Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Main Page: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Massey on her timely and moving speech on human trafficking—or modern slavery, as my noble friend Lady Gould described it. I pay tribute to all the other speakers in our debate, which has raised some very important questions for the Government to answer. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, gave us a very clear wake-up call.
The scale of the problem has been the subject of some debate both today and among a number of the relevant organisations. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lady Massey about the difficulty of obtaining statistics which can be deemed to be accurate, but there seems to be a consensus that we could be talking about as many as 12 million adults and children in forced labour, bonded labour and forced prostitution. Behind those statistics is a huge scale of human misery.
In the UK, in 2008-09, the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee found real challenges in estimating the numbers and, in the end, settled for more than 5,000 victims, while the EU estimates that between 100,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked into the EU every year. Those statistics are an interesting contrast with the number of prosecutions in both this country and other countries. In 2007-08, there were 87 prosecutions for trafficking. In 2008-09, there were 114 prosecutions. There were 18 convictions in 2007, 38 in 2008 and 35 in 2009. I understand that a further 35 cases are currently progressing through the criminal justice system. That shows some progress, but there is a long way to go. I echo the congratulations given by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to the Metropolitan Police but, as she suggests, other forces need to learn some of the lessons that the Met has learnt in developing their own programmes.
The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, was very apposite when he reminded us of the tragedy of Victoria Climbié. As I recall, the work that he and others did identified overwhelming failures of professional practice and the failure of professionals in different agencies to communicate and share information. I must say that the announcement by the Government of the abolition of ContactPoint is quite extraordinary in that context. I ask the Minister to explain to me why the Government really consider that necessary when the whole point of that initiative is to ensure that information is shared. Surely the lesson of Victoria Climbié is that had information been shared by those agencies, she might well be alive today.
I am proud of what the previous Government did in relation to this difficult issue. The UK action plan was published in March 2007. The United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre was established. We signed the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. The focus was widened to tackle issues such as forced labour and child trafficking. Since 2003, there have been specific anti-trafficking laws in force in the UK, including the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Asylum and Immigration Act (Treatment of Claimants, etc) 2004. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, the national referral mechanism was set up following implementation of ECPAT in April 2009. The Poppy Project was set up to provide accommodation and support for women who have been trafficked into prostitution and has 54 bed spaces in houses nationally.
I am proud of what was achieved, but I fully accept that there is much more to do. My noble friend Lord Dubs referred to the Home Affairs Select Committee report and its recommendations for making improvements in the services available and the co-ordination that is necessary. I was very taken by what he said about the need to improve preventive measures through increasing public awareness and the need to train a variety of public officers about the indicators of forced labour so that they can identify it and help victims to find help. There is concern that the identification system is geared towards viewing trafficking as an immigration crime, coupling it with facilitation or people smuggling, which are completely different. Those are interesting matters that need to be considered very carefully.
In relation to the UK national referral mechanism, there has been concern about the training of the staff involved and the fact that more emphasis is placed on the immigration status of presumed trafficked persons rather than on the alleged crime against them. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, put some very pertinent questions to the Minister, and I hope that he will be able to respond to them. It is worth making the point that this problem was also referred to by the US State Department in its 2010 report which stated that although the UK fully complies with minimum standards, the Government need to take greater steps to ensure victims are not penalised for unlawful acts. My noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, gave some positive and powerful illustrations of what can go wrong.
We then come to the Government’s policy. Mr Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, said that combating human trafficking is a key priority and that the Government are committed to identifying and protecting victims. I welcome that statement as a broad principle, but there are a number of questions that the Minister needs to answer. I shall raise three: on the directive, support for victims and the resources and effort available for education and prevention, which were raised by my noble friend Lady Gould.
This country played a pivotal role in the development of the trafficking directive. It contains a number of very important provisions. I still do not understand why the Government have decided to opt out. Theresa May told the House of Commons on 6 September that she saw no benefit to the UK because most of the provisions have already been acted upon in the UK. The Home Office said that the directive will make little difference to the way the UK tackles the problem. Surely that misses the point. Apart from the point put by the noble Lord, Lord McColl—that briefing that we have received suggests that that is not entirely accurate because the directive goes further than our existing—it seems to me to be an incredibly crass decision. We played a key role in getting this directive drafted, and we want other countries to implement the proposed directive, so how can we seriously expect those countries to do so if we are not prepared to ratify it? I do not understand the reason that the Government have given. The logic of the analysis by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, was unanswerable. I am sorry to suspect that hostility to Europe led the Government down that path. I hope the Government will reconsider. Perhaps the Minister has some good news for us today. At the least, I hope that he will take up the invitation by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and others to convene a meeting of noble Lords interested in this area.
I shall make two other points. I think that the Minister will not commit himself on resources before the 20th of this month, but I hope that he will seek to protect the services currently available. I also hope that when it comes to prevention and education he will listen very carefully to the comments of my noble friends Lord Dubs and Lady Gould about the need to strengthen preventive programmes now and in the context, as my noble friend said, of the Olympic Games when, as she said, we might expect to see a major increase in trafficking activity. This is a very important debate, and I hope that the Government will be able to respond constructively.