Sky: 21st Century Fox Takeover Bid

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the relationships that Prime Ministers of all parties over the years have had with members of the press.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has made it very clear that she does not feel able to comment on the content of this decision because it is a quasi-judicial decision, but does she share my anxiety that the timing is all in the hands of Murdoch? She has a responsibility to respond within 10 days. It might not be an accident that he has chosen not to notify the bid at the moment, in order to ensure that Parliament cannot take a decision before she has to. What is she going to do about that, now or in future?

[Karen Bradley]

At the moment there is no decision to take. This is a decision that will be taken by me as the Secretary of State. I reassure the right hon. Lady that I will not be taking a break over Christmas, whether there is a formal notification or otherwise.

Independent Advocates for Trafficked Children

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment she has made of the risks of trafficking or exploitation to unaccompanied child migrants in France who intend to seek asylum in the UK; and if she will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

The French and UK Governments have put in place a programme, run by the non-governmental organisation France terre d’asile, to identify and help potential victims of trafficking in the camps around Calais. As has been said in previous answers, unaccompanied refugee children in France should claim asylum there. That is the best way to ensure that they receive the protection and support they need. It also provides a legal and safe route to the UK for those with close family in the UK.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

But as we know from the earlier questions to which the Minister referred, there are 129 missing children, who are obviously those most at risk of such exploitation. I had a very welcome letter recently from her colleague, the Immigration Minister, about the situation of children in the camps. He said that these cases are being given priority so that the children can

“receive the protection and support they need and are reunited as soon as possible with any close family members in the UK.”

How many have been reunited?

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Lady knows that we are not giving a running commentary on numbers, but I can assure her that the work is taking place and that any unaccompanied asylum-seeking child in France should claim asylum there with the support of the NGOs, and if they have family in the UK, we will reunite them.

Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 12th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[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

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 9th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Karen Bradley and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

This has been an excellent debate, which has shown the House at its best. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed, and I take their contributions and suggestions in the spirit in which they were intended. I also welcome the cross-party support for the Bill.

We all want the same thing: to stamp out slavery and make it clear that there is no place for anybody who wants to abuse human beings as slaves in this country. I hope that we can all work together to achieve that aim. The experiences of coming into contact with victims of modern slavery are always harrowing. I would describe my life before I took this job as the Minister with responsibility for modern slavery and organised crime as one of blissful ignorance. I had no idea about the scale of the problem, the extent of it, its depth or breadth, how it affects towns and cities across the country and how it affects all communities. The victims I have met and the stories I have heard have deeply affected me. Each one brings home just how difficult it is to tackle this crime.

Throughout debate on the Bill, we must remember the immense misery and trauma experienced by the victims of this crime. Held against their will, with no means of escape, they often endure rape, violence and psychological torture. That is why it is so unacceptable that slavery is still a fact of life in this country.

The Bill will make a real difference. It is critical to improving the law enforcement response to modern slavery. It will ensure that perpetrators can receive the sentences they deserve, including life imprisonment. It will strengthen our powers to recover their ill-gotten assets, and it will enhance protection for victims of this heinous crime. We cannot safeguard victims if we do not catch and convict the perpetrators. The actions that we are taking, both in the Bill and outside it—changes to policy, the trials and the reviews of existing mechanisms that we are undertaking—are all aimed at achieving that.

The Bill has the potential to be even more than a crucial step towards stamping out slavery in this country. It will send an important signal to the wider world that the time has come to take firm action to end global slavery. That message is even stronger after today’s debate because of the degree of cross-party support for the Bill and the commitment that right hon. and hon. Members have shown to the cause in their contributions. Today’s debate builds on the excellent work of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, which has helped to shape the Bill. I am grateful to the members of that Committee and welcome the important contributions today from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my right hon. Friends the Members for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), and the hon. Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty).

During the debate a large number of Members identified areas where the Bill might adopt a different approach. I understand hon. Members’ deep commitment to using the Bill to make a difference on a wide range of issues and I will continue to work on both the Bill and the non-legislative ways in which we can tackle this horrendous crime. However, I urge hon. Members not to endanger the passage of the Bill in a very short Session of Parliament by trying to widen its scope. The Bill is a crucial first step, which will make a real difference to the lives of the victims of the appalling crime of modern slavery. By focusing on the very serious offences of slavery and trafficking, it will give law enforcement the clearest possible signal that Parliament wants these crimes stamped out, but it is a first step and I am determined that we will deliver it in the short Session that we have available.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Minister give way?