Major Incident in Essex

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise that issue, as he has done previously. It is clear that this is not a UK-specific issue but an international one. While a great deal of work is done internationally, through global compacts and migration funds, there is much more we can do, working collaboratively with international partners and our friends and allies, to deal with the root causes—the upstream issues—and criminality and to put something into statute globally to stop this happening again.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

Our outrage continues. The latest statistics from the National Crime Agency show that the top nationalities for potential victims of trafficking to the UK were Albanian, Vietnamese and Chinese. Given what we may or may not know, what discussions has the Home Secretary had, particularly with Albania, China and Vietnam, about what is going on and what more can be done to stop it?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He will know, through his work on the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery, that there are specific source countries—he named some of them—where we see far too much trafficking and criminality. There are discussions taking place—I will not reel them all off, but I have been involved in some—and many more will follow. I emphasise, however, that, outside the Home Office, much more can be done across other Departments, and I will pursue that this week. We have seen various streams of activity by other Departments, but we need to join that up to ensure that we speak with one voice to these countries and that we ourselves have a much more coherent approach.