Human Trafficking

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Gavin Shuker

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I was not expecting to be called at this point, Mr Robertson. I have not carefully prepared a speech, because I have just hauled myself off my sick bed to be here.

I care passionately about this issue, and I am concerned that the report has initially been half-buried by the Home Office. It was not scheduled for debate by the Government. After I raised in business questions the issue of debating the report, I had a very nice letter from the Minister—it arrived on 18 December, so very recently—saying, “Oh, we are doing all these things”.

The problem with the report is that it does not do what it says on the tin. We are told that we have an Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Human Trafficking. I share the view of the chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), that the title would be a long one for any organisation. The group was originally conceived by the previous Government as a mechanism for driving achievement on a set of targets in their anti-trafficking strategy by ensuring that different Departments took the actions required to achieve those targets. Departments had taken responsibility for that, but frankly they are not doing so now.

I wrote to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 19 November about the important issue of slavery in company supply chains. That is absolutely an issue for BIS, which is currently considering how regulations will apply. It has said that it will regulate human rights reporting, which in my view ought to include reporting on the use of slavery in company supply chains, particularly after the shocking revelations about a company of the status of Marks and Spencer using slave labour to supply chickens. Some time later, I received an e-mail from something called the BIS transfers team—obviously, there is a whole team to get rid of irritating letters from people such as me—that stated:

“Thank you for your letter about use of slavery in the supply chains of UK companies. Your correspondence has been transferred to the Home Office in view of that Department’s responsibility for the matters raised in your letter.”

It suggested that I should follow that up with the Home Office, which has not responded, and it also apologised

“for any delay in advising you of the transfer of your letter.”

It seems to me that the job of an interdepartmental ministerial group ought to be to do what Ministers do, which is to run things, to ensure that policy is delivered and to develop new policy. I do not think that the group’s members are doing that and, as the chair of the all-party group said, neither are they an independent rapporteur. Britain has a great tradition of independent inspectors and rapporteurs helping our public services to do a good job. If we look at the chief inspectors of prisons and of schools or at the ombudsmen, we can see that we have pioneered independent reporting mechanisms. Yet the group is not one of those, and the report is weaker for that, because it does not have a comprehensive picture of all that could be or is being done.

Unfortunately, because the report was made by the Government about the Government, in my view it suffers from spin. As I have said, I have not been able to prepare a detailed speech from my sick bed, but I will give the Chamber two examples of that spin, which are to do with legislation and its effectiveness. Paragraph 5.97 of the report proudly cites a piece of legislation that I helped to push through Parliament. The hon. Member for Wellingborough mentioned Anthony Steen’s efforts to push through his Anti-Slavery Day Bill in the dying days of the last Government. Section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 was the legislation that I pushed through. Many Ministers thought that I would not be able to do so in the dying days of a Government, but I did. The paragraph states:

“The UK is committed to tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with the sex industry”.

It refers to good progress

“in terms of legislation. In 2010 an offence which criminalises those who pay for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force was introduced. Section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 created a strict liability offence”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) has uncovered the fact that there were 43 prosecutions for that offence in 2010, which was a year when we had a high public campaign on the matter. I remember looking at the artwork for a poster that suggested to young men using men’s lavatories that they could go in a punter and come out a criminal. There was a campaign that was designed to raise public awareness of the offence and to secure a commitment in police forces to prosecute the offence.

The figure for subsequent years is not available—I fear that it might be fewer than 43, and yet we all know that many more than 43 men are paying for sex with women who are under duress.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, in addition to the facts that she has so eloquently expressed, the maximum sentence under section 14 is £1,000, which is a lot of money to some people and not a lot to others, and yet none of those 43 people who were found guilty of the offence was fined that? They got away with paying sums of £200 to £300 for what is a very serious offence.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed. Unfortunately, that is one of the risks of a strict liability offence; it tends to have a lower penalty. It would have been good had there been something tougher, but what I am hearing from the police is, “Oh whoops, we can’t prosecute because we have to prove both that she is under duress and also that he has offered to pay her.” The police keep telling me that they cannot do two things at once, which is a bit sad really. What they need is someone to drive them to do it. The only person who will do that is the Minister who will reply to this debate. I am expecting him to do that, and I hope that the figures that we see over the next couple of years will be an improvement on the 43 prosecutions that we know of already.