Independent Advocates for Trafficked Children

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered independent advocates for trafficked children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter.

I was proud to contribute to the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Although I wanted it to include specialist guardians for trafficked children, I was glad to support section 48, which provides for independent advocates to be available to promote the best interests of those children, advocating for them and accompanying them through the many confusing official processes that they encounter. Section 48 benefited from a series of improvements as it passed through Parliament, and the Minister and the Government are to be commended for listening to the concerns and suggestions of Members and responding with positive changes to strengthen the role of advocates.

Let us just stop to think for a moment about the lives of children who have been brought to this country by exploitative criminal traffickers. They are lonely in a bewildering foreign country where they do not speak the language. The person who brought them here may have sexually exploited them or tried to get them involved in criminal activity to recoup the cost of their horrible and terrifying journey. They may be told that if they do not collaborate their families will suffer. They feel scared and abandoned. Some 982 children were identified as having probably been trafficked last year, and we know that there are more who will never come to the attention of the authorities. That is why Kevin Hyland, Britain’s independent anti-slavery commissioner, has said that

“it is essential to ensure child advocates are put in place as soon as possible.”

However, a year later, section 48 remains dormant on the statute book. More than a year since the Act was passed, and three months after the Minister promised we would be presented with new proposals, vulnerable trafficked children are still without the specialist support that the Act intended to provide. The delay in establishing the scheme is particularly disappointing in the light of the positive evaluation of the trial schemes produced for the Government by the University of Bedfordshire and published in December, which concluded that

“evidence from the trial suggests that advocates added value to existing provision, to the satisfaction of the children and most stakeholders. The ICTA service”—

—the Independent Child Trafficking Advocates service—

“appears to be important in ensuring clarity, coherence and continuity for the child, working across other services responsible for the child, over time and across contexts…This evaluation’s main conclusion is that the specialist ICTA service has been successful as measured in relation to several beneficial outcomes for trafficked children.”

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her fantastic work with the all-party group on human trafficking. During my time on the group, there was an issue with consistency in how police services throughout the United Kingdom deal with trafficked children. Has that improved with time or are there still the same difficulties?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I do not think we have evidence about consistency, to be honest, but a comprehensive advocacy service would give us that evidence and could also improve consistency. The advocates were able to help children to orient themselves and navigate complex services; to keep trafficked children safely visible to all authorities—we know that is a problem in some areas—to build relationships of trust with the children and with other professionals; to speak up for children where necessary; to maintain momentum in the progress of their cases, including planning for their future; and to improve the quality of decision making in those cases. The children in the trials who had an advocate felt more secure and supported than those who did not. In the words of the report,

“when an advocate was involved in their life, the children had a sense of being cared for in a ‘tight knit’ manner. For the comparator group children, a steady impression emerged of more ‘loose weave’ relationships with intermittent contact with social workers”.

As one child put it:

“I can call my social worker and then she tells me OK but I’m busy or something. But if I call [the advocate] then she can make things happen.”

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Lady on her very good work with the all-party parliamentary group. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation. The right hon. Lady makes a good case. Does she agree that a close relationship with the advocate often allows the child to feel more comfortable and confident and therefore less likely to take instructions from the trafficker and more likely to trust the local authority?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Every human being needs that person they trust and who they know will stand up for them at every point. For so many of these children, initially that person is the one who brought them to this country, often to exploit them. The great thing about creating an independent advocates scheme is that it gives the children that person.

In February 2015, when the Modern Slavery Bill was on Report in the other place, the Home Office Minister Lord Bates said:

“The success of the trial will be measured by assessing the impact of advocates on the quality of decision-making in relation to the child trafficking victims’ needs by key professionals—for example, social workers, immigration officials and police officers—the child trafficking victims’ well-being; their understanding, experience and satisfaction of the immigration, social care and criminal justice system; and their perceptions of practitioners.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2015; Vol. 759, c. 1668-69.]

If that is the test, there is no doubt that the pilot was a success.

The evaluation report also recognises significant value in having the advocate role operate independently of local authorities and other agencies that provide services to the children, which enabled advocates to play a co-ordinating role, thereby keeping momentum in a child’s case, and to encourage coherence in how they were treated. It also gave the advocate a 360-degree view of the child, their life and their circumstances, which helped them to provide more informed and comprehensive support. One professional stakeholder described the benefit of the holistic nature of the advocate’s role thus:

“The independent CTA [child trafficking advocate] that I have met had a cross cutting knowledge of the NRM, criminal and immigration proceedings that other professionals working with the child (social services and support workers) openly told me they did not. She made sure that his interests in all…areas were proactively pursued, by remaining in contact with all other relevant professionals working with the child. I thought she was excellent in tying these areas together.”

That connects with the point that the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made about those children needing their trusted person. I worry that the Government’s unpublished anxieties about the shortcomings of the pilot risk our losing some of those special qualities in whatever is the next iteration of the scheme.

The trials showed that advocates can raise awareness of sexual exploitation, help to address poor legal services provided to a child, and challenge when children are placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, where other residents might exploit them, rather than with experienced foster families. They help children to access education and support with many everyday needs such as getting transport passes, opening bank accounts and going to after-school clubs. Sadly, those benefits were overlooked by the Government’s response to the trials, which stated that

“the impact of the independent child trafficking advocates…appears to be equivocal”—

a statement so contradictory to the conclusion of the evaluation report that it is honestly difficult to see on what basis it was made.

One sticking point was the failure of advocates to prevent children from going missing from care. Sadly, the Government seem to have a mistaken interpretation of the evaluation’s findings on that account. The fact is that seven of the 15 children who went missing from the advocacy group did so before an advocate was appointed; an accurate reflection of the figures would therefore be to say that, of the 27 children who were permanently missing at the end of the trial, only eight had an advocate in place. The failure of the Government so far to acknowledge that is concerning. I know that preventing children from going missing and protecting them from further exploitation must be a priority, and I welcome the Government’s concern.

[Mrs Grant]

On that important point, does the right hon. Lady agree that children go missing for myriad reasons, including the quality of accommodation, the relationship with the trafficker and the level of English? Although the going missing factor is extremely important, it is probably an unrealistic measure of the trial’s success.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That is exactly the point I was coming on to. [Interruption.]

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. We have a Division. The right hon. Lady will have to answer that intervention when we get back. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes. If there are two votes, please come back as quickly as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

We are waiting for one or two colleagues to return, but I think that we are able to get under way, so I call Fiona Mactaggart to answer the intervention that was made 20 minutes ago.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Thank you very much, Mr Streeter. The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald talked about the complex factors that lead to children going missing. As Professor Ravi Kohli, who led the evaluation team, told a joint meeting of the all-party groups on human trafficking and modern slavery and on runaway and missing children and adults, the circumstances in which a trafficked child goes missing from care are complex. Many factors may be involved and may need to be addressed to provide a solution. An advocate can help to mitigate those factors by raising awareness of the risks among other professionals, pressing for the provision of safer accommodation and building strong relationships with the child, but other action is also needed. As the evaluation report said, the circumstances in which children go missing require further investigation to ensure that we put in place the most appropriate measures to prevent that from happening.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. On that issue, the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults has done work on children who go missing from care and is concerned that a proper risk assessment should be made of what happens to such children and the risks that they may be opened to when they go missing. That relies on the child disclosing what has happened to them. Children will not disclose information unless they trust the person they are giving that information to. The trusted person is key. Does she think that one way forward on this issue might be to look at how we can get more trusted people for children who go missing—they go missing for all sorts of reasons—and possibly developing some kind of voluntary scheme?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend, who chairs the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, really understands this issue. I believe that children who have lost contact with families can benefit from such an advocacy scheme too. In a way, the Home Office has been more determined to provide support for isolated children than has the Department for Education, which should play a leading role in this area. Local authorities face diminishing resources and increased demand, and cannot adequately support British children who go missing or the unaccompanied Syrian refugee children who will come here. We know from international and indeed Scottish evidence that such children benefit from independent guardianship and that they are at risk of exploitation and trafficking.

My hon. Friend’s proposal that we find ways of giving all children a special person may help to make more children resilient to the risks that they face of going missing, being exploited and so on. Although it is beyond the scope of the debate, I hope that in the future we could extend an independent child advocate scheme beyond trafficked children to lone migrant children and children who have gone missing from their families and so on, because every child needs their person who will help to make them safer. There is no magic bullet, but having a person can make a lot of difference.

On my hon. Friend’s question about risk assessment, we know that the risk of going missing is much higher among some groups of trafficked children than others. For example, Vietnamese children trafficked to this country to work as gardeners in cannabis farms are at an almost automatic risk of disappearing. So a robust risk assessment is needed as soon as a child is identified as a victim of trafficking and we need an accelerated programme to connect high risk children to an advocate.

The evaluation illustrates cases where advocates were the only people who enabled a child who had gone missing to be brought back into contact with the authorities responsible for them. There were significant delays in children being referred to the advocacy service by local authorities—a delay of three days or longer in almost 70% of cases. In comparison, once the advocacy service received the referral, 84% of children had an advocate within one day and all within two days. This finding raises important questions about the referral process and—this is key—the level of commitment from local authority staff members to the advocacy provision. That is one of the reasons why I think the Minister must implement section 48 of the Act now so that local authorities have legal duties in relation to advocates.

The evaluation tells us:

“There were many difficulties associated with advocacy work where speaking up for a child required nimble and diplomatic manoeuvring, rather than being able to draw on a legal authority to contribute”

to meetings about the child’s case.

The evaluation identified challenges faced by advocates, and I am glad the Minister intends to look at those and seek to address them in future incarnations of the scheme. However, I do not believe it is necessary to conduct further trials to do so. The Government originally promised to implement the scheme after the trial. The Minister knows that inadequate co-operation from some public authorities, exacerbated by a lack of legal authority, can be resolved only by commencing section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which specifically requires public authorities to recognise and pay due regard to the advocates’ functions and provide them with access to the necessary information about a child’s case. Without bringing section 48 into force, the degree to which public bodies will pay attention to advocates will remain variable, and we will never be able to measure the full potential benefit of the scheme because this depends on statutory recognition, which trials can never give.

In their response to the evaluation report, the Government stated that they would bring proposals about the way forward to Parliament in March. Three months later, the proposals are unpublished, yet since the trials ended nine months ago, vulnerable trafficked children across the country have been left without vital support. Barnardo’s, which delivered the trial advocacy scheme for the Home Office, has continued to provide support to children who entered the trial because it is convinced of its value, but this is to rely on charities once again to step in and cover what should be a statutory responsibility. It is now of the utmost urgency that plans are put in place to make this support available on a wide basis.

Earlier this month, various charities wrote to The Guardian newspaper calling on the Government to act urgently to make independent advocates available to all trafficked children. The charities know, from their work with children, that the delay means many vulnerable children will lack vital support and will be at risk of cruel exploitation. I trust that the Minister will today set out in full the Government’s intentions. I urge her not to proceed with further unnecessary trials, but instead to commence section 48, which provides the best opportunity for acting on the recommendations of the evaluation report and for addressing the challenges it identified, not least that of a lack of legal authority that led to poor collaboration by some local authorities. We must act with urgency to make this provision available and I urge the Minister not to sacrifice the good for the sake of the best, which is what her present course of action risks.

Statutory services can be evaluated and improved when in operation; they often are. As understanding grows about trafficking and the nature of the challenges and risks that children face, there will inevitably be aspects of the advocacy scheme that will need to develop in response. However, the trials have provided sufficient information for the establishment of a permanent country-wide scheme and I hope, although I do not expect, the Minister will put one in place as soon as possible. If she prefers to press ahead with further trials before enacting section 48, I would ask her to heed the advice of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner to make every effort to avoid unnecessary delays that would result in beginning again from scratch.

If further trials are to be entered into, they must add to the information and knowledge gained from the first stage of the trials and not be an entirely separate process.

I hope that at a minimum the Minister will confirm today that any new trials and evaluation process will include continued monitoring of the situation and outcomes for the children who participated in the first phase. This will mean we can comprehensively assess the impact of the advocacy provision, particularly in the areas of operation where processes can be lengthy, such as the legal cases that did not reach a conclusion during the first trial period.

I also ask the Minister to build into any future trials the possibility for section 48 to be commenced before the end if interim reports are positive. Doing so would enable very needy children around the country to benefit from this important assistance as soon as possible. I know that the Minister is determined to eliminate trafficking and to protect and support its victims, but the delays that we are experiencing are leaving vulnerable children at sea in a bewildering ocean of statutory agencies, coping with a foreign language and unfamiliar processes, as well as in many cases recovering from trauma and exploitation without the support that Parliament, the European Union and the United Nations have all decided they need. Trafficked and separated asylum-seeking children in Scotland have benefited from similar services for several years and will soon do so on a statutory basis. Northern Ireland is also moving forward on this. However, here in England and Wales, where we have responsibility for the majority of trafficked children, we are lagging behind.

I hope to hear today when the Minister plans to commence section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act to make independent child trafficking advocates available for every trafficked child in England and Wales, because vulnerable trafficked children across the country—more than 1,000 kids—have been left without this support. We urgently need to make such support available on a wider basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will address the next steps later in my speech.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has made the point that I wanted to make, which is that no one in this Chamber today has said that it is acceptable that children are going missing. No one has said that the Government are wrong to focus on the needs of missing children. I and other Members have said that the advocacy scheme on its own was never going to be able to prevent children from going missing. The fact that some children went missing should therefore not be used as a reason for delaying the implementation of the advocacy scheme. It might be used as a reason for taking additional steps, such as the risk assessment to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) referred, to help prevent children from being added to the large number who go missing.

[Karen Bradley]

I apologise to the right hon. Lady if she thinks I implied that anyone in this room had said that it is acceptable that children are going missing—I withdraw any suggestion that that was the case. However, the fact remains that just as many children who had an advocate in the pilot went missing as other children, if not more. I take the point that that might be because they had not met their advocate, so we have to get it right and ensure that children do meet their advocate.

I fully appreciate that the scheme is not the silver bullet to resolve the issue of children going missing, but I am determined to ensure that we find a way to make a difference using advocates, who should be there to help prevent young people from going missing. We must stop children maintaining contact with their traffickers, as I suspect some probably have. It is important that we find a way to get this right. I take the point that we should not let perfection get in the way, but that is simply not what is happening.

There were other equivocal issues in the trial. Some children never met their advocate—some went missing before meeting them and some did not meet them full stop—and others did so only infrequently. There was limited evidence of advocates having an impact by assisting children in navigating and getting a better outcome from the immigration or criminal justice systems; in accessing the right health and education services; or even in getting better referrals to, and receiving improved outcomes from, the national referral mechanism. The fact that not all children who were trafficked and had an advocate went into the national referral mechanism raises concerns.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The evaluation highlighted that, in a number of areas to which the Minister is referring, the timeline of immigration administration, for example, did not fit the timeline of the evaluation process, so it was not possible for some of those points to be concluded. I have not heard any reason for not implementing section 48. She wants to improve the scheme, but how will continuing without the legislative back-up of section 48 enable the scheme to improve? I do not understand that.

[Karen Bradley]

I hope the right hon. Lady will forgive me, but I have a little more progress to make.

I welcome the comments from all hon. Members on the comparison with Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is important that we reflect on the relative scale and complexities of the problem in England and Wales, where we need to work with many different social services, legal systems and police forces. I assure Members that we have taken on board all the learning from the Scottish Guardianship Service, but the circumstances and the models are different. The service in Scotland is only for children for whom no one has taken parental responsibility, and in such circumstances children in England and Wales will receive support from a social worker and, if there are care proceedings, a children’s guardian. We have kept wider criteria for receiving an advocate in the Modern Slavery Act. We have carefully considered what has been done in Scotland, and we have taken much learning from the schemes in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is important that we reflect on the differences between the legal systems.

A number of serious questions raised in the model testing tell us that, although the model shows great promise, it is not universally effective. I am convinced that independent advocacy has an important and central role to play in supporting children, but as the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner has told me in correspondence, further work is needed to get the model fit for purpose. He remains concerned about the lack of evidence from the trial. Although advocates can clearly play a crucial role, we need to consider the whole package, which is centred on each child’s individual needs. This is simply too important to get wrong. We need to ensure that all child victims of modern slavery are properly identified and supported.

Turning to what I intend to do, I am pleased to announce a full package of measures that, collectively, will improve the support we offer to child victims of trafficking. I make it clear so that no one is in any doubt that I am fully committed to commencing section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act and to the full national roll-out across England and Wales of independent advocates for all trafficked children. To support that, following the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner’s advice, I also propose two interim measures to improve advocacy now and to prepare for the implementation of the new system as soon as possible.

First, I propose to introduce independent child trafficking advocates at three early adopter sites. The competition for providing those sites will be launched this summer. The sites will enable us to refine the model that was previously tested, including by increasing the speed of referral and the number of people and organisations that can make such referrals; testing the use of quasi-legal powers by advocates and the impact that that will have on their effectiveness and their relationships with statutory agencies; and training and recruiting advocates with specialist skills, such as in certain languages or in dealing with particular forms of abuse, so that they can give more targeted support.

Secondly, in collaboration with the Department for Education, the Home Office will commission a training programme for existing independent advocates, who are statutorily provided to all looked-after children. The training will improve their awareness and understanding of the specific needs of trafficked children and how to support them. But that is not enough. I am also determined to address the other concerns raised in both the trial and the feedback from right hon. and hon. Members.

I am therefore pleased to announce that this year the Home Office will establish and launch a new child trafficking protection fund, with up to £3 million of Government funding initially available over the next three years. The fund will be targeted at addressing two key issues where advocacy alone appears to be insufficient and where alternative and additional approaches are needed. The first aim is to reduce the number of children who go missing or who have contact with traffickers. The second is to support children from high-priority states, from which we continually see high numbers of children trafficked to the UK. I want to explore how we can best meet the needs of such children and disrupt the traffickers who target them. We all agree that a culturally targeted approach is likely to be effective and, having listened to stakeholders, we have decided to launch the fund to promote innovation from stakeholders in all sectors who work with trafficked children and know how best to meet their needs. Critically, such discrete funding could support bespoke local and innovative strategies.

[Sir Alan Meale in the Chair]

[Karen Bradley]

That may be one of the detailed points on which I will have to get back to the hon. Lady. I will talk about some of the other points at this stage, but maybe I will write to her with the specifics.

I want to address the concerns raised about accommodation. We are doing two things about that. First, as the Immigration Minister announced earlier this year, we are taking forward plans to review local authority support for non-European economic are migrant children who have been trafficked. The review will help improve our understanding of specialist local authority provisions for that group as we implement the Modern Slavery Act.

Additionally, the Department for Education is rolling out training for foster carers and support workers that will equip them to understand better the complexities facing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been trafficked, and to gain their trust to prevent them from running away from safe placements. We are already piloting a new way of delivering the national referral mechanism. The pilot is testing new models of identifying victims, processing cases and making effective decisions. It will help ensure that all victims, including children, can access the support that they need. To underpin all that work, we are developing new statutory guidance on identifying and supporting potential victims of modern slavery and trafficking, on which we intend to consult later this year. It includes specific guidance on how best to support child victims of modern slavery.

Looking more widely, many services that trafficked children receive will be the same as for all children, although tailored to them individually. That is particularly true for children in need or looked-after children. Although only part of our approach, incorporating provision for all trafficked children into what is already there, not increasing their isolation, is the way forward. Setting trafficked children apart runs the risk, among other things, of reinforcing their sense of isolation and further increasing their vulnerabilities.

I appreciate that many hon. Members, like me, may be frustrated that establishing independent child trafficking advocates will take some time, as we need to find and train them, and that they may have concerns about how child victims will be better supported in the short term. That is why I have put forward a range of shorter and longer-term proposals and addressed areas where advocacy does not appear to be the only or best solution. We need to get it right. We must strike the right balance between requirements in secondary legislation, statutory guidance and a provider contract, and I need to engage further with right hon. and hon. Members and others to determine how best to do that, including informally via the modern slavery strategy implementation group, with key voluntary and statutory partners and, of course, via a public consultation exercise, followed in due course by the necessary parliamentary processes.

That will happen in step with a public procurement exercise to seek a provider for the national service. We will monitor outcomes for children who have an advocate in the early adopter sites, and look at whether children are generally being helped across a range of key areas including safety, wellbeing, health, education and criminal justice. We will use the learning from the early adopter sites to refine the model for independent child trafficking advocates, which will then be rolled out across England and Wales.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

One issue that Kevin Hyland and I have both raised is whether the further assessment can build on the learning from the original pilot. Can the Minister assure the House that she will continue to draw on the information from the first round of pilots, so that we do not waste all that work but use it to inform what she is doing?

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point and is absolutely right. We need to take what we have already learned, look at early adopter sites and trial new and refined ways of working as we roll out the national process.

The point is that we want to do this right. We will start the process for a national roll-out without delay by ensuring that we have early adopter sites, so that we can trial what we know is successful from the first trial as well as new and different ways of looking at the situation. Although it will take time, I assure all hon. Members that I am determined to move as quickly as possible towards achieving those steps, and in the meantime to implement the immediate improvements that I have outlined. I ask for the continued support of all during that process and stress again that we must get it right for the sake of trafficked children.

I reiterate my commitment to providing an independent advocate to all children who have been trafficked within or into England and Wales, and to getting the arrangements for independent advocates right. The most important thing is to support and protect all trafficked children and ensure that the role of advocates is fully effective. We cannot rush it and risk relying on a sticking-plaster approach on the assumption that we think we have the answer. We must implement fully a considered, holistic and proven solution that meets the needs of trafficked children, who are already vulnerable and may, tragically, be subject to future harm, including from their trafficker, even after coming into the protection system.

I thank the right hon. Member for Slough once again for raising this important issue—I know that she will continue to raise it, and I look forward to that—and for giving me the opportunity to set out the Government’s work. I look forward to our continued dialogue and meetings on this complex issue. I will write to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on her specific points, and I assure all Members that I will reflect most carefully on their considered comments and helpful suggestions.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank everybody who has contributed to this debate. It is clear how seriously people from all parts of the House take our duty to protect vulnerable children. I am still worried that the Minister risks making the perfect the enemy of the good. In her concluding remarks, I did not hear a commitment to offer the sites that she calls early adopter sites the backing of section 48, which is the legal power that advocates need in order to be listened to properly by local authorities. It would be helpful to know—

[Karen Bradley]

I apologise if I did not make this clear: the concern that we had in the trial was that advocates were not using the powers given to them in the Modern Slavery Act. Those legal powers will be available to advocates in the early adopter sites.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I hope that that means that section 48 will be in place, even if the Minister does it in a way that enables it to be rolled out in places. It is quite clear that without it, local authorities will treat advocates as just the guy from Barnardo’s, which is just not good enough and does not protect children.

The other thing that I did not hear is a response to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) about risk assessment. I think I heard a bit of a response when the Minister said that it is not in the interests of trafficked children to put them in a “trafficked children only” box. I felt that that might be a way of resisting proposals to assess, for example, Vietnamese gardeners as being at acute risk of disappearing.

As well as the work that the Minister has described, it is essential to establish a national system of risk assessment that is available to local authorities to protect the children who are at most risk of disappearing. Even if advocates on their own are not sufficient protection, we know that certain groups of children are at particularly acute risk. Designing a scheme that recognises the acuteness of risk to particular groups of children would therefore be sensible, and it would be likely to reduce the incidence of children from those particular groups disappearing.

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Lady’s point involves missing children. We are considering fully the points made by the all-party group in the inquiry on missing children, to which I gave evidence and in which I have been very interested. I will respond shortly.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Good, except that “shortly” in the Minister’s life and my life is “longly” in the life of a 14-year-old. That is the problem that we face. It is not that we believe the Government do not want to do this, or that they have locked the issue in a cupboard and are ignoring it; that is not my accusation. I have a deep concern about the delays that we have faced since we introduced the Act. The Minister, the Home Secretary and many other Ministers have said how wonderful the Act is. It is important legislation, but only if it exists in reality on the ground everywhere. That is necessary if we are to protect children.

I heard the Minister’s perfectly reasonable answer about how the civil service does things, how we are going to run the competition for early adopter sites and so on. I realise that this is not a quick process, but I worry that we are in for more months of delay and that there will be more children who do not have the person they need. It is important that the Minister quickly ensures that section 48 is in place, and that she considers what is at risk of being missed out of the process. The risk is that in trying to design a system that is perfect, we will leave too many children without a person they trust, who can help them to negotiate the ghastly bureaucracy that they will face.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered independent advocates for trafficked children.