Trafficking in Human Beings

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s decision. We asked for it some 40 times before they decided to do it, but that does not make the decision any less welcome. It is a recognition of the need to work between countries in this area of international abuse of human rights. Getting more effective collaboration between countries is critical if we are effectively to drive down the extent of human trafficking.

I genuinely welcome what the Government have done, but I think there is still a gap between refining the law, creating the right procedures and perfecting the administrative procedures that happen on the ground. If we look at our record on apprehending traffickers, we find that the numbers apprehended remain unconvincing. There is a huge gap between the estimated number of traffickers and the number of prosecutions. Victims largely remain invisible unless they are uncovered as a result of raids. Some victims have been identified through the national referral mechanism, but I am concerned about the way in which the NRM seems to have an attrition rate of about 50% after the initial recognition and 50% on the final recognition. Every organisation working in this field believes that a huge number of victims have not yet been identified.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that although, as we heard from the Minister, there are hotspots around the country, there is a danger of forgetting that this can be a problem absolutely everywhere? There is a great deal of unreported trafficking in areas that might not be hotspots but still need to be the focus of Government attention.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I fear that I probably represent a hotspot—one of the few constituencies in which successful prosecutions for child trafficking have been launched—yet I recall hearing a police officer from rural Dorset talking about his experience of finding in a local brothel women who had been trafficked. Police officers involved in the post-Ipswich work were shocked at the number of trafficked women they found in brothels in very nice parts of East Anglia. I think it is clear that this is happening all over the country and that we are not yet drilling down to the bottom of the problem. I know that trafficking is not just an issue across international borders, as it also occurs within the UK. I welcome the fact that the directive reflects that, so that we will be able to deal with internal trafficking around the country, which is a critical issue.

My concern is that, without targets—Pentameter 1 and 2 provided them—the police do not have sufficient incentives to deal with the problem. I agree with the Minister that it is becoming more mainstream police business, but I also know that some police forces have not learned what we have just been reminded of by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton)—that the trafficking is happening here. It is not given sufficient priority and many victims fail to be identified.

[Mark Tami]

Is my hon. Friend concerned, as I am, about the level of cuts to the police forces, particularly in areas such as port security, where traffickers probe for a weak point when they are bringing people into the country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Under Pentameter 2, an expert team was set up at Heathrow, which was able to identify children who came through the airport without their parents, as they were particularly vulnerable. That team is not replicated at other ports of entry, and there seems to be compelling evidence to show that Eurotunnel is a route increasingly used by child traffickers because that same kind of expertise is not deployed to identify and interdict child trafficking at the port.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech and knows a lot about the subject. Would Her Majesty’s Opposition support the Government in respect of the border police, as one of its roles is to make sure that trafficked victims are not brought in through our ports?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The Opposition will support any effective border measures that help to protect this country’s borders against illegal immigration and to prevent the victimisation of people through trafficking. We are absolutely on side when it comes to both those things. The targets that existed under previous nationally initiated police operations are, in my view, necessary to make this kind of work, which I welcome, operate effectively.

Another theme in the directive is the importance of looking after victims. I am concerned about the recent decision to replace POPPY as the provider of victim care. I think that the POPPY project was the most exemplary pioneer in its work on victim care. One thing it was prepared to do because of its independence was to challenge decisions on behalf of victims who were not identified as victims by the national referral mechanism. Will the Minister give a guarantee that the present arrangements for providing victim care will include a willingness to act on behalf of those victims who have not been identified by what amounts, frankly, to a bit of a tick-box exercise when it comes to the questionnaires issued by the NRM? Will the new victim care arrangements allow decisions by the NRM to be challenged so that people who have not been designated as victims of trafficking can be properly protected?

[Margot James]

I share the hon. Lady’s admiration for the work of the POPPY project. There is no doubt about the excellence of its organisation. It was, however, in receipt of nearly £1 million for doing its work. Does she accept that it is worth at least trying to allow the new organisation, which will provide care for more victims with the same amount of money—we have heard that the actual amount has been increased, but pro rata I believe it will provide care for more—to get on with its job?

[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.