Resettlement of Vulnerable Syrian Refugees

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman rightly highlights the scale and impact of what is happening in that region, and that is why we remain in close contact with the Government of Jordan and are providing assistance. He is right to say that those who have been traumatised may be appropriate for the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, and we are working with the UNHCR to ensure that those who come to the UK have their needs identified. We work closely with them so that once they arrive they can receive direct medical or other assistance from the word go. That is why the scheme is—rightly, I think—being undertaken in that way, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting his direct experience.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister said earlier that the withdrawal of the wider search and rescue scheme in the Mediterranean had not led to more people drowning. He cannot possibly know that, however, because the new Operation Triton only operates close to the Italian coast. Given evidence that people are still dying in their hundreds and thousands in the Mediterranean, and that the Italian navy is putting about one third of its boats at the service of the new rescue operation, should the UK and the rest of the EU be thinking about a wider search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean? How many people is the UK assisting Italy with in Operation Triton?

[James Brokenshire]

The decision taken on Mare Nostrum was endorsed by all EU member states because it was felt that the programme was leading to more people putting themselves at risk, and—sadly—more people dying. More than 3,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean already this year compared with 700 in the previous year. The UK is not part of Frontex, which is the EU body that leads the current work on a pan-EU basis, but we are nevertheless providing two debriefers and a nationality expert to support the operation, and considering what other resources we can provide. On search and rescue, if a vessel is in distress, another vessel in the vicinity will clearly seek to come to its aid. Indeed, as I have already highlighted, a Royal Navy commanded vessel did precisely that in recent weeks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am pleased to say that the National Crime Agency has enhanced the ability of police in this country to deal with these particularly abhorrent crimes. By bringing the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre under the NCA, it is now able to have access to the tasking powers of all police forces and to the national cyber crime unit and other functions within the NCA. The NCA is very clear that it is looking at all the evidence brought before it. I am pleased that it has already made the number of arrests that the hon. Gentleman has referred to and, as I have said, it will look at the evidence brought before it and take action appropriately.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

3. When she next plans to meet the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to discuss student immigration.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary meets colleagues regularly for discussions on a range of issues, including on how we can continue to attract the brightest and the best to the UK while bearing down on abuse.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The Government’s arbitrary immigration target has clearly been shown to be both unworkable and misguided. A particularly misguided aspect is the decision to include international students in the target. There is now consensus—from the Labour party, political parties across the House and even Government Members, as well as from universities, trade unions and business—that the target should not include international students. Will the Home Secretary and the Minister join that consensus?

[James Brokenshire]

The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is no, we will not, because students continue to use public services. If we look at the Office for National Statistics data for the 12 months to September 2013, we see that 50,000 non-EU students left, whereas 124,000 entered the country, which suggests that students have an impact on net migration.

I say to the hon. Gentleman and the sector generally that there is no cap on the number of legitimate students who can come to study within the UK. Indeed, we have seen significant increases from a number of countries, including China, Brazil and Malaysia. The UK very much remains open to business for students.

Refugees and Migrants (Search and Rescue Operation)

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on why the Government have decided not to support search and rescue operations for refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

The United Kingdom has a long and proud tradition of providing sanctuary to those who genuinely need it. We work closely with our European neighbours to provide assistance to those fleeing fear or persecution and to deter those whose criminal actions stand in the way of providing effective help.

The scenes we have witnessed in the Mediterranean in recent months, with people risking their lives to reach Europe, are hugely distressing. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that over 3,000 people have already died attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year, compared with some 700 deaths in the whole of last year. When people are risking life and limb—not just their own, but those of their loved ones too—it is clear that they are caught in a desperate situation. Nobody underestimates the sincerity of their plight. It demands an equally sincere approach from the governments of European nations, and that is what it has been getting.

Since Italy launched its Mare Nostrum operation in October 2013, there has been an unprecedented increase in illegal immigration across the Mediterranean and a fourfold increase in the deaths of those making that perilous journey. The operation has been drawn closer and closer to the Libyan shore, as traffickers have taken advantage of the situation by placing more vulnerable people in unseaworthy boats on the basis that they will be rescued and taken to Italy. However, many are not rescued, which is why we believe that the operation is having the unintended consequence of placing more lives at risk, and why EU member states have unanimously agreed that the operation should be promptly phased out.

It is, of course, vital that this phasing out is well managed and well publicised, to mitigate the risk of further deaths. It is vital that we continue to take action to provide real help to those who genuinely need it.

We have made clear our view that the only sustainable answer to the current situation in the Mediterranean is to enhance operational co-operation within the EU; work with the countries of origin and transit to tackle the causes of illegal immigration and the organised gangs that facilitate it; and enhance support for protection in north and east Africa for those in need.

We have agreed to a request from Frontex—the EU’s border management agency—to deploy a debriefing expert in support of the new Frontex Operation Triton off the southern Italian coast. This operation is not designed to replace Mare Nostrum, but will instead patrol closer to EU borders. We stand ready to consider any further request for UK support for the new Frontex operation.

The UK is also among those member states offering substantial numbers of resettlement places for refugees from outside the EU—more than 4,000 between 2008 and 2013—working closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In close partnership with other member states, we are developing a strong programme of work to tackle the causes of migration from the horn of Africa, including through investment in regional protection programmes.

It is not in the interests of anyone—most especially those who are genuinely fleeing persecution—if European countries have an uncontrolled and ineffective approach to immigration and asylum. It is not in the interests of anyone if the criminal gangs that exploit the fear and suffering of vulnerable people—endangering human lives for cold, hard cash—are allowed to continue their despicable work unimpeded. It is not in the interests of anyone if we fail to adapt to a situation which encourages more and more people to make that dangerous journey across the seas. That is why member states across the EU have unanimously agreed to act—to defend our borders, crack down on crime and protect those who so desperately need our protection.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The Minister knows that many of those seeking to make the journey are fleeing war, poverty and starvation in places such as Syria and Libya. They know already that the risks of dying en route are high. They are exploited by people traffickers, as the Minister has accepted, and if they are picked up by European navies or border control, they know they will not be given free entry to Europe, but are likely to end up in a detention centre in Italy or to be sent back to their country of origin. Surely it is obvious that these refugees and migrants are desperate given that they are still prepared to make these terrible journeys. The idea that search and rescue operations should be discontinued and that people should be left to die in their thousands—presumably in order to discourage others from making the journey—is not just cruel and inhumane, but totally without logic

Is not the right response for Europe as a whole to support a comprehensive search and rescue operation for refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean? Will the Government now reconsider their position and try to persuade other European nations to bring that about? Why do the Government not listen to the refugee agencies when they say that the real answer to the problem is to provide more safe and legal channels for people to access protection?

This policy is shameful. Surely, when we know that hundreds of our fellow human beings face a terrible death and it is in our power to do something about it, it is our moral duty to act. And if we fail to do so, are we not complicit in their deaths?

[James Brokenshire]

I am very proud of this Government’s humanitarian work. The investment we have provided for places such as Syria—we have committed about £700 million to the aid effort that is providing direct assistance to those in need—reflects our response. The hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of search and rescue operations, but I want to highlight the fact that such matters are for individual member states in respect of their territorial waters. It is ultimately for Italy to decide how it conducts its search and rescue operations.

The Frontex operation, which I have outlined, provides surveillance capability and other support at the border. I find it inconceivable—the head of Frontex has said the same—that support would not be provided if a boat were in peril. Obviously, a rescue would be undertaken in those circumstances.

The Government’s view is that, because of the situation in various parts of the region, a regional solution is required. I have already made the point that assistance is required to prevent people from making such perilous journeys. The judgment of the UK Government and other Governments across the EU is that the emergency measures should be stopped at the earliest opportunity. Ultimately, we want to do something that helps, but sadly, in our judgment, the emergency measures are not achieving that end.

UK Visa Applications (Malawi)

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. We are debating in the presence of the Malawian high commissioner to the UK, who is here to observe our proceedings. I am pleased to have been able to secure this debate this afternoon. I am grateful to the Home Office Minister for being here to respond to it. I am aware that he has a full range of responsibilities. Although Malawi is important to me and to many other Members of this House, I am sure that it is not necessarily at the top of his agenda. I took the opportunity earlier to provide him with a list of the points I want to raise, so I hope he will be able to respond to at least some of those points this afternoon.

I declare an interest as the co-chair of the all-party group on Zambia and Malawi. I chair the Malawi part. As I am sure Members are aware, Malawi has strong links, through David Livingstone, with Blantyre in my constituency in Lanarkshire. That is the basis for my interest. It is a long-standing interest also shared by many of my constituents, which is why I am keen to pursue some of the issues this afternoon.

I should also say that I am indebted to the Scotland Malawi Partnership, a non-profit organisation in Scotland that works to ensure that relationships between projects and communities seeking to support Malawi are well linked up. It works as a resource for a range of charities, some large and some very small, that support communities in Malawi. It has provided me with some of the case studies and detailed information that I want to touch on this afternoon.

This is not a new issue. Through the all-party group, I have been involved in meetings with the Minister’s colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development over the past year to express some of these concerns. Each time, they have said that they understand that there are frustrations, acknowledged the issues and said that the matter was really for the Home Office. That is why I am grateful that a Home Office Minister is here. I hope that he will be able to respond to some of these issues.

As the Minister will be aware, there was a short general debate on Malawi last week in the other place. In the debate, Lord McConnell, the former First Minister of Scotland, who was involved in the founding of the Scotland Malawi Partnership, and Lord Steel, the former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament—I visited Malawi with him and others last year—raised the frustrations that had been expressed to them about the way in which the visa system operates for applicants from Malawi. They did so in the context of a much wider debate on Malawi, which focused on the UK’s relationship with Malawi and the strong community relationships with Malawi that exist in many parts of Scotland.

The context is significant for this debate, because the point I want to get across to the Minister is that there is real concern that the relationship is being undermined by the frustration, the difficulty, the bureaucracy and the cumbersome nature of the visa application process, which enables people to visit the UK in support of many charitable, educational and religious projects at a community and local level. The nature of that relationship is important, particularly because with Malawi, due to issues that are rightly of concern to the UK Government, it is not possible for there to be direct grant aid from Government to Government. A lot of the aid and support is channelled through charitable and other projects. That makes the issue even more significant, and the frustration is in danger of undermining the relationship.

As such, there appears to be a contrast between some of the language and ideals that the Government say underpin their international development efforts and those that inform the way in which this aspect of the immigration system works. They talk about inclusion and equality as core principles, yet it is near impossible for anyone other than the wealthiest of the urban elite in countries across Africa to secure visas to visit the UK. These visits are often for legitimate purposes. In many circumstances, all the costs are being met by reputable charitable organisations and groups in the UK. They are more than happy to provide any assurances that are needed that the visitor will be there for those purposes and will be able to return at the end of the visit.

I raised an example at a business statement in the House just two weeks ago. Christian Aid held an event in Parliament to highlight the impact of climate change on some of the poorest countries of the world. Representatives from organisations working with Christian Aid from the Philippines, Bolivia and Malawi were due to be at the event, but the Malawian representative was unable to attend due to problems securing a visa. Sadly, that is not unusual. I have heard examples—I know of some personally—of teachers, charity workers and people working with Churches being unable to fulfil long-standing partnership engagements in communities across the UK, including in Scotland, because of the changes to the application system for visas from Malawi.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I have come along to endorse what he is saying. I have constituents and organisations in my constituency that are involved in the Scotland Malawi Partnership and want their concerns raised in the House. I hope that the Minister can respond to them. As my hon. Friend has set out, it is not just about projects in Malawi and similar projects elsewhere; this issue is of great concern to those involved in that partnership. I hope we can get some results from the Minister this afternoon.

[Tom Greatrex]

My hon. Friend makes a good point on the growing sense of frustration felt by many of those involved in Malawi on the difficulties people have had in securing visas to visit the UK. I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond to some of these more detailed points as we develop them this afternoon.

Modern Slavery Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) highlights the importance of emphasising that this issue affects every constituency in this country and every Member in this House. Although on the one hand I think he is right to point out that people are sometimes not aware of it, at the same time the awareness of this issue around the country is why there was such strong lobbying from churches, NGOs, trade unions and individual members of the public as the Bill was prepared and as it reached Second Reading. I join those who have paid tribute to the many people inside and outside the House who have campaigned on the issue for so long.

Like many Members who have spoken, I want to see a number of major improvements to the Bill. In saying that, I do not want to detract from the fact that it has been introduced by the Government, as I recognise the major step that it represents.

Given my constituency, my initial concern is how the Bill will impact on Scotland and my constituency. As it stands, it does not apply to Scotland. It extends only to England and Wales because in Scotland the matters it covers fall under the responsibility and competence of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. A human trafficking Bill is expected to go through the Scottish Parliament shortly. It was brought forward initially as a private Member’s Bill by my Labour colleague, Jenny Marra, the Member of the Scottish Parliament for North East Scotland, and it has been adopted by the Scottish Government as a Government Bill, which they expect to introduce in the current Session.

I am glad that Bills are being promoted in both England and Wales and in Scotland, but it is clear that in this area, more than most, there needs to be seamless working between Governments and law enforcement agencies across England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I understand from the Joint Committee report that the Scottish Government recognise that aspects of this may be covered by a devolved competence, but that they should be taken forward at UK level. I would welcome some comments from the Minister, if she has time, about how she envisages the legislation in England and Wales and in Scotland, and the responsibilities of the various law enforcement agencies, working together when the Bills, we hope, become law.

Those areas that I, like many other Members, identify as gaps in the Bill are ones which relate to UK-wide competence, not to devolved competence—issues relating to the supply chain in particular and the requirement for companies to report on such things in their annual reports, and the proposal to extend the remit of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another area that might be worth revisiting as the Bill goes through relates to women who are referred to the national referral mechanism in connection with prostitution? Would it not be good if the Government looked at the current law to see whether it has an effect on trafficking?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That would be a valuable point to examine, although it is not one of the UK-wide matters to which I was referring. I am sure my hon. Friend makes an important point.

I do not wish to detract from the generally excellent report from the Joint Committee, but I see that although it recommends that the Bill should cover the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the provisions in the Companies Act 2006, it does not say that the territorial extent of the Bill should be extended beyond England and Wales. I do not suggest that a Committee with such prestigious members could have committed an oversight or an omission, but that proposition needs to be considered and it would have to be dealt with at UK level.

Issues relating to the supply chain have been identified by many of our constituents. They are rightly concerned that goods, products and services that we can purchase in the UK are produced under conditions which, by any definition, would count as slavery or something close to that. We should not miss the opportunity of addressing that while the Bill is going through the House.

I take the point that Members have made about not wanting to delay the Bill so that it risks not becoming law, but the proposals from the Joint Committee in relation to the GLA and to changes to the Companies Act are very limited in scope. I cannot imagine that they would do anything other than widen the appeal of the Bill, and I do not see how they would risk its passage in this House or the other place.

We have had examples in Scotland of exploitation and forced labour—the kind of work that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority is designed to address—in areas of activity not yet covered by the GLA. From a Scottish perspective, I support this change. That cannot be taken forward at Scottish level only, because of the way the devolution settlement is structured. That is a good reason why it should be dealt with at UK level, and the Bill is the place to do it.

Similarly, the proposal to amend the Bill so as to amend the Companies Act to require companies to include modern slavery in their annual strategic reports is sensible and proportionate, and the specific explanations suggested by the Joint Committee are ones that I support. Comments from many Members suggest that there is wide support for such a measure. This again is UK legislation under the Companies Act and it seems to be a missed opportunity at this time, when there might not be an opportunity under a future Government for us to have legislation on this matter for some time to come. It is an opportunity that should not be thrown away and a reform that should not be delayed. I suspect that one of the concerns in some quarters about including requirements on companies is that UK companies will be put at a disadvantage—a concern that our companies might lose out to other companies that are not being put under the microscope in the same way. However, as many right hon. and hon. Members have said, the good company that wants to be a world leader does not want to benefit from modern slavery or forced labour. We should not have fears in that respect. In any event, as the Joint Committee has highlighted, other countries have passed similar legislation. For example, legislation has been passed in California. I hope that, just as we were world leaders when we passed the Climate Change Act 2008 nearly seven years ago, this legislation will be followed in other countries. We will be contributing to a worldwide movement by setting an early example. Although I accept that this will be anathema to certain Eurosceptics in the House, it may well be that our legislation encourages European countries to adopt similar European-wide measures for their companies.

Modern slavery is a complex issue. It requires international action. We cannot solve this problem in the UK alone, but we should not reject the chance to take the action that we can when we can do so. No one in the House would want to congratulate ourselves on taking action to tackle forced labour and slavery at home while turning a blind eye to more extensive examples elsewhere in the world if we had a chance to do something about it. The amendments that I and colleagues have referred to today show how we can take action to require our companies to act in a more socially responsible manner and encourage better employment practices to oppose forced labour and slavery worldwide, and in so doing encourage other countries and other companies to do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

It has been an enlightening afternoon—I have sat through most of the debate. I am sorry for those Members who did not get manage to get slipped away before I was called to speak; as the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) said, I can be pretty emotional and repetitive on this issue, but I make no apology for that.

I want to compliment the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), who became engaged in this issue when she stepped down as a Government Minister. Having taken an interest in the supply chains, she bolstered my determination to convince the Government that we need to change the law to bring companies into line with at least the situation that exists in California, if not something better, if we are really to make an impact and increase the scope of the anti-slavery movement that started more than 200 years ago, because slavery does not happen only in the UK. If we deal only with the UK, we might prosecute a few people and stop a few hundred people being exploited, but we will not deal with slavery, and this is called the Modern Slavery Bill.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) has returned to the Chamber, because I thought that her speech was a tour de force that articulated the need for this Government really to deal with slavery. We should look at the documents. We had the draft Modern Slavery Bill and then the excellent report from the Joint Committee. As many Members have said, we could not really put a cigarette paper between the opinions and motivations of its Members, who were from parties on both sides of the Lords and the Commons. We then had the Government’s response to that report, and at the same time the Bill was published. I have to say that parts of the Government’s response to some key issues were so thin and poor that they had to be exposed, as I think they were in the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough.

On the question of whether there should be a specific crime of trafficking children, which I will come to later, I think that the strength lies with the Joint Committee, not with the Bill before us.

I want to talk first about the thanks we owe people. Every member of the Joint Committee requires thanks, because, in the same way as happens when people go on a foreign trip, we bonded over the common purpose of trying to improve the draft Bill. It is amazing how Committee members from all parties and different belief systems came together, but I am sorry that the Government have not taken into account the report in its entirety, so we have a lot to talk about.

Soroptimists UK invited me to speak at their conference. That is not an organisation that would usually take such a forward position on an issue of such massive import. I thank in particular Miss Billie Wealleans, the organiser of the Scotland north branch. The conference carried the motion that it would campaign this year to get the supply chains amendment inserted in the Bill. The conference came to the same conclusion as my hon. Friend the Member for Slough did in her ten-minute rule Bill, and as I did in my private Member’s Bill, which, sadly, was talked out.

The Human Trafficking Foundation and Anthony Steen have been mentioned. The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), entered Parliament in 2010, but he missed the best part, because it was the energy of the generation before 2010 that brought us to where we are. Many compliments have been paid to people since the publication of the Centre for Social Justice report, “It Happens Here”, but that was way down the line—it was after my private Member’s Bill had been debated and talked out on the Floor of the House. It was the first time that a Conservative-led organisation took the issue seriously. It is led by someone who was a bête noire of mine when I was in local government in Scotland. To see it take such a forward position was heartening to me, but it was perhaps just a little late to save my Bill. ECPAT UK has done so much good work over 20 years, particularly, as the hon. Gentleman has said, on the question of children.

The Catholic bishops conference was fully behind my supply chains Bill. Unfortunately, that was not noted by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), whom I believe is devout in that particular faith. The conference backed the Bill, but he volunteered—the Whips arranged it—to talk my Bill out on the Floor of the House. I pointed out to him that it was also supported by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, particularly its then moderator, Albert Bogle. He told me that he was not afraid of the Church of Scotland, but that he was a little afraid of the fact that the Catholic bishops conference supported my Bill.

There is a wide range of support, including from individual bishops of the Church of England, including the bishop who sat on the Joint Committee, and Christian Action Research Education. They all hearten me because I am a humanist and an atheist. I am not just a humanist without a church; I am someone who does not believe in the whole nonsense of totem poles and pie in the sky when you die. I think you have to earn it every day, here.

Focus on Labour Exploitation has been mentioned, because labour exploitation is at the heart of the issue—the use, as the Home Secretary has said, of human beings as commodities whereby people can get rich by putting them in a position where they have no rights and where they are available for exploitation at the cheapest cost.

Other organisations include the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UNICEF UK and the POPPY Project, which, as has been said, has been doing such stalwart work in rescuing trafficked women—mainly, I have to say, from our immigration service, which tends to put them in Yarl’s Wood, treat them like criminals and try to send them back home, where the facts show that they are re-exploited and re-trafficked again and again. We would not be sending them back to safety even if we put £3,000 in their back pocket, as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has suggested we should do.

Before the Centre for Social Justice published its report, “It Happens Here”, Andrew Wallis of Unseen UK was a stalwart supporter of my supply chains Bill, and I think he also supported the ten-minute rule Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough.

Anti-Slavery International has been doing such a stalwart job, but with its hands tied behind its back, because we lack the proper legislation. Aidan McQuade, who leads it, still thinks that the supply chains amendment we want, which is stronger even than the one in the Joint Committee report, is not good enough. He wants to use an equivalent of the Bribery Act 2010 to make it a criminal offence for the chief executive of a company to be found using exploited labour in its supply chain, which would be pretty tough legislation.

Walk Free, which was mentioned earlier, was set up by Andrew Forrest, who owns a company called Fortescue and lives in Perth, Australia. He gave evidence to the Joint Committee by satellite, but I have spoken with him in London. He set up an organisation when he found that his own company was using trafficked children in, I think, Nepal. He wanted 1 million members; then it went up to 5 million members; and Walk Free now has 7 million members worldwide, who are in his network and are taking up cases.

David Arkless of ArkLight, the former world president of Manpower—the most audited company in the US, as well as the most ethical company in the US—has to be thanked for the amount of work that he has done to spread the word, including by offering training to any company that wishes to do things to stop exploitation.

My question is: when we are going up a mountain—we are going up a mountain, because the Bill will be hard but, I hope, effective—why would we stop three quarters of the way up? Why would the Home Secretary want to stop and plant her flag somewhere on the mountain, instead of going to the top? Only at the top of that climb will we take on the work done 200 years ago and take it forward.

Many things have been said, and it has been hinted that the Home Secretary is involved in a contest against some dark force in No. 10 Downing street that is trying to stop the Government moving all the way forward on the Bill, particularly on questions such as supply chains. I once asked the Prime Minister, when he appeared to be reluctant to sign up even to the directive on human trafficking, where he had lost his moral compass. I suggest that both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, if they are looking for a moral compass on this issue, should follow the direction of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough and her all-party group, which has been working for a long time. The all-party group was founded by Anthony Steen, and apart from giving him his knighthood, which he has long deserved, they should take a lesson from it and go the whole way.

The first thing that troubles me is the definition. The six-step definition in the report has been dismissed as somehow too complicated. We took evidence from Lord Judge, who used to be one of the most senior judges in the land. His advice was: “If you want to do something and have a court do something, say what it is you want them to do; don’t muddle it up with complicated phrases.” However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Slough has pointed out, the Bill has a lot of complicated phrases—drawn from other Bills into one Bill—which do not simplify it at all, but probably complicate it for people.

For the simple definition in the Bill, we recommended that it cover the slavery of children and others, and that child exploitation offences should simply say:

“It is an offence to exploit a child”,

and:

“It is an offence for one person to obtain a benefit through the use of a child for the purpose of exploitation.”

People recognise such a definition. We took evidence on the very simplest way to do it from barristers who have prosecuted and defended, and it seems to us that the Government have missed an opportunity to lay out a law that would be recognised and used properly. Those offences were part of what we called a hierarchy, all six parts of which built bit by bit into a clear definition of what we are trying to stop.

Another point is about the protection of victims, including when a victim is turned into a criminal. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) may not realise it, but we need to change the attitude of police forces and of the Border Force.

We met a young woman when we visited POPPY, who said: “I was trafficked, I was brought here in a boat. I had never been outside Africa before. I ended up in Liverpool. I was put into prostitution and moved around the country. I ran away and I went to the police because I always had this idea that British justice would free me if I could reach the police station. They threw me in a cell. They treated me like a criminal. They said I’d done all this just to get into the country and they put me into Yarl’s Wood.” It was only when POPPY met that young woman that her life of exploitation could be pieced together and she could be rescued. She is now in college in London.

The police should not treat people who are trafficked as criminals, and that also applies to Scotland. It is one of those coincidences, but I had a cannabis factory in the house next door until about nine months ago. By a police blunder, they got away, although I had warned the police six weeks before they fled. If the person in the house—the farmer—had been caught, they would now be in Polmont young offenders institution. There are three young people in that institution at the moment who were trafficked from Vietnam and used as farmers. They were caught, but the big people who brought them here—the people who make the money—did not get caught.

Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister in Scotland, said to me when he launched the review—Baroness Kennedy sat on the inquiry—that the then UK Border Agency, now the Border Force, was the problem and that it criminalised people. I have to say to Kenny MacAskill that the Scottish police, for which he is responsible, criminalised those young men who are in Polmont for being farmers in cannabis factories. We need to change the police attitude and the Border Force’s attitude. That would affect Scotland massively, because it applies to the whole UK. The Border Force is not just for England, but for everyone.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Surely my hon. Friend’s point emphasises my point that there needs to be effective co-operation and liaison between enforcement agencies throughout the UK, no matter that separate legislation will be introduced for Scotland. That is precisely why we need to work together, and I hope that the Minister will speak about that in her response.

[Michael Connarty]

I do not in any way try to diminish my hon. Friend’s point, which he made very well. When I was outside Dungavel, which is basically Yarl’s Wood in Scotland, campaigning to have people released, I was told that it does not hold people for a long time. However, it is a little piece of English territory in Scotland because it is effectively run by the Home Office, not by any institution in Scotland. The point is that if we change the police attitude to the victims in England through the Bill, we will change it in all the other jurisdictions.

I have a plea, which I will not read out in full, from Graham O’Neill from the Scottish Refugee Council, who helped draft the Scottish Bill for Jenny Marra, our friend and Member of the Scottish Parliament who introduced the measure in Scotland. He said that,

“the biggest priority for Jenny and I is to secure at least a statutory right to assistance for survivors of modern slavery.”

They want that to be in our Bill, which would then be copied by the Scottish measure and would change the lives of victims universally.

ECPAT has written at length about the victims in its submission on the Bill. I will quote from it because it is a distillation of many years of work and advice to us:

“ECPAT UK’s work with trafficked children over the past decade has seen us campaign tirelessly for a system of legal guardianship in order to protect the best interests of children and uphold their rights. The Modern Slavery Bill has made provision for ‘Child Trafficking Advocates’, which represents a move in the right direction, but falls far short of a system of independent, legal guardianship that can adequately support and protect children and is in line with best practice across Europe and is recommended by international bodies.”

Guardianship is part of the directive that we signed up to—it is clear in the EU directive, but we have not implemented it correctly. ECPAT should be listened to on that. Independence is important.

The hon. Member for Salisbury spoke about foster care. It is not necessarily about foster care, but the fact that most of the children who are trafficked have language problems and, as people who have worked in this field for a long time said, feel closer to the trafficker than to the authorities. We must find a system that gives people someone who looks after them and someone they feel confident in, so that they do not wish to go to someone else who will re-traffic or re-exploit them.

Another issue is the independence of the commissioner. The Home Secretary assured me that only matters of endangering or exposing an individual, interfering with a possible criminal prosecution or questions of public security will be edited out by her. As I have long said, however, the commissioner must be entirely independent. The Bill must say that the Home Secretary shall provide those resources, shall give the commissioner powers, shall set them up independently, and that the commissioner shall be given rules to work to rather than having to go through the Home Secretary every time they want to publish anything, as they will live by those rules.

I have to disagree with the right hon. Member for Meriden, having been in the Netherlands and Finland a number of times. We have asked the ombudsperson in the Netherlands several times whether they are controlled by any Member of Parliament or Minister. They say, “No. I write what I see and I publish what I need to, and the Government have to take it into account, even if I am criticising the Government.” Interestingly, in the Netherlands, the ombudsperson was given the job of looking after both trafficking and child sexual exploitation, because there is so much confidence in that person’s independence. The Dutch are on to their second ombudsperson, and that situation remains. Until we change that provision, we have a problem.

The third and last thing I want to talk about—people expect me to talk about it—is the transparency of UK supply chains, because it is missing from the Bill. I do not know whether there is a problem at No. 10 Downing street, but someone is giving the Prime Minister such bad advice. He is running into his last year before the Government go to the polls. People will look at the Bill and say, “What made the Prime Minister be dragged kicking and screaming by Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s to put something in the Bill that wasn’t previously there?” We know—I take it that people have good intelligence on this—that the Home Secretary wants to do something in the Bill about supply chains. Everybody knows. Eighty-two per cent. of people surveyed have said that they want a clause dealing with the transparency of UK supply chains in the Bill.

What Government would not go with the rub of the green in that situation? Only a Government who have some misguided idea that any kind of statutory regulation will somehow offend the public or the business community would do so. I cannot find that. I could find it when I tried to get a private Member’s Bill through, but it is much more difficult to convince people of an idea when it has not been given the blessing of Government time. When I spoke to the Ethical Trading Initiative, it said, “We want to see this.” The logic has been put forward by so many Members. Why should bad companies get away with it? Why should companies that want to rip off the public and sell them goods they know are tainted by slavery get away with it? Good companies do not want that, so we should level the playing field. I think Churchill wanted a minimum wage for that reason. He said bad companies undermine good companies, and the worst of companies undermine everyone.

It is quite clear that a narrative and a logic are leading the business community in that direction, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and others have said, and as I have said all along. There is a kitemark on offer to companies that says, “We have the right kind of auditing. We are reporting on that auditing and we are getting rid of any errors we find.” When I was doing business economics at university, I was told that to find a problem was to find the jewel, because it would help people to improve their company. That is what the supply chains proposal is about.

Andrew Wallis of Unseen UK was dealing with this issue long before the Centre for Social Justice ever decided that it should take it up. I commend the CSJ for taking it up—it has taken it up later than Anthony Steen, later than the Human Trafficking Foundation and later than Unseen UK, but it has taken it up. Why will the Government not take it up? I do not understand what is going on.

I am going to say a word about domestic servants. There is absolutely no doubt that the Government have done something immoral in abolishing the domestic servant visa, as it was, when we find that 62% of domestic servants who come with people from other countries do not get paid a wage. Somebody talked about contracts. How can there be a contract with somebody who brings servants in as baggage with their family to look after their children and cook their food, and treats them so appallingly? The Government have abolished their right to leave their employer. All they can do is go home or stay with that employer. They are usually so tied in to families that they do not have a world outside. The little stipend they receive gets sent back to their families, who live in abject poverty in other countries.

Why will the Government not realise that what they have done has soiled their hands, as there are people enslaved in this country, under our very noses, with their complicity? Please do something about that. At least give us some sense that the Government have not completely lost their moral marbles.

Passport Applications

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I certainly wish the hon. Gentleman’s constituent all the best, and I am glad that he got his passport in time. I also hope that he did not face undue stress over any delays. Other hon. Members have constituents who have been attending international sporting competitions and have had to drive halfway across the country to Durham the night before they were due to fly out to make sure that they had their passport on time.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

About 23 minutes ago, yet another constituent contacted me with the problem of a delayed passport—that makes almost 30 cases I have had since this episode started. That constituent may benefit from the free upgrading service announced by the Secretary of State last week, but I had an e-mail this morning from another constituent who has spent a total of £176.50 on upgrading passport applications for herself and her children because their passports were delayed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such people should get a refund?

[Yvette Cooper]

I do agree with my hon. Friend, and that is one of the purposes of the motion today. We hope that the Government will give way on this and do more to help those who through no fault of their own have had to pay out in order to meet deadlines.

Passport Office (Delays)

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robinson]

I will give way in a moment. If I turn round to give my right hon. Friend any further indication, I will be called to order by Madam Deputy Speaker.

A family of five in my constituency, the Vernons, and mother Amy, saved up and the whole family chipped in for their first ever holiday as a family together. Because one passport out of the five was not available—if I am correct, it was the first issue of a child’s passport—they drove 200 miles to Durham, leaving at 4 o’clock in the morning. They got nothing but hassle when they got there and further delay. They got the passport, but after driving all the way back to Coventry to fly out from a local airport, they missed their flight by 15 minutes. If that does not ring a bell with the Minister about the state of chaos in the Passport Office, I do not know what will.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister said earlier that measures have been taken to deal with this problem. I raised the issue in the previous debate, went out of the Chamber, and within two minutes I received an e-mail about yet another passport problem. We get them all the time. The Government are not taking action or making a difference yet.

[Mr Robinson]

I am willing to take even more interventions as I think they are nearly as effective as this couple of photographs—I will not display them, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will draw Members’ attention to them. They show interview rooms being used not for interview purposes but to store unprocessed files of passport applications in the course of being processed. They say that a good picture tells 1,000 words, so I refer the Minister to those photographs, which I am sure will soon be in circulation.

Home Affairs

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention gives me an opportunity to tell the House that it is not true that the number of staff at the Passport Office has gone down; the number has gone up. In the first few months of this year, we saw a significant increase in the number of applications for passports, both renewals and new passports, and I am pleased to say that even given the unprecedented levels of applications, we are still meeting the service standards of 97% of straightforward applications being returned within three weeks, and 99% being returned within four weeks. We are not complacent. We continue to consider whether further contingency measures need to be put in place, should the significant increase in applications that we saw in the first few months of this year continue. I recognise the importance of this issue for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and for mine.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Surely the Home Secretary will know from her own constituency experience that there has been a big increase in such problems in the last few weeks. Has she not seen that in her constituency?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my main comments, I want to say a few words about the crisis in the Passport Office, about which some hon. Friends have already spoken. I was disappointed that at the start of the debate the Home Secretary did not seem to take this issue very seriously. It has attracted considerable media attention in the past few days, but I—and, I suspect, practically every other MP—have been grappling with it for weeks, as we have dealt with more and more people whose holidays and work have faced disruption and cancellation because their passport applications have been delayed and who are making inquiries but are unable to find out what has been going on, with the whole process causing great stress and worry. I could refer to many examples, but I will not go into them in detail given the pressures of time.

I have had more problems with the Passport Office over the past three weeks, as a Member of Parliament, than in the previous 13 years. Bluntly, the Government need to take action to sort this out, or lots of holidays will be ruined and business opportunities lost. This mess should have been sorted out months ago. If management and Ministers had been on top of their jobs, they should have realised there was a problem long ago and taken the necessary action. Let me be clear: this is not the fault of the front-line staff in the Passport Office, who have clearly been overwhelmed by a situation not of their making. They have been very courteous and helpful when my staff have made inquiries. The source of the problem is clearly at the very top, with, I suspect, cutbacks being a major contributory factor. I suspect that it is also the result of a Secretary of State whose focus, to put it kindly, has been directed elsewhere. I hope that the Minister will give some indication of taking this more seriously and ensuring that action is taken to deal with the problem and the backlog.

The main thrust of my comments is on the wider issue of immigration policy. I welcome the clear commitment given by my party leader and my Front Benchers to reject anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote policies that deal with the real issues of migration. Many people have concerns about immigration; I hear them frequently in my constituency. Some of those concerns can be well-founded, and they must be addressed. This debate should be based on facts, as many Members have said. The fact is that the many people who are immigrants, or descended from immigrants, make, with only few exceptions, a positive and beneficial contribution to our society and our community. They make a direct contribution through the taxes that they pay. They often provide key workers in sectors of the public service, such as the health service, and have proved vital to many private sector businesses as well. They have made, and still make, important contributions to our culture and our sporting life, to the academic world and research, and to much else besides—even, indeed, to our political life in this Chamber and beyond. That is not surprising, because, reflecting our history, our country has always been a country of migrants, whether from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean or many other parts of the world. That is the nature of our society and our country, and it is a source of strength, not weakness.

Inevitably, the arrival in any part of this country—in any country of the world—of large numbers of incomers over a relatively short period, whether migrants from other countries or people moving from elsewhere in the same country, will have an effect on society and is likely to put pressures on social infrastructure and the employment market. The way to respond to those pressures and concerns is not to ramp up anti-immigrant rhetoric—or to set unworkable targets, as this Government have tried to do time and again—but to provide a real solution to real concerns and a positive response where possible. That can be done by recognising the need to improve social infrastructure and taking the necessary steps to put it in place, while challenging those myths and rumours that are not well-founded. It is also important, as my Front-Bench colleagues have emphasised today and elsewhere, to stop the exploitation of workers—UK citizens and those from elsewhere—which lies at the heart of many of the concerns raised by constituents.

One aspect of immigration policy—not just in the UK, but worldwide—needs to be considered as part of the backdrop to any debate on the issue. Given that the world population has been doubling over a relatively small number of decades and that many countries are suffering from war and conflict, it is not surprising that people seek to come to countries that are relatively wealthy, stable and secure. The UK is clearly too small to have an open-door policy, which is why it is right to have a firm immigration policy, but it is worth bearing in mind the overall context, because if we do not also do as much as we can to solve some of the underlying reasons that people want to migrate, we will, bluntly, always have pressures on migration, no matter what policies we or any other Government of any other country adopt. That is why we should be working to reduce conflict in the world and why we should seek to do what we can to support international development, to try to reduce the pressures on migration to the wealthier countries, of which we are one.

Perhaps the starkest indication of those pressures is the fact that, perhaps at this moment, somewhere on the southern shore of the Mediterranean a boat is setting off and over the next few days its occupants may well drown and die horribly in those waters. Thousands die each year on that journey, as do others on journeys across the sea to more attractive parts of the world, such as north America and Australia. Over the past 10 to 15 years, 25,000 people are known to have died in the Mediterranean sea when seeking to travel to the shores of Europe. That small number is probably only a proportion of those who have died making that journey, because many more will have died without anyone knowing anything about it, except for their grieving relatives back home.

Of course, people should not seek to cross borders illegally in the Mediterranean or elsewhere, but the fact that so many are in such desperate circumstances that they are prepared to take the risk should demand recognition from us of the forces that lead them to make the journey and of the need to tackle some of the underlying causes of migration. The situation also requires a humanitarian response from us as fellow human beings.

I understand that a European Union institution—probably the Justice and Home Affairs Council—will meet in the next few weeks to discuss the future direction of EU policy on borders and asylum. Amnesty International has made a number of proposals on the approach that the UK Government should take at that meeting, including:

“Safe routes to Europe for refugees from countries like Syria so they are not forced to take dangerous journeys, for instance, through resettlement quotas”.

The Government have made some moves on that, but they should do a lot more. Amnesty International also suggests:

“Increased search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean to identify boats in distress and save lives”,

and

“Human rights at the heart of migration control agreements with neighbouring countries”.

Those seem to be a set of reasonable policies that not only reflect humanitarian concerns, but are practical.

I should like the Minister to tell the House in his closing comments how he and the Government will respond to the calls for a European-wide policy to tackle the crisis in the Mediterranean and off the shores of southern Europe. That tragedy is an issue not just for the countries involved, but one that must also be addressed in our national interest. The fact is that people who take that route to southern Europe may, in due course, also seek to travel to the UK. The situation requires a coherent response across the European Union, and I should like to hear what our Government are doing to make that coherent response possible.

Asylum Seekers (Support)

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of ensuring that proper decisions are taken at the earliest practical opportunity. It is the uncertainty he highlighted that causes some of the challenges that we have to face if people reside in this country for long periods. That is why UK Visas and Immigration is putting additional caseworkers into the asylum area to see whether decisions can be taken more swiftly, and to bring matters up to service standard by March next year to deal with these cases. That is to ensure that there is roughly only two months’ intake outstanding. It is right that we continue to focus on this matter.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

If the level of support was right in 2011, it is hard to believe that, given the increase in basic living standard costs over the past three years, it is still right in 2014. Would it not be sensible to agree an interim increase at this stage, pending the review that, as the Minister said, will take at least some months?

[James Brokenshire]

As I have indicated, the court judgment does not state that the current levels are incorrect. It is important that we reflect carefully on all current matters in conducting the review that we will undertake in the next few months. I certainly would not want to prejudge the outcome of that or our decision about whether we appeal the court judgment.

Immigration Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson]

I shall try to be very brief.

The Home Secretary’s proposal to extend her powers in respect of the removal of British citizenship from a limited and specific group of people must be assessed against the judgment that it is in the national interest or for the public good. I have to say that I have never heard anyone give a single example of Britain’s having benefited from some individual’s loss of British citizenship, and I think that it behoves the Home Office, and possibly the Foreign Office, to find out whether there actually have been any such benefits, because there are certainly disbenefits. Harm is done, or can be done, when someone loses British citizenship, and I do not mean that harm is done to the person who loses his citizenship. I mean that harm is done to other people—to the rest of us.

In my constituency, a young Somali—I do not know whether he is a terrorist or not a terrorist—went to Somalia, got married and had children. He was going to come back to this country, for what purpose I know not, but when he went to Djibouti he was arrested. After his arrest, when he was being handed over to some Americans, he said “You cannot do that: I am a British citizen.” He was then told “You are not any more, because the Home Secretary has taken your citizenship away.” He ended up being kidnapped by the Americans, and is now facing a court in New York. If he has done something that merits his going before a court in New York and he has never previously been to America, he could presumably have been prosecuted here for the same offence.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Under the current proposals, the person whose passport was removed would not necessarily appear in a court anywhere. The proposed measure gives the Secretary of State a very broad power when she considers it conducive to the public good to deprive someone of a passport because his or her conduct is

“seriously prejudicial to the vital interests”

of the United Kingdom. No actual crime is specified anywhere. Everyone has been talking about terrorists or other criminals, but the problem is that the proposed power is so broad.

[Frank Dobson]

I entirely agree. That is why I am doubtful about the capacity to take away people’s British citizenship.

There is a substantial Somali community in my constituency. Needless to say, it includes quite a few testosterone-exuding young men who are very upset about what is happening in Somalia, and who are dubious about what the British Government are or are not doing. However, a much bigger group of young men, and young women, have been working tremendously hard in trying to combat the extremist elements, such as people preaching hatred. Indeed, they have been very successful in doing so, and the Prime Minister himself has commended their effort and commitment. For instance, they have massively improved the performance of Somali young people in schools. One of the things that they were able to say when countering the arguments of the extremists who were trying to lead local young people astray was, “Always remember that you are a British citizen now: you are British, not Somali.”