Human Trafficking (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill [HL]

Lord Henley Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, bearing in mind the strictures of my noble friend the Deputy Chief Whip, I will endeavour to be brief. I therefore from the start offer to write to noble Lords if I fail to answer some of their points.

I begin by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, to what she described as her guest appearance. I hope that there will be many more such guest appearances, and we look forward to them. I also thank my noble friend Lord McColl for introducing the Bill and providing the opportunity for a debate that has raised a wide number of issues, reflecting the complex nature of the problems of tackling human trafficking. It is clear from the strength of feeling throughout this debate that human trafficking is an issue that profoundly affects us all—of course, no one more so than the victims of this appalling crime.

Human trafficking is a complex and covert crime that demands an international response. In the UK, we have a very good story to tell, but that does not mean that we can rest, and we obviously have a responsibility to lead the way in the fight against trafficking and to develop increasingly sophisticated responses to the changing nature of the organised crime landscape.

The Government’s decision in May this year to opt in to the EU directive confirmed our commitment to this goal. It might be useful if I set out in a few words a little about the directive and our response. Noble Lords will be aware that we chose not to opt into the directive when the draft proposal was initially published last year. We knew that the draft text would go through an extensive period of negotiation between the European Council and the European Parliament, and we wanted to be absolutely sure that the text would in no way be detrimental to the integrity of the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system. The feared widening of the text of the directive did not happen and we examined in great detail the final text and its impacts on the UK, and concluded that applying to opt in would benefit the United Kingdom.

We must now ensure that we achieve compliance with the requirements of the directive by April 2013. Failure to do so would be very damaging to the United Kingdom’s reputation in this area, as well as open up the possibility of infraction proceedings. While we are, I must stress, already compliant with the majority of the articles within the directive, we have identified two existing areas of primary legislation that must be amended within this short timescale. The remainder of the directive can be implemented in full through secondary legislation and through various operational measures and operational routes.

My noble friend’s Bill is obviously to be commended—it is a very good, detailed and thoughtful piece of work. It sets out to transpose the directive fully into United Kingdom domestic primary legislation and brings together a range of human trafficking provisions into a single piece of legislation. Again, I congratulate my noble friend on his commitment to this important issue. As I said, we are obviously fully committed to implementing the directive, but it must be emphasised that the United Kingdom already complies with the majority of the measures in the directive and will bring forward the necessary primary legislation required for its implementation as necessary.

To comply with the directive, we will establish extra-territorial jurisdiction where the offender is a United Kingdom national, and I hope that that deals partly with one of the noble Baroness’s questions. We will also widen one existing offence of trafficking for forced labour so that it is an offence where trafficking takes place wholly within the United Kingdom.

However, we believe that, in seeking to implement the directive, the Bill introduces unnecessary legislation and implements measures beyond what is required in the directive. For that reason and others relating to timing and other matters, I obviously cannot give it my wholehearted support today. However, I recognise that it provides a very welcome opportunity to debate these matters.

I want to be clear that implementing the directive is only one part of the wide range of work that we are carrying out to tackle trafficking. In July this year, the Government published a new strategy on human trafficking. The strategy has a clear and single aim: to stop trafficking being a viable and profitable crime and to end the harm that it causes. We want to tackle the problem at source, improve intelligence-sharing and the co-ordination of law enforcement in the United Kingdom, and address the demand that fuels this appalling crime, as well as improve victim identification and care.

My noble friends Lord McColl and Lady Berridge and others raised the question of the national rapporteur. My noble friend Lady Berridge did not believe that the expression “inter-departmental ministerial group for oversight” exactly rolled off the tongue and caused much joy. I assure her that we have a number of inter-departmental ministerial groups. However, the idea of a national rapporteur has generated a great deal of interest. We believe that with our group, even with its fairly inelegant name, we have an equivalent mechanism in place, and that its remit, which includes the assessment of trends in human trafficking, will be sufficient to comply with the EU directive. We have recently revised our arrangements to better support the Government’s work on human trafficking and to ensure effective oversight of the human trafficking strategy and implementation of the directive.

The question of child guardians was raised by a number of noble Lords, and I understand the concerns. The directive contains a number of important provisions about assistance and support for child victims. Again, we are confident that the United Kingdom is compliant with these measures. As noble Lords will be aware, local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that they safeguard and promote the welfare of all children, regardless of their immigration status or nationality. We believe that this responsibility should remain with the local authorities, which co-ordinate the arrangements for each child to ensure that they are safe and to promote their welfare. Local authorities obviously have comprehensive systems in place to do this. Adding a “guardian” to this framework risks creating yet another level of complexity to these arrangements, which are already strong and ensure the best interests of the child. Even worse, it risks creating confusion for children if plans for their care are not effectively co-ordinated.

There was also considerable concern, quite rightly, about the number of children who are going missing from local authority care. As I stressed, local authorities have an overall statutory duty to safeguard children and that includes responsibility for preventing and mitigating the risk of them going missing from care. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, raised concerns about the numbers of such children going missing. There are good examples of measures that have been put in place by various local authorities to reduce the number of children going missing, such as the installation of CCTV, the greater use of interpreters and ensuring that children are aware of the situation and the risks. A number of local authorities have ensured that there are placements for potentially trafficked children and that they are protected by maintaining confidentiality about the location of the placement and by limiting the direct contact of the young people with adults who have not been formally assessed or vetted. Recently published guidance on the safeguarding of trafficked children highlights these models and seeks to encourage agencies to adopt similar approaches.

In addition, we will continue to work with CEOP and I was very grateful for all the references that noble Lords have made to the work of that agency, which I visited only last week. It takes the national lead for missing children and combating that issue and it has issued the guidance to promote the spread of good practice. Our forthcoming strategy on missing children and adults will also help to provide a framework for local areas to put in place a more effective arrangement to tackle this issue.

Bearing in mind the time, and the fact that I shall write to noble Lords on some more detailed comments that have been made, I hope that they will understand if I cannot answer, at this stage, all the questions that have been put. We believe that it is intolerable that in 2011 human trafficking still plagues this country and the whole world and that we should not rest until we have it under control. I am very grateful to my noble friend for providing us with the opportunity to debate these matters. I look forward to the support of the House as we continue to strengthen United Kingdom’s response to human trafficking.