Anderson Report
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has, in a welcome move, promised the House pre-legislative scrutiny of the legislation that will follow from Anderson’s excellent report. She says that it will include consideration not only of that report, but of the ISC’s recent report and the forthcoming report from the Royal United Services Institute. There is another report, however, which is still secret: Sir Nigel Sheinwald’s report. Although I understand that some of the details of that report are commercially confidential and cannot be released, can she make sure that Sir Nigel’s conclusions are available to those conducting the pre-legislative scrutiny?
Mrs May
I will look at that. The Prime Minister’s written statement today refers to the work that Sir Nigel Sheinwald undertook as the Prime Minister’s data envoy. As my right hon. Friend makes clear—I did not refer to this—in parallel to the new legislation, we will be taking forward Sir Nigel’s advice, including pursuing a strengthened UK-US mutual legal assistance treaty process and a new international framework. Sir Nigel was looking particularly at the question of the powers and capabilities in relation to cross-border matters and the international framework needed for that.
Clandestine Migrants (Harwich)
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
As I hope my hon. Friend will recognise, it would not be appropriate for me to identify or set out alternative routes for others to take. I can say to him that Border Force is vigilant and is always looking at different ways in which those who seek to get to this country may stow away or hide themselves. The real concern is the extent to which people are prepared to put their lives at risk, sometimes in really dangerous conditions. We take that extremely seriously, in terms not simply of trying to identify individuals but of ensuring that they are safeguarded.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister has talked about how some people who have been smuggled are being returned and how the drivers of the lorries have been arrested, but he has not told us what has happened to the organisers of this operation. In preparation for this question, I looked to see how many criminal gangs that are smuggling people into Britain had been prosecuted. The Minister said he is disrupting their operations, but is he going to prosecute any of them?
James Brokenshire
When the right hon. Lady looks back at a previous answer I gave about the work of operation groundbreaker, she will see that prosecutions have been achieved, with a significant number of years’ imprisonment secured against those involved.
As I said in my statement, the National Crime Agency is involved in this area, working with immigration enforcement. The hon. Lady rightly says that this is about going against the trafficking groups—the organised crime groups—and looking overseas to where the facilitation is taking place. This is a pernicious and appalling trade, which is why we are fusing intelligence and working jointly with European partners to go after those responsible for putting people in such dangerous conditions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We have looked at addressing the issue of those people and groups who act in a way that does not meet the current proscription threshold, and we will, indeed, introduce extremist banning orders and extremist disruption offers, which will do exactly what my hon. Friend says.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
In her response to the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), the Home Secretary referred to the three girls from Bethnal Green academy. When the first girl left in December, what specific assistance was given to the school by the Home Office?
Modern Slavery Bill
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Karen Bradley
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right: we are at a very late stage and we want this Bill to become an Act of Parliament. We want the Modern Slavery Act, the first piece of anti-slavery legislation for 200 years, to be on the statute book. We must make sure we achieve that, but in a way that provides all victims, including victims on an overseas domestic worker visa, with the support and protection they need.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The hon. Lady emphasised that she wanted, through the Government amendment, to give additional protections to domestic workers, but in fact I think her amendment has either confused her or is designed to confuse the House, because it actually reduces the protections that exist under the national referral mechanism. Has she looked at the National Crime Agency report about what happens to someone who has conclusive grounds? First, they are given 12 months’ leave to remain, but the Minister is suggesting that domestic workers get only six months’ leave to remain and cannot get access to public funds. Those two things are available to every other enslaved worker, but will not be available to domestic workers.
Karen Bradley
The evidence is not that it has made things worse. Kalayaan, the leading charity in this area, was getting 300 victims of slavery coming through its doors each year under the old system. The figure is now 60 a year.
Karen Bradley
I want to understand what is happening with the visa and to ensure that we do not import abuse. The fact is that we need to find the evidence and we need to understand the problem. That is why we have instigated the review and why we are taking the steps that we are taking today.
Fiona Mactaggart
I tried to intervene on the point about Kalayaan, because I want to put on the record that Kalayaan would say the reason for the reduction in the number of people who sought its help was that the remedies available to them have gone away. Does the Minister share my concern that in primary legislation there is an entitlement to six-months’ leave, which may guide the courts and officers in what they do, but no entitlement to the one year she claims those helping the police with their inquiries will receive?
Karen Bradley
On the numbers, I accept and do not dispute what Kalayaan is saying. What I am saying is that through this Bill we are offering the support Kalayaan says it believes overseas domestic workers do not get. I can work only on the basis of the figures it has produced about the number of people who have come to it looking for support; that is the only evidence I have on this at the moment. I have the other evidence about people who have gone through the NRM having been on an overseas domestic worker visa, and they are far smaller in number than those going through the NRM for domestic servitude who are UK or European economic area nationals, or who are here completely illegally. I can work only on the evidence I have, which is why I have asked James Ewing to look at the point.
The right hon. Lady makes the point about the courts, but they are not determining whether somebody is given a conclusive grounds decision within the NRM. She knows we have reviewed the NRM and introduced, as we will discuss later, an enabling power to put the NRM on to a statutory basis, as and when we have completed the pilots. But it will not be the courts deciding whether somebody gets a conclusive grounds decision; it will be the decision makers within the NRM—those specialists, led at the moment by the Salvation Army, who run the care contract. So this measure will not make any difference to courts decisions or decisions about discretionary leave, but, as she rightly says, this will be the only set of victims who will have something in statute over and above what is available in policy. She should welcome that.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I approach this debate with, perhaps, a different viewpoint from some other people in the Chamber. The midlands is a thriving area—the beating heart of the economy, in my humble opinion. It is very interesting to see the aspect of modern day slavery that can show itself in tarmacking gangs and farm gangs. It is absolutely disgraceful that such things are going on in this day and age.
I thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for what he said about the Bill. It will be groundbreaking legislation that any Government ought to be, and certainly my Government will be, proud of. It is crucial in all respects, because we need to put a big message out there that our country looks after vulnerable people, that it is a country of law and order, and that nobody should come here thinking they can employ people and abuse them. That will not be tolerated by my Government, my country, and my people.
I am very proud of this Bill. I disagree with the Lords amendment and agree with the one we have tabled in lieu. The important thing is that people feel comfortable and confident that they can go to first responders and be looked after. I almost wish that we did not need to have this Bill, but I am incredibly proud that we have brought it in. It will be a very special day when it gets on to the statute book.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am very sad about this debate on Lords amendment 72. For some time, we have debated the treatment of overseas domestic workers. Before the Government changed the immigration rules, I wrote a report called, “Service not servitude”, and we have debated it since then. I am glad that we are debating it in the context of modern slavery because, horrifyingly, a shocking number of overseas domestic workers have to submit to slave-like conditions.
I am sad, however, because although Government amendment (a) in lieu looks as though it gives rights to such very vulnerable victims, it actually offers them less than other victims of modern slavery, which is very distressing. There is the proposal to give someone a six-month visa. A number of my Slough constituents who for one reason or another are subject to immigration control have only six months left on their visa. The Minister will know that Slough has a pretty buoyant employment market, but it can be impossible, even for constituents in a category which means they are almost certain to have their visa renewed, to find a new employer in that six-month period. Why? Because no employer wants to employ someone who only has six months left to stay. Unless the employer is offering a tiny little temporary job, it is very unusual for someone in that situation to be able to secure new employment.
Let us look at the Government’s record. We have heard much about it in relation to the Bill’s introduction, but what about overseas domestic workers? This Government, along with that of Panama, Sudan, El Salvador, Malaysia, Singapore and the Czech Republic—think of having them as comrades—is one of very few Governments in the world to refuse to support the International Labour Organisation convention on decent work for domestic workers. Why do I bring that up? Because the exploitation of domestic workers does not always amount to enslavement: the courts have sometimes decided that people who are vilely exploited are not enslaved, and are not eligible for some of the existing protections under the regulations on trafficking. If we are ambitious for world-leading legislation, one thing we must do is to ensure that workers are not paid less than the minimum wage, or are exploited or made to work ridiculous hours or in dangerous conditions. All those things would be protected if we had signed up to the ILO convention, but——guess what?—we did not. The Government have form on that.
The Minister tells us that there will be tough guidance on interviewing people separately to ensure a sort of pre-entry protection against modern slavery. I am really glad about that, but I remember being told that there was tough guidance on people carrying their own passport through immigration control. Indeed, there is such guidance for immigration officers, but in speaking to victims who are overseas domestic workers, I have yet to find one who did so. I am afraid that the Minister’s tough guidance just does not work.
The guidance is not sufficient protection, and neither is the six-month visa, while the failure to sign up to the ILO convention is another example of inadequate protection. The Minister has cited senior police officers who believe that her proposed changes will increase the number of overseas domestic workers willing to be police narks. Well, it might, but it might not. As we know from the evidence of battered women and all other victims of abuse, the best way to encourage victims of abuse to give evidence is to focus on the support and advice they need.
Kalayaan, with which I have worked for a scary number of years, is the organisation with the pre-eminent record in doing so. It has a real record of working closely with such women, and in providing them with the kind of advice that best enables them to get their rights, such as they exist. Under the old system, it regularly helped women domestic workers to get their passports back, because—guess what?—their employers used to steal them and hold on to them.
Such support will not be provided by the Minister’s amendment (a). To suggest to people, “Oh, you get support if you become a police nark, and as long as you support this, or on condition that you do that”, is not the way to enable people to get control over their own lives, which the Minister said she wanted to achieve.
Heather Wheeler
I love the passion with which the hon. Lady speaks about this issue, but I really think she is missing the big picture. If we do not do something about this, new people will be enslaved day in, day out in such domestic situations. There has to be a change, and what she is offering will not give us that change.
Fiona Mactaggart
Actually, Lords amendment 72 would make exactly the change that the hon. Lady says we need. It would support victims and trust them to take control of their own lives, whereas, frankly, there is a real risk that the Minister’s amendment (a) will infantilise victims. I know from working with victims of abuse that the best way to make them agree to be witnesses and to give them control over their own lives is to support them in taking the lead, not to tell them that as long as they collaborate, they can get this, that or the other.
I welcome the involvement of the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and I am glad to see other people focusing on this issue, but those of us who have focused on it for a long time and who argued that ending the ability to switch visas would produce the kind of kafala system now common in Britain have been proved right. We are very sad to have been proved right, but I am glad that Members from every party, including Conservative Members, have regretted their former decisions and recognised that what the Lords are seeking is a better way to protect such vulnerable victims than the proposal the Minister has tried to sell us. If we trust and protect the victims in such a way, we will significantly reduce the level of slavery in Britain today.
Michael Connarty
The Minister has become much more skilful at arguing her brief than she was at the beginning of the process on the Bill. We forgave her for reading her text line by line in the beginning, but we will not forgive her for what she has done today. She rose to excuse a police-drafted clause with a fixation on criminality and catching bad people. Catching bad people is fine: I totally support it, as I have in the campaign that I have run for a long time and since long before there was engagement by the Minister or her colleague, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who is sitting smiling on the second Bench. The reality, however, is that if we substitute the rights of victims with the overarching demand to catch criminals or bad people, we sometimes sacrifice the victims in that pursuit. Government amendment (a) takes the that line.
If an overseas domestic worker coming forward in relation to an employment situation is not paid, are they a slave? If they are held by somebody who has their passport but does not give it back and does not pay them—perhaps feeds them, and perhaps does not beat them—they are still slaves. Are the police likely to take information from those people to pursue the employer? Probably not. Will those people be able to leave their employer and say, “I want to go somewhere where I will be paid and treated correctly; where I will be treated with respect, not as a slave, but as a worker”? A worker expects to be treated properly. If people are treated badly by their employer who has brought them to this country, it is still slavery as far as I am concerned.
Heather Wheeler
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman genuinely misunderstands what is going on here. He is an experienced Member, but I wonder whether people really understand that what he is saying is that if somebody comes here on this sort of visa, he will give them carte blanche to go and do something else.
Heather Wheeler
That is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. He is going into realms that are not to do with protecting people from modern slavery, which is what the Bill is about.
Emily Thornberry
I remember welcoming the Government’s move to opt into the EU directive on human trafficking in March 2011. I learned this afternoon that that was the result of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). I congratulate him on that.
It seemed to me that the Government were putting themselves in a contradictory position by signing up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The European Court of Justice has said that any country signing up to the directive
“must refrain from taking any measures liable seriously to compromise the result prescribed.”
It seems to me that signing up to a directive is about more than putting our country’s name to a piece of paper; we must sign up to the spirit of it, too. As I have said, the European Court of Justice has said that we must not go backwards.
I read with interest the speech of the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), to City university about the role of UK law as a model for combating human trafficking and slavery, in which he summarised the progress that had been made. I was very concerned that it was entirely contradictory for the Government on the one hand to sign up to the directive and trumpet the work that had been done to combat human trafficking and slavery, yet on the other hand to change the immigration rules to make life much more difficult for domestic workers. That seemed a complete contradiction, so on 30 April 2012 I wrote to the former Attorney-General to point that out. He referred me to the Home Office, which wrote back. I am glad that it has moved on from the position that it adopted on 16 June 2012, when it stated:
“The position is that, if an ODW has been granted a visa to come to the UK to work for their overseas employer while that employer is visiting the UK, the ODW will have leave to remain in the UK in line with that granted to the employer—ie, up to 6 months’ leave (the maximum grant of leave for visitors). If an ODW leaves their employer during the time of the visit to the UK, the ODW will retain whatever time remains of the original leave granted and so will not be in the UK illegally during that time.”
That did not seem terribly generous. Let us suppose an overseas domestic worker came with a visa to stay in the UK for a certain amount of time. If they left their employer because of abuse, they could remain until their visa ran out but then they had to go. The letter continued:
“The ODW will not be entitled to work for another employer, but they will not be in the UK illegally unless or until the leave expires.”
As I said, we have moved on from that, but it seems that alarm bells have been ringing about abused and exploited overseas domestic workers for many years. Many of those who have raised the alarm have spoken today in the House, and many organisations outside have done so. The Government have spent a number of years preparing such a Bill, and I am disappointed and surprised that, to try to get the Bill through the House today, they are putting this matter back for yet another review. Many people with much greater experience in this issue have been assisting the Government as best they can for some time. They have coalesced around this amendment in the House of Lords, and although I listened carefully to the Minister when she explained why the amendment is not satisfactory, I still do not understand. Not to accept the Lords amendment seems to fly in the face of the collective common sense in this place.
Perhaps I can add my ha’pence worth. We have heard a great deal about how important it is for victims to give evidence against their employers in court, and that to encourage them to come forward it is important they understand that their continued presence within the United Kingdom will be dependent on their giving evidence against their employers, or assisting the police to ensure that those employers are prosecuted. I hear and understand that point, but it makes no sense.
Fiona Mactaggart
My hon. Friend is a lawyer and has court experience of these matters. Will she comment on advice I have received from Parosha Chandran, which suggests that where leave is granted as a result of someone coming forward, a prosecution might be more difficult to secure? Although 29 victims of slavery have had conclusive decisions referred by Kalayaan, there has been only one successful prosecution for domestic worker abuse.
Paul Blomfield
My hon. Friend makes the point very powerfully: there is enormous pressure on victims not to come forward. The Government’s position is indicative of their whole approach. It puts the responsibility on victims to come forward to secure prosecutions to end trafficking. Unlike Lords amendment 72, which places the emphasis on how best to protect victims, the Government are instead trying, with their amendments, to refocus on the need for victims to do the authorities’ work for them. It almost suggests the victims are guilty of something if they do not want to take this enormous risk. The Minister is shaking her head, but the Government’s approach does not take account of why victims are scared to come forward, nor does it recognise that trafficked people are frequently trapped in a trafficking situation because of a fear—real or perceived—of authorities. Traffickers prey on that fear to hold victims in exploitative situations.
Fiona Mactaggart
Another problem with the Government’s proposed amendments relates to people who are exploited but not enslaved. For example, a woman domestic worker is more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, because she works in the private family home and so on, but she would not benefit from these protections because she could not enter the NRM. She is not enslaved, but she might have been a victim of sexual exploitation or rape. There is no mechanism to protect her.
Paul Blomfield
My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful additional point on why the Government’s approach is flawed.
My overriding concern is that, despite the Government’s stated commitment to tackling modern slavery, the Bill is still far too dependent on the victims rather than the state to identify the perpetrators of trafficking and slavery. That is not only morally wrong; unfortunately for the Government, it is also illegally flawed. The European Court of Human Rights has held that the state has a positive obligation to protect victims of trafficking and to investigate potential trafficking situations. Lords amendment 72 brings us much closer to meeting that positive obligation. It provides victims with a clear safety net: the ability to leave an exploitative situation without hesitation.
We all need to play our part to combat the horrific crime of modern slavery, but the agencies of government are legally obliged to take a proactive role in identifying potential cases. It seems that in the absence of an effective prevention strategy to meet that aim, the Government are depending on victims to pick up the slack when they really need proactive labour inspection and enforcement. That is a point I will make further, if I have the opportunity, in relation to Government amendment 77.
Paul Blomfield
I want to speak briefly to Lords amendment 77. I support it, but I have some concerns about how the consultation relating to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority was described by Ministers in the other place, first in relation to the consideration of changes to enforcement and licensing activity and, secondly, in relation to intelligence sharing and interaction with other agencies. On the first, it is important to emphasise that the interest shown in the role of the GLA throughout the passage of the Bill has been due to its status as a model of best practice internationally. Its strength lies in fulfilling the very letter of the new International Labour Organisation protocol and the recommendation to the forced labour convention—which this Government voted for just last year and intend to ratify shortly—calling for improved labour inspections and enforcement of labour laws as key prevention measures.
Will the Minister assure the House that consultation on changes to enforcement and licensing activity will give due consideration to the success of the GLA’s licensing and enforcement activity in its current form? I emphasise the words “in its current form”. General law enforcement is not a GLA responsibility and, should the GLA’s meagre resources be diverted into criminal investigations and crime control, as was suggested in the other place, its critical licensing and intelligence-gathering role would be compromised.
Much of the GLA’s strength lies in its ability to build relationships of trust with workers during its detailed intelligence-gathering work. Critically, that intelligence is often anonymous and relies on workers trusting that the GLA is independent of the Government. Vulnerable workers have expressed considerable mistrust for the GLA where it is considered to be too close to border security or the police. So will the Minister assure the House that the consideration of a role for the GLA in intelligence sharing will not pose challenges to its intelligence-gathering function?
At the recent GLA national conference in Derby, the Minister said that the review would ensure that the GLA would
“target the ‘right’ businesses, the ones who break the law, the ones who exploit their workers and the ones who subject them to servitude and slavery.”
I think everyone would agree that it is important to target the right businesses, but we want to ensure that the Home Office does not allow its emphasis on prosecution to obscure the complexity of the fight against modern slavery. We do not need another National Crime Agency or a new UK Border Agency; we need the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s good practice in issuing and monitoring licences and in gathering intelligence extended to other sectors.
Throughout the debate on the Bill, businesses have made the point that many of them want to do the right thing, but that they cannot trade ethically and effectively police their supply chains here in the UK without adequate labour inspection and an enforcement framework. Recruitment agencies try to operate within the law but find their margins impossible and so undermine labour rights to save money. Gangmasters, whose business model depends on paying less than the national minimum wage, are overworking people and taking cuts for substandard accommodation. So we need a labour licensing, inspection and enforcement regime that offers assurances to good business, reduces the temptation to shave away at the corners of workers’ rights and absolutely outlaws the descent into forced labour.
Fiona Mactaggart
The Minister will not be surprised to find that I want to ask for more—I feel like Oliver sometimes—but let me start by saying thank you to all the members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, to the members of the Public Bill Committee and to the Minister, because we have made real progress—I say that to Members from all parties. The Minister has often said that this is the first UK Bill to deal with modern slavery, but it will not be the last. So one thing I should like her to commit to—she has time in this debate to do so—is a review of the effect of this legislation within three years of its commencement. We are passing so much here that we need to test whether some of our anxiety about whether it will work, and some of her confidence that it will work, is well founded. Such a review would be a good foundation for looking to the future.
The second thing I want to ask for relates to Lords amendment 61, where the power to make regulations about victim care is explicit, but it is only a power to make regulations. There is a risk that for many months after this Bill victims of modern slavery in England will be less well cared for than victims of modern slavery in the other parts of the UK, which have passed legislation including powerful mechanisms for victim care. So will the Minister commit now—I believe that she is willing to do so, but it would be helpful if the commitment was made on the Floor of the House—to take the earliest opportunity to introduce regulations to ensure high standards of victims’ care following the review of the NRM.
My final point is about the Connarty-Mactaggart-Bradley issue, which is about supply chains. I really welcome the fact that supply chains are provided for in the Bill. The Minister will have noticed the debate in the House of Lords, which told us to learn from California about having no central spot where supply chain reporting happens. I have been struck by the keenness of companies on having a central spot, because good-quality companies will benefit from this legislation on supply chains. They are keen to ensure that there is proper comparability between the reports of different companies. The Minister could now say—it does not require legislation—that she will work with the commercial and voluntary sectors to try to establish a single repository for those reports, because if we do that, customers will be able to hold companies to account.
Karen Bradley
With the leave of the House, I should like to respond briefly to the comments that have been made. May I start by saying that I am pleased the Bill has been so well received by Members from all parts of the House? I am grateful to all the right hon. and hon. Members, both here and in the Lords, who have worked so tirelessly in assisting the Government to make the Bill as effective as possible. We have had some animated debates and differences of opinion, but I think all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that the Bill today looks very different from the one first presented as a draft Bill in December 2013.
I wish to pay specific tribute to my colleagues Lord Bates and Baroness Garden, who steered the Bill through the 95 amendments we are discussing today, and to the shadow Ministers, both here and in the other place, who worked constructively with the Government to make sure we get the right result: by the end of prorogation, a Modern Slavery Act—something of which we can all be incredibly proud.
Some specific points were raised. I welcome them, but do not have much time to cover them. Briefly, many of them, particularly those raised by the shadow Minister and others, were debated in the other place, and there is much on the record about our position. Let me just say that we will continue to consider those points. From my point of view, the Bill is a means to an end; it is not the end itself. It will enable us to identify more victims, using the anti-slavery commissioner and the victim support that we have outlined, but that cannot be the end. We have a long way to go, working on the strategy and working with partners, to ensure that the measures are implemented on the ground.
I pay tribute to all members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee and the Bill Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), whose work on trafficking and child trafficking advocates has put us in the position that we are now in, and he should take great credit for that. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for their work on supply chains, which they did for many, many years before the Bill was introduced. They know that we wanted to do this in the right way; we wanted to have the right evidence to get the Bill right. I can tell the right hon. Lady that we are consulting on the statutory guidance, including on how best to make statements available online. We are working with the voluntary sector and businesses specifically on a website or a comparison tool for statements.
This Bill is important and historic, and I am incredibly proud of it. For the victims of those most heinous and horrendous crimes, we have done something very good today in this place.
Lords amendment 1 agreed to.
Violence against Women and Girls
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Katy Clark
The hon. Gentleman makes his case powerfully and is of course right that it is difficult to quantify the cost of violence—to the individual and the country. However, there is no doubt that there is a vast cost to the country—millions, and probably billions, of pounds—in consequence of the effect of violence on individuals, whether they suffer it as children or in later life. A great deal of work has been done on the cost to business of people having to take time off as a direct result of physical violence in domestic situations, but, as the hon. Gentleman powerfully expressed, things are far more complicated than that. Government has an interest in addressing the matter, to ensure that all parts of society function as well as they can.
I am particularly concerned that the women’s aid services in North Ayrshire are currently out to tender. There is no guarantee that the service will continue to run as it has in the past if Women’s Aid does not win in the current tendering process.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
We experienced the same thing in Slough. Berkshire East and South Bucks Women’s Aid did not succeed with its tender; the process was constructed in such a way that it was not possible for it to win. The housing association that won has now withdrawn from providing the service. Berkshire East and South Bucks Women’s Aid has changed its name to Dash, and continues to provide a service using charitable and other funds. Those women will not allow women to continue suffering, and have carried on, but it is shocking that local government, and our tax money, are not backing an effective service. Instead there was investment in a service that turned out to be a paper straw.
Katy Clark
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has illustrated the point I am attempting to make extremely powerfully.
Even if North Ayrshire Women’s Aid wins the tender, the impact will be a cut of 22% to its budget. My hon. Friend is correct to say that many such services began as voluntary services. Women provided them out of their convictions, in their own time. However, it is practically impossible to provide a service on a purely voluntary basis throughout a local authority area. There is a need for state support. My case is that women-led services may be the most effective among those provided for women and girls in this country. It will be a sad indictment of Members, irrespective of party, if we allow the current budgetary position and the tendering exercises that are happening throughout the service to lead to a situation in which services cannot continue operating in the way that developed over generations.
With a 22% cut in its budget, North Ayrshire Women’s Aid will no longer, if it wins the contract, be able to help with addiction or children’s issues, which are part of its core service at the moment. Workers have already been issued with redundancy notices. A cause for concern is that the tendering process is such that whoever wins the contract will have to operate differently from previously. The council will control opening times and decide the nature of the service provided to women. Historically, the service has been led very much by women. Women have been employed by it and run it, and there is a woman chief executive.
Previously, of course, it was a co-operative operation. However, pressures from the public sector have meant that Women’s Aid could not continue to work in that way, so a male chief executive could be appointed. He might be good at the job, but that does not accord with the ethos in which Women’s Aid developed—of a women-led project, with recognition of the fact that women are often best placed to provide the relevant services to women and children. Things might be different in the context of men suffering domestic abuse, which we have debated previously, but the debate today is about women. The council will decide on recruitment and selection, and there will be a more limited service dealing with housing and shelter, rather than the more holistic approach developed by Women’s Aid over a long time. That is just one example of how services are under threat as a result of budget cuts.
When the previous Administration were in power in Scotland, Women’s Aid budgets were ring-fenced; it was decided that they should be because it was recognised that when times are difficult, services of that kind are the first to go. Services that are there for the most vulnerable do not have big lobbying groups providing them with protection and so they will be the ones to go when times are tough. However, the decision was then taken in Scotland not to ring-fence budgets for such services, and we are now seeing the consequences.
As we debate the effect of these issues on women and girls throughout the world, it is important that we also remember what is going in our own backyards—in our constituencies and communities. We should make sure that we protect the kind of services that are required when women and girls are most vulnerable—the point in their lives when perhaps they are at their lowest and so need support—and that there are the resources, commitment and vision to develop better services in future.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I want to make three main points. One is that violence against women and girls is serious. I want, secondly, to discuss better ways of preventing it and, thirdly, to raise issues about ensuring that policies and law actually work in practice.
The issue really is serious. I was looking at the statistics for Thames Valley, the police area that covers Slough, which I represent: one third of the assaults with injury, in the latest year for which figures are available, are as a result of domestic abuse—and actually not just assaults with injury are involved. If we look at the homicide figures for the Thames Valley area, we see that in the past five years there have been 86 adult homicides, of which 27 were domestic abuse-related homicides. One in three murders in the Thames Valley police area is domestic abuse-related.
This is a real problem, which is life-threatening for women and girls. We have to start from realising that and recognising that it is not just a question of bringing the perpetrators to justice. This debate has illustrated that very powerfully. It is also a question of preventing these kinds of incident in the future. That is mostly what I want to focus on—the education not just of girls but of wider society in how to protect girls and women from violence.
I held a meeting with women in my constituency about child sexual exploitation. They were concerned about the issue. They felt that policies were being developed “somewhere up there” and their experience, as anxious mums, was not part of the debate and discussion. It was striking that again and again they came back to the issue of education—education not just for their daughters, but for themselves.
One of my asks for the Minister is that every school should have not just education for girls, but PSHE education for mums and dads. That was the demand that came from the meeting in my constituency, and I think it is a brilliant demand, because lots of mums there said that they did not really know what their daughter or son was seeing on the internet. They did not realise that internet safety should mean that they keep the family computer in a room where they can see what is going on. They should not allow their sons to have access to computers in their bedrooms, because if they do, they will be looking at things that mum and dad do not want them to see.
Pauline Latham
I arranged an evening in a school to talk about just that. I invited two lots of parents from two very large schools to talk about what was happening. Do you know how many actually came? It was an official meeting at the school, and I had the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and child protection people there. Twenty people came, and most of those were teachers. There were probably four or five parents.
Fiona Mactaggart
I think that part of the reason for this situation is that we do this education too late. I do not know whether the hon. Lady’s school was a primary or a secondary school, but if we did it in primary schools, with which parents have a more intimate relationship, it is more likely that parents would do it. I think that we should do it in primary schools.
In Slough earlier this week, I talked about this issue at a meeting—a kind of youth question time for parliamentary candidates and their MP. A young woman came up to me and said, “Do you know what? The PSHE I got was much too late. It was when I was in year 10 or 11—something like that. Actually, it’s in year 7 that you are trying to make your first relationships with boyfriends.” I had the impression that she had been a victim of exploitation. She did not say anything that implied that she had been, but the fact that she wanted to take me into a corner and talk to me about this made me feel that she had been vulnerable and had not known what to do about her vulnerability. My anxiety about the welcome announcement from the Secretary of State is that this education will not happen young enough.
I used to teach year 6 in primary school. Some of my colleague teachers—this was a lifetime ago—were frightened of doing sex education, so I tended to be the person who did it, but I think that we have gone past that. It is really important that before girls have boyfriends and develop a sense of their own sexuality, they are able to have these conversations with trusted adults who can advise them on ways to be resilient to exploitation.
Mary Macleod
I want to give the right hon. Lady this example. I ran the London domestic abuse summit, in Chiswick, with the Home Secretary. I invited a couple of students from each of my local secondary schools, and some of the schools came back and said, “Sorry, we think it’s inappropriate.” I think that there is some work to be done to educate teachers that this is a very important issue and they have to play their part in it.
Fiona Mactaggart
The hon. Lady is right to say that we need to educate teachers. I used to be a teacher educator—a teacher trainer—and it is true that we gallop through so much training for teachers so fast that we do not train them in how to teach this. Primary school teachers in particular can feel anxious about teaching it, but in my view it should be mandatory at every level of a child’s education.
Children should have relationships education from the age of five. At five, children will be talking not about sex and sexuality, but about what to do about bullies and about sharing toys. Those are very important lessons about relating to other people that at the moment schools avoid. Not every school does so, but it is not mandated, as part of the national curriculum, that schools have to teach this, and many parents do not have the confidence to teach it. As a result, we leave our children vulnerable because they do not know how to protect themselves. The best form of protection against exploitation is self-protection. The police cannot be there all the time; mum cannot be there all the time. We need to develop young adults who can keep themselves safe and who know how to resist exploitation.
Seema Malhotra
My right hon. Friend is making a very important point in a powerful speech. I was struck by a story that I heard recently about the impact of sex and relationships education in school. A young boy went home after some classes and realised that the domestic abuse—the violence—that he was seeing at home was not normal. He then raised a challenge at home, which led to the mum disclosing the abuse. Given the impact that SRE can have, not just in raising awareness but in making a change, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is right that it should be compulsory and that it can be age-appropriate and safe to teach from the age of five?
Fiona Mactaggart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is also right to admit that dealing with such things is complicated for teachers. We need to support and educate teachers. I remember reading a story that a pupil of mine had written; it was obvious to me that she had been watching utterly inappropriate movies at home. I thought that they must have strongly informed her writing, because I did not believe that she could have imagined all the things that she had written about. As quite a young teacher, I did not really know how to respond to that situation. Young teachers will encounter that kind of thing, and we need to train them to deal with it.
Education is one of the keys to prevention, but I believe that there is another way of reducing violence against women and girls. Hon. Members probably know that I regard prostitution, as it actually happens, as usually being a form of violence against women and girls, particularly vulnerable women. I believe that the way to prevent that form of violence is to reduce girls’ vulnerability to being seduced into prostitution.
There has been much greater awareness of child sexual exploitation in debate and discourse recently, and that is an important step, but we need to reduce the number of women who are prostituted. As a state, we need to help women leave prostitution, and we need to deal with the demand for prostitutes. In my view, we should follow the Swedish example and criminalise the customers, who have choice, rather than criminalising the women, who have little.
I praise the Government for creating section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which makes controlling and coercive behaviour an offence. That offence has the capacity to play a role in the prevention of physical violence, because physical violence is often not the first step; it follows on from, and is bound up with, controlling and coercive behaviour. Will the Minister tell the House the exact steps that she will take to ensure that police forces deliver on that? Earlier in the debate, we heard how for decades we have had legislation against cutting girls’ genitals, but there have been no successful prosecutions. I want to make sure that section 76 of the 2015 Act does not follow that trend, and that it is instead used by police services as an effective way of preventing violence against women and girls.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) referred to the additional £10 million of support for refuges announced in November 2014. I was glad to see that, but I have to say that, too often, services for women, whether it be Rape Crisis helplines or funding for refuges, are sorted out at the last minute with no time for people to apply. The requirements often mean that, as on this occasion, lots of brilliant services cannot get themselves together to access the money, because they get the rules and regulations too late.
We need to make sure that in the provision of such services, as with other things, women are not seen as an afterthought. It must not be a case of a Department—in this case, I believe it was the Department for Communities and Local Government—saying, “Oh, whoops, we have a £10 million underspend here, and we do not know where it came from. Let’s shush the women by giving it to them.” I suspect that that is what happened, although I might be wrong. That happens too often, and we need to make such services absolutely mainstream. If we protect women and girls, we will reduce violent assaults and cut by a third the number of women who are murdered. We must make sure that that is front and centre of everything we do.
The Minister will speak on Tuesday next week in ping-pong on the Modern Slavery Bill. I believe that the Bill gives us an opportunity to help a number of women who have come to Britain as domestic workers and who have been vilely exploited and hurt. I am glad that the Minister has agreed to take a step in the right direction on the Bill, and I hope that she might turn it into a leap and support the Lords amendment. The Bill offers us another opportunity to support a number of people, mostly women, who have been victims of violence and exploitation. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
I know that the right hon. Lady—she is a passionate advocate on this topic—cannot be here for my closing remarks, so I wanted to comment now. We are drawing up an implementation plan to deal with the domestic abuse offence. Officials from the Home Office have met the national policing lead on domestic abuse and the College of Policing, and they will be meeting the CPS, to work on implementing the offence in such a way as to ensure that it genuinely offers better protection to victims. We have debated the generalities today, but I wanted to make sure that the right hon. Lady knew the specifics before she left.
Yarl’s Wood
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Karen Bradley
As my hon. Friend says, I cannot comment on the specifics of that case, but it clearly sounds like a heart-rending situation. We have taken action to make sure that those suffering from mental health conditions are not detained in police custody, and we are taking steps to ensure that they are not detained in immigration detention.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister has said that about two thirds of the women in Yarl’s Wood are there for more than a month. Overwhelmingly, these are people who have not been convicted, or even accused, of any crime, but who are put in administrative detention for extended periods. What is the Minister doing to make sure that they have the high-quality legal advice and representation they require to make sure that their case is properly heard before she organises their removal?
Karen Bradley
To correct the hon. Lady, she said that two thirds are held for more than a month, but 63% are discharged within 28 days and either removed or released. The issue with the length of time for which people are detained is that the system that we inherited had too many layers, too many procedures and too many appeals, which meant that we could not get to the bottom of whether somebody was right to claim asylum or whether they should be returned to their home. By reducing the number of appeals to four, I hope we will see a shorter time period.
Counter-Terrorism: Conflict Zones
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend will know that we did in fact take on board a number of Anderson’s recommendations in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill. David Anderson is carrying out a fuller review for the Government on the question of the threat, the capabilities that are needed and the regulatory framework that needs to be in place to ensure that the police and the security and intelligence agencies have the necessary powers, and I look forward to his report.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
If I knew at 7 o’clock on Wednesday evening that three girls had gone to Turkey, why did not the authorities in Istanbul?
Counter-terrorism and Security Bill
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Hazel Blears
The hon. Gentleman has a proud record of having pursued these issues with such determination and tenacity that he has, perhaps, had no small influence on the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister in talking about the long-term generational struggle and the need to deal with ideology.
I want to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) about resilience, as that is the second issue that I am concerned about. I have read the guidance very carefully and the first mention of building community resilience is in paragraph 175 of 178, on page 39. It is about the police and it states:
“The success of Prevent work relies on communities supporting efforts to prevent people being drawn into terrorism and challenging the extremist ideas that are also part of terrorist ideology. The police have a critical role in helping communities do this. To comply with the duty, we would expect the police, working with others, to build community resilience”.
There is no objection to community resilience in principle in the guidance, yet it takes us 175 paragraphs before we talk about the need to do that. The Home Secretary is looking at me quizzically, but this is the guidance as we see it now and when it is revised, as I hope it will be, I hope that there will be a stronger emphasis on families, parents and communities. I have made those points consistently and I asked the Home Secretary to reflect carefully on that.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Within those communities, there is a hunger to be engaged and a worry that at the moment the terms of engagement seem to be determined completely by the police and not sufficiently by families. I had a meeting with a group of Muslim mums in my constituency who asked for better education on how they could understand what was going on on the internet. We need a non-police-led element to this Prevent work as well.
Hazel Blears
My hon. Friend makes a point that is based on experience and it is all the more authentic and powerful for that.
These issues are not mutually exclusive. The police have a role to play and have an important security role, but other agencies and people in the community can equally make a big contribution.
The second point that I have raised consistently is about ideology. I am more reassured about ideology and paragraph 4 of the guidance, right at the front of the document, states that one of the objectives is to respond to the ideological challenge. Paragraph 17 talks about the need to train front-line staff so they are aware of the ideology and what they can do to push it back. I have asked again during the passage of the Bill how much resource will go into the area. We have £120 million to deal with the increased threat, but how much will go into the Prevent agenda? It is very important for people out there to know that. There is a hunger for training, support and capacity building among all the agencies that will have to carry out that duty. We need to offer some reassurance that that capacity and guidance will be in place.
My final point is about freedom of speech. I know that many Members have made their points on that already. The noble Lord Bates made a neat attempt to try to make the division between having due regard to and having particular regard to. I am not sure that I would envy him the prospect of litigating on that basis, because it seems to me to be a bit of a philosophical exam question. I know that the Home Secretary will look at that guidance again and make it as practical as possible, but reconciling those two formulations seems to me to be intrinsically difficult. I do not think for one moment that I am capable of reconciling that; that would require a greater philosophical brain than mine. Perhaps it will eventually come to judges. If the Home Secretary could say a little more about that, that would be very welcome.
Finally, will the Home Secretary publish all the responses to the consultation? That would help us all significantly in seeing the direction of travel. She has said that this is an ongoing generational struggle, as indeed has the Prime Minister. He said last week that the shadow will hang over our generation for many years to come. We are all engaged in trying to ensure that we tackle the problems we face. I will certainly seek to make whatever contribution I can to this agenda now and in future.
Oral Answers to Questions
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
11. What recent discussions she has had with police and crime commissioners on the priority they give to prosecuting and preventing human trafficking and modern slavery; and if she will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
My ministerial team and I engage regularly with PCCs on a range of issues. Most recently PCCs attended the international crime and policing conference which I hosted in January, and at that event the new designate independent anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Highland, gave a keynote address about the importance of tackling modern slavery. I am committed to working with PCCs to ensure that the police remain focused on this terrible crime.
Fiona Mactaggart
How many PCCs have made tackling modern slavery and human trafficking a strategic priority for their force?
Mrs May
PCCs have made a range of issues a strategic priority for their forces, as the hon. Lady will know. We are clear that the impetus for dealing with modern slavery is coming from the Government and that it is a priority for the National Crime Agency. Police and crime commissioners will of course set what they believe to be the most appropriate strategic priorities for their areas. I am interested that the hon. Lady wants PCCs to be interested in this matter, because her party wants to abolish them, and if that were to happen, they could take no interest in it whatever.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that one in 20 cardholders in Britain have been victims of plastic fraud and that levels of fraud reported by Action Fraud have gone up by 10% over the past year. She says that she is trying hard to do something. When will she succeed?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady knows that we need to increase the reporting of fraud. The dedicated cheque and plastic crime unit, which is run by the City of London police and the Metropolitan police and works with Financial Fraud Action UK, is doing an enormous amount of work to improve that. Also, given that the UK has significantly higher levels of plastic payment than other parts of the world, we should be very proud of the great advances we have seen, including with chip and pin and contactless payment, which are incredibly safe here in Britain.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
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Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her suggestion. Crown Prosecution Service guidelines are already in existence. The CPS will want to make sure that the guidelines are appropriate to the changes we make, so that people are aware of the changes in what, as she says, can be a tricky area when it comes to definitions and determinations in such cases.
A particular form of cruelty inflicted on some young girls is genital mutilation. There is absolutely no cultural, religious or any other justification for female genital mutilation. It has no place in this country, or indeed anywhere else in the world, and the Government are committed to eradicating the practice. The Bill as originally introduced included an extension of our ability to take jurisdiction over FGM offences committed abroad. At the girl summit last July, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I undertook to bring forward a number of further legislative changes to tackle FGM in this country, and these were added to the Bill in the House of Lords.
First, to encourage victims to come forward, the Bill now provides for lifelong anonymity from the point at which an allegation is made. Secondly, to target those parents who allow this dreadful practice to be inflicted on their daughters, we have now provided for a new offence of failure to protect a girl from the risk of FGM. Thirdly, to stop FGM being inflicted on a girl in the first place, we have now provided for FGM protection orders, which are modelled on and build on the success of forced marriage protection orders.
Mrs May
May I make a little more progress?
In July, we announced a range of other measures, including the creation of a new cross-Government FGM unit to work with criminal justice agencies, children’s services, health care professionals and affected communities. I hope that, together, these measures, including the changes to criminal and civil law, will help to tackle this appalling practice.
Fiona Mactaggart
In preventing FGM, will the Home Secretary consider the provision of refuge places for girls who are at risk? These girls are frightened of reporting this or talking to a doctor, and their families are putting them under pressure. They need refuge, and in my experience Britain currently has inadequate refuge places for any woman who is at risk of violence.
Mrs May
The hon. Lady makes a point not just about FGM but more generally about refuges. Before Christmas, the Government announced the availability of a further £10 million for refuges as a recognition of the valuable work they do, particularly in relation to women who are leaving a domestic environment where they have been subject to domestic abuse. On female genital mutilation, it is important to ensure that the young people involved are aware of what they are able to do in order to escape this danger. It is also important that we send out very strong messages from this place, and generally, about the fact that it is a criminal act that we are not willing to accept in this country, and that we will make every effort we can to ensure that we eradicate the practice.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate.
When the Home Secretary referred to scams that defraud pensioners of their savings, I thought that it is unfortunate that at present such scams are not often counted in our crime statistics. The crime survey for England and Wales has shown that since 1995, in our country as in most other European countries, crime has consistently fallen, and we are all glad about that. I fear, however, that that is a reflection of crime changing and migrating to new kinds of offences for which our statistical methods fail to account. That is particularly true of online fraud and exploitation, people trafficking, and other very serious crimes. While I welcome this Bill, I think that measures other than legislation are needed to make dealing with these things a reality.
I will focus on two parts of the Bill: in part 1, the powers to confiscate and restrain assets; and in part 5, female genital mutilation. I am glad that the pressure from the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill has been responded to in part 1 and that the test for freezing assets is being reduced from “reasonable cause to believe” to “reasonable suspicion”, as the Committee recommended. We also recommended, in paragraph 208,
“that the existing requirement to demonstrate risk of dissipation be explicitly removed.”
I am not a lawyer, and I recognise that that requirement, which currently exists in these sorts of cases, might still be there, but I cannot find it. I would be grateful for reassurance that it has been removed. If it has not, may I suggest that we should look at the issue when the Bill is considered in Committee? Very often, with those involved in organised crime and so on, there is no way of showing that there is a genuine risk of dissipating assets, yet those assets will be concealed, and it would therefore be sensible to enforce their restraint at an early stage.
The pre-legislative scrutiny Committee also recommended that it should be possible to include in restraint orders
“property that the court deems to have been related to the offence”,
such as certain premises or very low-value property, particularly if that property is one of the tools, as it were, that are being used by the people traffickers to oppress and exploit victims. One of the aims of the powers of restraint is to disrupt the capacity of the criminal to continue with exploitation in future. I would be grateful to receive some reassurance from the Minister on those points.
My main point is about female genital mutilation. We know how hard this offence is to prove. Indeed, we have had legislation on the books since 1985, amended in 2003, and yet there were no prosecutions until October last year. That is partly because we have not listened enough to victims and to women in the communities where FGM is most rife. Let us be clear: this is not some quiet little bit of fiddling with women’s bits; it is an issue of abuse against children and violence towards women, and all institutions of the state should be committed to eliminating it.
At the risk of horrifying Members, let us go through the consequences of cutting into a young woman’s genitals, because that is what happens. It can cause haemorrhages and death. It can cause death from tetanus, particularly if it happens overseas—that is one of the things that the Bill is helping to deal with, for which I am grateful. In the short term it can cause shock, open sores, cysts and keloid scarring, among some of the less severe physical impacts. Sometimes the same knife or instrument is used to cut many girls without being sterilised, making the girls vulnerable to HIV infection. Girls who have been infibulated are likely to have trouble passing urine, as the urethra may be obstructed and urine cannot escape easily. They will be prone to bladder infections. Once a girl starts menstruating, it will be hard for menstrual blood to pass through the small hole, which may cause extremely painful periods as stagnant menstrual blood causes bacteria to build up, leading to pelvic inflammation. Infertility may result.
So there are huge consequences to the offence. I welcome the changes in the Bill, which will help to deal with the main reasons why we have failed to prosecute. The main obstacle has been the difficulty in getting testimony. One of the reasons for that is that FGM is usually arranged by close family members of the victim, and children, whether from loyalty or fear, are reluctant to implicate their own parents or other relatives. The anonymity provision might help in this regard, but we also need to beef up victim support. I raised with the Home Secretary when she introduced the Bill the need for refuge provision for girls who are victims or prospective victims of FGM. The lesson we have learned from similar kinds of offences is that if a victim knows that she can be safe, she is much more likely to be a witness to the abuse which has harmed her. As well as legislation, therefore, we must ensure that there is effective protection and refuge for victims of this crime.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Is she heartened by the Royal College of Nursing and other royal colleges adopting a joint approach, particularly to raise awareness within their profession so that there is a requirement for mandatory reporting by health professionals?
Fiona Mactaggart
Mandatory reporting by health professionals is essential, and it should be a duty on all professions, especially teachers. I agree that any steps which ensure mandatory reporting would be valuable.
The other well constructed amendment that the Bill makes relates to immigration status. Where someone is at risk overseas, the amendment shifts the requirement from permanent residence, which was in the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and was thought to be sufficient but proved in practice to be insufficient, to habitual residence, so that there can be effective prosecution of cases where people’s immigration status in the UK might be vulnerable. Those steps are important and will make a real difference.
I mentioned at the beginning that legislation is often not sufficient to achieve the desired outcome. We need a multi-agency approach to female genital mutilation, involving education, health, and local authorities, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, so that all the information on suspected FGM cases is shared and communicated appropriately. Institutions must work together on cases, sharing intelligence to ensure that girls at risk are not lost in the system. Even though there had not been a prosecution until October, every prosecution is a mark of failure. It is a mark of a girl who has been cut up. Our ambition should therefore be to change the thinking and to create a consciousness which rejects this form of abuse.
We in Parliament know that we can do that. We have done it on gay rights and gay marriage, for example, and on a number of other things. We can change thinking. However, although I am glad that there are still a few Members in the Chamber at 9 pm on this first day back after recess, this debate is not going to do that. We have to go out there and work carefully with people to make sure that FGM is recognised as a crime and that we work with the communities most affected in order to prevent it.
I was struck by what happened in a meeting I held in my constituency of Slough on 12 December on the issue of women and child sexual exploitation. About 25 women turned up. We were not focusing on FGM, but it was raised by one of the women in the audience. The meeting’s minutes say:
“General feeling that a lot of ‘brushing under the carpet’ still happens in our communities regarding these issues. Much of that is closely connected to misplaced notions of shame/honour and that needs addressing and should not be allowed to go untouched or not spoken about honestly and openly…Strong feelings that women need to be at the forefront of tackling these issues and providing solutions but that hasn’t been case up to now”.
A particular suggestion was made for parents to receive personal, social, health and economic education. I think it would be an excellent idea to educate parents about some of the risks to their children, such as online sexual exploitation and FGM. We could provide such mechanisms in schools to help to protect young girls. I pass that recommendation on to the Home Office team and hope they can make their colleagues in the Department for Education realise what a difference it might make.
I gather from other speeches that there are plans to amend the Bill in a number of ways in Committee, including criminalising coercive behaviour as part of domestic abuse, which I welcome. I want to focus, however, on a proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) relating to child abduction, because I am concerned about the sentences available to people who have abducted children.
I met Abida, who lives in Slough, a couple of years after I was elected in 1997 and she asked me for help to bring back her children. Just a year ago, the perpetrator who had taken away two of her children was successfully prosecuted, but the maximum sentence for such an abduction is seven years. Frankly, that does not seem right, given that a woman has been separated from her children and those children have grown up without the love of their mother or contact with their brother because their father has exploited them. They have spent many years without that contact. Indeed, as a result of the way in which they have been groomed during that process, relationships within the family have broken down.
I do not think that the current maximum sentence is sufficient in such cases. Therefore, if the Bill Committee considers child abduction, I hope that the question of the appropriate sentence, taking into account in particular the amount of time a child has been separated from the rest of their family, is reviewed during that debate.
It is not enough just to pass laws, although that is critical; we have to work together in unison. This debate has shown that Members on both sides of the House think that this Bill moves us forward in many regards, but we will have to work together and with people on the ground. That means using the resources existing in our constituencies to help women to be at the forefront of protecting their daughters and to help girls to protect each other by helping them be aware that such behaviour is illegal and is abuse, and that they can report it and be protected without making themselves more vulnerable to different kinds of abuse within their family. That is what we must all do.
I am glad that these issues—people such as me have blithered on about them for decades—can now be discussed in Parliament, and that we can do something that I hope will be more effective than what we have been doing for the past 20 years.