Modern Slavery Bill

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful additional point on why the Government’s approach is flawed.

My overriding concern is that, despite the Government’s stated commitment to tackling modern slavery, the Bill is still far too dependent on the victims rather than the state to identify the perpetrators of trafficking and slavery. That is not only morally wrong; unfortunately for the Government, it is also illegally flawed. The European Court of Human Rights has held that the state has a positive obligation to protect victims of trafficking and to investigate potential trafficking situations. Lords amendment 72 brings us much closer to meeting that positive obligation. It provides victims with a clear safety net: the ability to leave an exploitative situation without hesitation.

We all need to play our part to combat the horrific crime of modern slavery, but the agencies of government are legally obliged to take a proactive role in identifying potential cases. It seems that in the absence of an effective prevention strategy to meet that aim, the Government are depending on victims to pick up the slack when they really need proactive labour inspection and enforcement. That is a point I will make further, if I have the opportunity, in relation to Government amendment 77.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (UKIP)]

I am grateful for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker. I entered the Chamber during the speech by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who made some compelling points. I intended only to listen to the debate before making up my mind between the Government’s and the Opposition’s approach, and I am pleased that the differences seem to have narrowed. There appears, at least in the Home Secretary’s amendment, to be something of a spirit of compromise. I am surprised by the temperature of the debate on both sides of the House, because Parliament is acting in one of its better ways.

This debate has risen up the agenda very strongly in recent years. I do not think the Government should be criticised for putting a Bill through Parliament only just before Dissolution and I do not think the Opposition should be criticised for not having acted during 13 years in government. Politicians and society as a whole have turned their minds to this issue only recently. As far as I am concerned, I do not think I turned my mind to it before 2011. I apologise if I have got this wrong but it may have been a report from MigrationWatch UK that drew my attention to the sharply rising numbers of people—I think they were referred to at that time as being in the domestic servants category—coming into the country. The report asked whether that was right and appropriate.

The Government’s changes to the visa in 2012 were, overall, positive and they reduced the time that somebody could be an overseas domestic servant. It strikes me as understandable, if not necessarily right, that a family from overseas visiting this country for a relatively short period and who have a long relationship with the people who have been working in their household might wish to bring those people with them. They may be very well-off and used to having a level of service from particular individuals. What struck me as much less reasonable was for that relationship to persist for a very long time: very wealthy families coming to this country and permanently continuing to have staff who had previously worked for them, or bringing in new staff from their country of residence and using only those staff rather than employing people domestically.

In terms of immigration control, I fear there is something about the overseas domestic servant category that is liable to exploitation. I wonder whether there are shades of grey or whether there is a lack of clarity on where precisely the line is drawn when one moves from service to servitude and then to slavery. To try to change the law to mitigate, reduce and minimise—it would be wonderful if we could eliminate it—that exploitation is the right thing for this House to do. Moving from people being employed in that way for very long periods to a maximum of six months strikes me as definitely the right thing to do.

What the Government have done is really positive. Whether it is right to see this more from the criminal justice perspective, or whether we should simply allow people to switch to different employers in a more liberal way, as the House of Lords wants, is a difficult question. However, I believe there is a sincerity of approach on both sides of the House and that we have moved on hugely.

I assume the Lords amendment will be defeated in a Division and that the Government’s alternative amendment will pass. I hope that if the Lords come back again, it may be to find perhaps even further compromise, or to take some of the positives of the Lords approach and to consider some of the criticisms that the Opposition have made of the Home Secretary’s amendment. However, I agree that what is absolutely key is to pass the Bill.

We still need to focus on the diplomatic domestic service category, where people can work still for up to five years although I think it used to be six. I think that the prospect of prison is likely to have a persuasive effect on an abusive employer who employs someone in a private household for six months, although it will be a challenge to communicate to both overseas domestic workers and the families employing them that that consequence is a real one. In the diplomatic sector, however, given diplomatic immunity, I fear that that incentive might not be so great because the period that people are in service is much longer. I worry that, given the Government’s understandable concern for our relationships with foreign countries, we might not come close to eradicating servitude, if not modern slavery, in those categories. We must continue to focus on that area not just in legislation but through our foreign relations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

Unlike the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), having been here throughout this debate, having sat through the Public Bill Committee and having been present for all the Bill’s other stages in the House, I am not surprised at the heat generated by Lords amendment 72 and the Government amendment to it.

I will not rehearse the issues raised in Committee. Instead, I will concentrate on some of the issues heard this afternoon. It has been argued that because this is such an important and welcome Bill, it is untoward to argue over amendments. It is an abuse of the procedural requirements of this place for Government Members to suggest that anybody pressing a point in relation to these amendments threatens the Bill at large or would be happy to see it frustrated or set aside. The attempt, here in this Chamber, where we talk about being mature legislators, to create the impression of an abuse of process and a scaring process should give us pause for thought about what is at play in these amendments.

The Government amendment provides that if an overseas domestic worker wants to exit a position of slavery, they can do so only if they participate in the national referral mechanism. They will have to engage in a process they might not know about or understand, and they might have their own particular fears, misgivings or hang-ups. They will have been subject to intimidation, having effectively been employed as chattels of their employer, courtesy of the kafala-style system that operates for domestic visa workers. The idea is that these victims—people on the margins of the margin—should have confidence that their position will be transformed by the national referral mechanism. I wish that were the case.

The Minister has emphasised that the Government amendment aims to ensure that when a domestic worker leaves a situation of slavery, that can help to ensure prosecution. The national policing lead and the director of crime command for the National Crime Agency have been quoted as saying that the Lords amendment would be at fault because it would undermine the capacity of the authorities to secure more prosecutions. When I asked the Minister about the experience of the national referral mechanism in terms of the number of conclusive decisions made compared with the number of successful prosecutions, she did not answer, although the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) subsequently gave us an indication. In quoting the figure from the legal advice to Anti-Slavery International, she gave the example of Kalayaan, which supports victims, and mentioned that 29 conclusive decisions had been made. However, there is only on record one conviction of an overseas domestic worker employer, so the link between the national referral mechanism and successful prosecutions is not strong. For that reason, the argument used by Government Members—that supporting the Lords amendment would undermine or wash away any prospect of prosecution—is entirely false.

I understand that the Minister will probably argue that that has been the case with the national referral mechanism historically—we all accept that it has had its flaws—but the reform of the mechanism that is to be implemented follows last autumn’s publication of a review, and of course that review will be subject to pilots that will have to be implemented and then evaluated, which will probably take a year or more. Separately, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and others, we know that the Government have instituted a review of tied visas by James Ewins. If the Government are conducting a review of tied visas, and if we have acknowledged that there are issues with the national referral mechanism—issues that I hope will be addressed by the reforms that are to take place but which are as yet untested and unproved—surely it would be reasonable for the Government to accept the Lords amendment and then revisit the issues around tied visas, first, following the review and evaluations of the changes to the national referral mechanism, and secondly, after the review by James Ewins has reported. At least victims on overseas domestic worker visas would then have the autonomous right to escape their victimhood.

It is interesting that in one of her interventions today the Minister said that the reason the Government amendment rested so much on the victim co-operating with the national referral mechanism was to give victims control. Surely victims would have control if they could vacate their exploitative employment autonomously and then have the right to seek alternative employment. If the Government are worried that the abusive employer might then escape scrutiny and employ somebody else, that brings us back to the hole in the bucket, dear Liza, of this whole question: the tied visa system is a licence to employers to exploit and abuse employees. If the Government’s best argument against the Lords amendment is the likelihood of employers using the device of the tied visa system simply to repeat the same abuse, the Government should be questioning their position more fundamentally, rather than relying on their amendment.

[Mark Reckless]

Is the hon. Gentleman not concerned that subsection (b) of the Lords amendment, which would allow workers in these categories to extend for up to 12 months each time, might create a sub-category of foreign domestic servant, separate from the domestic labour market, and that would make exploitation more likely?

[Mark Durkan]

As any evidence emerges, we will have to consider what it suggests about this sector of employment in general and individual employers in particular. This goes back to some of the arguments the Government have used in support of their own amendment and against the Lords amendment. If a domestic worker were to change their employer under the visa entitlement the Lords amendment would give them, it would be known to an authority, and the authority should be duly asking questions. It would then be for somebody else—perhaps not the victim—to notify the national referral mechanism and for issues to take place there.

In separate interventions today, the Minister seemed to make different arguments. On the one hand, the Government amendment was defended on the grounds that it would lead to more prosecutions of abusive employers by ensuring that victims co-operated with the national referral mechanism and therefore that their victimhood would translate into active cases. That is what we were being told by the policing lead and the National Crime Agency. Then, in another intervention, the Minister made the point that the national referral mechanism was not of itself hidebound in achieving prosecutions and not necessarily police or prosecution-driven in any way. We cannot have both arguments being used in contradictory ways here.

I ask the Government to listen to their own arguments and to think about some of the things they are relying on in respect of their own amendments. They should think again about pressing those amendments; the chances are that they will have to revise them in the light of subsequent reviews and evaluations. The sensible thing to do—and most in keeping with the spirit claimed for this Bill, as being “world-leading” legislation—would be to accept the Lords amendments and, if necessary, qualify them by revisiting the issues in the light of subsequent reviews.