Fiona Mactaggart
Main Page: Fiona Mactaggart (Labour - Slough)Department Debates - View all Fiona Mactaggart's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
If the commissioner is to help increase prosecutions, they need to help to provide witnesses, who are the evidence givers in those prosecutions. I therefore support the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) in her plea to give the commissioner some responsibility for victims, which will assist the Home Secretary greatly in her ambition to increase the number of prosecutions.
Mrs May
The hon. Lady and I have discussed this important matter before, and I will talk about what we can do to protect victims. The strategy that the Government will publish as the Bill progresses through Parliament will be important, because not everything is about legislation; many issues relating to the protection of victims are about some of the other ways we can ensure that support is provided. Yes, of course we need victims to be willing to come forward in order to prosecute, but one of the areas that I do not think has been given sufficient attention in the past is the question of law enforcement, prosecution and the need to ensure that the police and prosecutors are sufficiently aware of these crimes and have a sensible legislative framework and offences framework that means they will be more likely to bring perpetrators to justice. The more perpetrators who are brought to justice, the fewer victims there will be in future.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Getting elected as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery last July, with 332 votes to my opponent’s 196 votes, was a proud moment. I stood because I care passionately about this issue. Freedom from slavery is a fundamental human right protected by article 4 of the European convention on human rights. Up until that time, I had been excluded from contributing effectively to the main parliamentary vehicle for pursuing change to protect victims of a crime which, only a few years ago, we did not even believe was still being committed.
The founder of the all-party group was Anthony Steen. He deserves our praise for that work and for continuing his work, since leaving Parliament, through the Human Trafficking Foundation. It is thanks to its work and the efforts of many voluntary community organisations—not just the Centre for Social Justice, which the Home Secretary referred to—and campaigning groups, such as Croydon Community Against Human Trafficking and Justice for Domestic Workers, shelters run by the Medaille Trust and the Poppy Project, and research bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the UK Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, that people are becoming aware that we did not abolish slavery when we outlawed the transatlantic slave trade two centuries ago. The difference, as the Home Secretary said, is that instead of being in the public eye, slavery is now hidden.
The Bill should help to change that ignorance. I commend the Home Secretary for inviting a study of the issue, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), and allowing robust pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I was glad to join that scrutiny. I am, however, disappointed that not enough notice has been taken of our unanimous recommendations. There is an international commitment to tackle modern slavery through three Ps: prevention, prosecution and protection. The Bill has mistaken those Ps and instead focused on another P—punishment—and felt that that will deliver the other three. Let me explain why it will not.
Part 1 of the Bill describes the offences. I recommend that Members read it. The language is intensely jargonish, which can and does confuse. How do I know that? These offences are exactly the same as offences currently on the statute book. Admittedly, they are in a number of different Acts at present—the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Clients, etc.) Act 2004, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and the Coroners and Justice Act 2009—but, frankly, just bringing these offences together in one law and adding harbouring and receiving to transporting in the trafficking offence will not achieve the end we all want: to expand the number of cases covered. Everything else in the Bill is already explicitly in legislation or in case law.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) asked, on 24 June, how many successful prosecutions for trafficking offences there have been. The figures are rather disappointing. In 2008, 61 offenders were proceeded against, with 24 found guilty. The following year the figures were 47 and 25. In every year since, fewer have been found guilty: in 2010, only 16; in 2011, eight; in 2012, 12; and in 2013, 19. Were other laws being used? An additional offence was added in the Coroners and Justice Act, which came into force in 2010. That offence is translated in part 1, clause 1 of this Bill. That has not resulted in many prosecutions either. According to a question in the other place on 25 June, there were 15 prosecutions in 2011, 20 in 2012 and 18 last year.
In 2010, I secured a clause in the Police and Crime Act 2009, which criminalised men who pay for sexual service where the person they pay is subject to exploitative conduct. In the first year, only 49 people were proceeded against. I consoled myself with the fact that it was a new offence and only a part year, but in the next year only 17 people were proceeded against. In the next year, the figure was only nine. Police told me that they wanted to pursue the exploiters, but the other figures I quoted show that they are failing to failing to do that.
The Home Secretary has said that the reason she is pursuing the Bill is to lead the world. That can happen only if the architecture of the Bill works so that any police officer knows what these offences are. The plain fact is that they do not, and that is one reason why there have been so few prosecutions. However much we trumpet the Bill, it is unlikely to deliver more prosecutions. Although it claims to consolidate legislation, it actually just jams existing and often poorly drafted laws into one place. The Government claim that there are more prosecutions, but on the whole they are for rape and kidnapping, not slavery or trafficking. There is a reason for that, and it is not just the length of the sentences that the different offences attract: it is that every police officer knows what those offences look like.
The problem with the Bill is that the offences are not well constructed and that will make them relatively hard to prosecute. It is not because there are few such crimes. The tiny number of prosecutions happened at a time when 1,355 people were identified as trafficking victims by first responders and referred to the national referral mechanism, and 444 were confirmed as such by the NRM. We know that the NRM underestimates—that is one of the reasons why the Home Secretary has announced a welcome review. It concludes that 76% of UK nationals, 29% of EU nationals and only 12% of non-EU nationals referred to it are trafficked: just one hint that the system is more obsessed with immigration control than justice.
My biggest fear is that the failure to outline in simple language what slavery and trafficking is, will mean we still fail to prosecute a huge majority of cases. The Bill introduces a maximum life sentence akin to murder, but in Britain 80% of murderers are prosecuted. We should expect the same proportion for this heinous crime, but that will not happen unless we change the Bill.
In addition to the failure to describe the offences in a simple and straightforward way, one other reason why the Bill will not live up to the high hopes of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee to increase the number of successful prosecutions is that it fails to protect victims sufficiently. This is not rocket science. The annual report of the US Secretary of State into human trafficking around the world made a series of recommendations for the UK:
“Ensure that law enforcement priorities to combat organized crime are effectively balanced with a victim-centered response to protect trafficking victims; ensure that a greater number of victims of trafficking are identified and provided access to necessary services, regardless of their immigration status; consider introducing a ‘pre-reasonable grounds’ decision period in which potential victims can access services before having to engage with police and immigration officers; ensure that appropriate government officials interview all incoming domestic workers in private so they are familiar with their rights and protections in the UK;”—
that theoretically happens at the moment, but in practice it does not—
“develop secure and safe accommodations for child victims and establish a system of guardianship for unaccompanied foreign children; effectively engage with multiple agencies to ensure child victims’ needs are assessed and met; ensure child age assessments are completed”.
We have to read two thirds of the recommendations to get to measures that are in the Bill.
Good quality victim services are necessary so that witnesses to this horrible crime, who are overwhelmingly its victims, are available to help prosecutions. Present arrangements, which give them 45 days housing and then too often forget and abandon them, usually with no access to counselling or other support, means that many victims run away rather than give evidence. They do not trust the police and they are frightened that their exploiter will wreak revenge on their families.
We need to do more to improve the protection of victims. The Bill includes a welcome statutory defence for people forced to commit criminal acts while they are enslaved, but that has been Government and Crown Prosecution Service policy for a long time. That has had to be put into legislation only because the policy was not being put into practice. The Equality and Human Rights Commission concludes that
“As currently drafted, the effect of the Bill is that a victim’s failure to object to their exploitation by means of threat, force, coercion etc would be relevant to any decision as to whether they had been trafficked. This would erode the protection for victims seeking redress by opening debate about the nature and degree of the threats, force, coercion etc. to which they were subjected. It is not clear whether this omission is an oversight or intention”.
Protection for victims is what is most urgently needed. They need security, knowing that they will not be turfed out of a shelter on to the street where, under new regulations, they face quizzing from landlords about their immigration status and, if they are EU nationals, they will not have access to housing benefit. They need help to find employment other than prostitution or whatever other degrading acts they have been forced into. They need psychological help to deal with the trauma they have experienced and, above all, children need a guardian who can be there for them, protect them and ensure that we stop losing them. The Home Affairs Committee concluded that nearly two thirds of trafficked children go missing from care and that almost two thirds of those children are never found. Why? Because their trafficker is the person they know and have been groomed by. The Government are not yet providing a tough enough alternative in the Bill.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has been explicit about the responsibilities that Governments have to provide guardians for unaccompanied and separated migrant children. This approach to guardianship is reflected in a number of European countries, most notably Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. They have led us; we are not leading them. Children who have been protected and nurtured are more likely to give evidence. They will not be terrorised out of it through threats to their families. The failure to protect victims will add to the poor design of the offences and mean that more traffickers get away with it.
If the Home Office had followed the advice of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, there would have been clear offences based on the concept of exploitation; there would be strong advocates with the power of guardianship for children; there would be a separate child offence, because children cannot consent to their own exploitation; and the Anti-Slavery Commissioner would have a duty towards victims. These are areas where the weakness of the Bill will mean that, in future, we fail to catch and convict some of the perpetrators of this crime.
As well as protecting victims and prosecuting offenders, there is a responsibility to prevent the crime. Opportunities to do that have been lost too. The orders in this Bill are one strategy, but they will not have a broad effect. We know—and recommended in the pre legislative scrutiny Committee—measures that will have a broad effect. One is effective protection for migrant domestic workers. When they had a fair visa, which allowed them to change employers if they were exploited, most were at least paid. Now, Kalayaan, the wonderful organisation that assists them, reports that nearly two thirds do not get any pay. They have their passports taken away, they sleep on the floor and they cannot leave the house. In the tragic case referred to by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, someone returned to a situation of domestic servitude because, under the present immigration rules, she had no escape.
Other forms of enslavement at work could also have been prevented by widening the scope of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, and by requiring companies to ensure that their supply chain is free of exploitation. I moved a ten-minute rule Bill on this subject in 2012, and it is great to see the approach winning all-party support. But the Home Office needs to know that a measure that is supported by M&S, Sainsbury's and Tesco, because they do not want to have slavery in their supply chain and because they do not want to compete with companies that drive down prices by using slave labour, is a pro-business move. That is why California took action and why we should now.
The USA report sets out quite simply what we need to do in the UK. It also reminds us that the victims of slavery across the world are, overwhelmingly, women and children. They are more vulnerable and also easier to be turned into commodities, which is the essence of this crime. So whether it is children forced to cultivate cannabis or to beg, or women forced to have sex with men, it is about the exploitation of one human being by another.
I am glad that we have a Bill, but sad that after all of the thoughtful and non-partisan study of it, the Home Office has rejected so much of the advice it received and left us with a Bill that is too weak.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
This has been an excellent debate, which has shown the House at its best. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed, and I take their contributions and suggestions in the spirit in which they were intended. I also welcome the cross-party support for the Bill.
We all want the same thing: to stamp out slavery and make it clear that there is no place for anybody who wants to abuse human beings as slaves in this country. I hope that we can all work together to achieve that aim. The experiences of coming into contact with victims of modern slavery are always harrowing. I would describe my life before I took this job as the Minister with responsibility for modern slavery and organised crime as one of blissful ignorance. I had no idea about the scale of the problem, the extent of it, its depth or breadth, how it affects towns and cities across the country and how it affects all communities. The victims I have met and the stories I have heard have deeply affected me. Each one brings home just how difficult it is to tackle this crime.
Throughout debate on the Bill, we must remember the immense misery and trauma experienced by the victims of this crime. Held against their will, with no means of escape, they often endure rape, violence and psychological torture. That is why it is so unacceptable that slavery is still a fact of life in this country.
The Bill will make a real difference. It is critical to improving the law enforcement response to modern slavery. It will ensure that perpetrators can receive the sentences they deserve, including life imprisonment. It will strengthen our powers to recover their ill-gotten assets, and it will enhance protection for victims of this heinous crime. We cannot safeguard victims if we do not catch and convict the perpetrators. The actions that we are taking, both in the Bill and outside it—changes to policy, the trials and the reviews of existing mechanisms that we are undertaking—are all aimed at achieving that.
The Bill has the potential to be even more than a crucial step towards stamping out slavery in this country. It will send an important signal to the wider world that the time has come to take firm action to end global slavery. That message is even stronger after today’s debate because of the degree of cross-party support for the Bill and the commitment that right hon. and hon. Members have shown to the cause in their contributions. Today’s debate builds on the excellent work of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, which has helped to shape the Bill. I am grateful to the members of that Committee and welcome the important contributions today from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my right hon. Friends the Members for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), and the hon. Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty).
During the debate a large number of Members identified areas where the Bill might adopt a different approach. I understand hon. Members’ deep commitment to using the Bill to make a difference on a wide range of issues and I will continue to work on both the Bill and the non-legislative ways in which we can tackle this horrendous crime. However, I urge hon. Members not to endanger the passage of the Bill in a very short Session of Parliament by trying to widen its scope. The Bill is a crucial first step, which will make a real difference to the lives of the victims of the appalling crime of modern slavery. By focusing on the very serious offences of slavery and trafficking, it will give law enforcement the clearest possible signal that Parliament wants these crimes stamped out, but it is a first step and I am determined that we will deliver it in the short Session that we have available.