine through the website, takenebook.com. I commend it to hon. Members. Hazel tells of a girl who was 11 when she was trafficked from a poor village in India. Her trafficker was her mother’s friend, and she promised Guddi—the girl’s name—well-paid domestic service in Mumbai that would help feed her struggling family, but when Guddi arrived she was taken to a brothel and raped. The madam of the brothel and her daughter held her down by her arms and legs to restrain her. If Guddi and her family had known about domestic trafficking and where she was really going, her life today would be very different.

The book highlights the extensive prostitution in Mumbai, where women are kept enslaved in a tiny red-light district: 20,000 women and girls are believed to be forced to work as prostitutes in just one small network of streets, and many of them, when they first arrive, are kept in small cages, where they can barely stand up, to break them. Some of them are kept there for months. Many of these women, brought in when they are young women or girls, live there and have no hope of escape. There could be as many as 26 minders from the cage to the outside of this red-light community that they would have to get through before they could possibly escape. It is virtually impossible.

International hotels have a key role to play in addressing this terrible issue of sex tourism. Some hotels actually house brothels. They will say, “We have nothing to do with it”, but they will subcontract part of their buildings, which will then be classed perhaps as gyms or health clubs, but which will in fact be brothels. It is essential that we ensure that international hotels have nothing to do with this. I commend Hilton Worldwide for taking action, operating training programmes at both leadership and in-house levels, to teach hotel employees to identify illicit activities and better understand the issues surrounding child sex trafficking. Hotels, particularly the large international ones, must take a lead in demonstrating that they will take no part in this.

Before closing, I commend the work of some airlines. The “It’s a Penalty” campaign aims to educate tourists about international legislation while they are on British Airways flights to Brazil. There is a film with the Brazilian ambassador, with Gary Lineker and with other prominent footballers. We need to see more of this kind of constructive, innovative campaigning so that we can alert people both in this country and abroad to the fact that this is an international trade and that we must play our part in stamping it out.