Trafficking in Human Beings

Debate between Margot James and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The Opposition will support any effective border measures that help to protect this country’s borders against illegal immigration and to prevent the victimisation of people through trafficking. We are absolutely on side when it comes to both those things. The targets that existed under previous nationally initiated police operations are, in my view, necessary to make this kind of work, which I welcome, operate effectively.

Another theme in the directive is the importance of looking after victims. I am concerned about the recent decision to replace POPPY as the provider of victim care. I think that the POPPY project was the most exemplary pioneer in its work on victim care. One thing it was prepared to do because of its independence was to challenge decisions on behalf of victims who were not identified as victims by the national referral mechanism. Will the Minister give a guarantee that the present arrangements for providing victim care will include a willingness to act on behalf of those victims who have not been identified by what amounts, frankly, to a bit of a tick-box exercise when it comes to the questionnaires issued by the NRM? Will the new victim care arrangements allow decisions by the NRM to be challenged so that people who have not been designated as victims of trafficking can be properly protected?

[Margot James]

I share the hon. Lady’s admiration for the work of the POPPY project. There is no doubt about the excellence of its organisation. It was, however, in receipt of nearly £1 million for doing its work. Does she accept that it is worth at least trying to allow the new organisation, which will provide care for more victims with the same amount of money—we have heard that the actual amount has been increased, but pro rata I believe it will provide care for more—to get on with its job?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That is what the contract requires of the new organisation. I did not make any criticism of it because I wish it well. It has the job now, although I am sad that POPPY’s talent might be lost as it had powerful experience to bring to bear on the problem. I asked for a specific assurance that the new organisation will be allowed to challenge—and provided with the finance, perhaps retrospectively—in cases where its advisers and support staff believe that a decision by the NRM has been inaccurate. I put that question to the Minister and I am sure he will come back to it in his reply.

I accept that we need value-for-money services. Personally, I thought POPPY provided pretty good value for money for the women victims whom it supported and I hope that the new arrangements will provide a similar quality of support for women, which is gender sensitive and so forth. I know that part of the ambition was to extend it beyond trafficked women to male victims of trafficking—an initiative that I welcome—but I hope we will continue to have the gender sensitivity that is required in the directive and that POPPY so exemplarily displayed.