Modern-day Slavery

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to speak on this very important topic and I congratulate hon. Members on securing the debate. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), whom I want to defend, because her opening speech was not party political, as the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) claimed. My hon. Friend’s work over many years, including leading the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and the way in which she has challenged Governments of any colour belie that claim.

The Minister is a good Minister and I do not think he is afraid to be challenged by Opposition or Government Members on this issue. I know that he welcomes challenges to improve legislation and that he genuinely listens and will take on board our points. My hon. Friend’s comments were made in that respect. It is unfair to bring party politics into an issue on which we all agree that something needs to and must be done.

It also gives me great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), who made some typically thoughtful comments. I want to pick up his point about bank accounts, which is a big issue for the Minister and it is at the heart of not only this but other questions. Over the years, I have employed people to look after my children. One young woman was unable to get a bank account. It did not mean the end of her employment—it ended eventually—but she repeatedly could not get one. That is often a convenient excuse, because it means that people can dodge being in the system.

The issue is important in relation to people who are trafficked and become victims, because they are told that they cannot get a bank account, and those trying to hide below the radar. There is a genuine issue about the ability of banks to provide people with basic bank accounts. The number of hoops people now have to go through in providing identification can make it genuinely challenging, and it is sometimes seen as very difficult. In that respect, the Minister may want to challenge the banks, through his ministerial contacts, to address the point made by the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire.

I have had a long interest in modern-day slavery and other issues that I want to raise. I first came across unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the mid-1990s, when I was chair of neighbourhood services on Islington council. Young children would be found wandering up and down Holloway road with no papers and very vague stories about where they had come from, and they ended up being put into the care of social services. Many of them had been trafficked, but identification was very difficult. The borough of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), Hillingdon, was also greatly affected. Two of the hot spots were Hillingdon—perhaps obviously, because of the airport—and Islington.

That demonstrates that trafficking takes many forms. We have heard a lot about the workplace, and I will touch less on that than on other matters. As hon. Members have said, not all victims are locked up: freedoms can be restricted in many ways.

I recently visited Nigeria with the all-party group on Nigeria, which I chair. We went to look at human rights, but we were very shocked to discover some of the issues concerning children’s rights and child trafficking in particular. Nigeria is the main source country for people trafficked into this country, so it is vital that great thought is given to whether a British Bill can help to tackle the issue in the countries of origin. We need to prevent and tackle trafficking at source, not just carry out enforcement, although I agree with other hon. Members that enforcement is also important.

Benin City in Nigeria is the capital of human trafficking. As we have heard, people who have been trafficked become traffickers in turn, and there is a sort of career progression in Benin. The Nigerian authorities are aware of and keen to tackle that real hot spot. The all-party group met those at the national agency dealing with child trafficking, which is working hard to identify, tackle and prosecute people, as well as to prevent trafficking from happening in the first place, but they are few in number and resources are limited, while Nigeria is a huge and populous country.

From a British perspective, there are also deeply ingrained and worrying cultural attitudes, but I know from speaking to many Nigerians in this country and Nigeria that they share such concerns. The domestic servitude of children is widely accepted, and the all-party group was shocked to hear it defended very often when we raised it in talking to people in various circles.

Child traffickers are aided by the poverty, and by profits that can be made along the line. Those profits, as someone is trafficked through the hands of perhaps 12 traffickers, are immense. Until we look at the supply chain involving trafficked people and work out how to tackle each of its stages, we will not solve the source problem of people being brought into the UK, although enforcement should continue.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is speaking with a good, deep understanding of the problem. Along with Hillingdon and her constituency, Solihull has also been a dispersal area for asylum-seeking children. Her point about it being very hard for certain local authorities with many trafficked children to have the necessary expertise at local government level to reach into foreign, and sometimes very chaotic, countries of origin makes the case for a multi-agency, multi-departmental approach, particularly to assist local authorities that are severely affected.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. For the record, I should make it clear that I was talking about my time in Islington in the mid-1990s, but there are issues in Hackney in my constituency, and I will touch on them.

In Nigeria, the all-party group saw some good practice. I would particularly highlight the yellow card for children’s rights that Lagos provides to as many agencies as possible to tell people what children’s rights are, which the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) described. There is strong legislation in Nigeria to support children’s rights, but the desire to tackle such problems is not as widespread as it could be and they are often excused. We heard of terrible situations in which very young girls are raped and the rapist then buys off the family for less than the price of a parking ticket in the UK because of the shame. The girl will find it very hard to get married if she has the stain of rape on her and it brings shame on the family. Sometimes that is just a criminal matter, but sometimes it is to do with trafficking.

I commend the report of the all-party group to the Minister. It is worth reading because it highlights the challenges in Nigeria and the need to highlight human rights across that country. That is a wider issue than the subject of this debate, but the report makes interesting points about trafficking and its impact on children.

I want to make a couple of points to the Minister while he is forming the modern slavery Bill. I reiterate what colleagues have said about domestic worker visas. Many families in Nigeria see domestic servitude as the norm. People excuse it and say, “The girl from the village is getting educated. What’s the problem?” However, the girl from the village does not have the freedom to move. Sometimes, families bring such individuals to the UK. Domestic worker visas did provide some protection. The Minister will know that no immigration system is perfect and that people will exploit bits around the edges whatever system is in place. However, things have gone too far the other way and the Minister needs to ensure that domestic workers are supported. If he does so, it might stem the flow of such workers into the country and act as a preventive measure.

The Minister for Immigration mentioned in a recent sitting of the Immigration Public Bill Committee that Operation Paladin is still in operation. I would be keen to hear more details from the Minister, if not in this debate then at another time, on how it is working across different airports. The operation was introduced in Gatwick. Trained professionals watched the people who were coming into the airport to see whether the children were related to them. They could recognise whether a child was trafficked and intervene. That does not prevent trafficking, but it does stop it at the border. Given the announcement about further cuts to the Home Office budget, I would be interested to hear whether there is a threat to Operation Paladin or whether there are plans to extend it. At the very least, it should be continued. As the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire said, if we are serious about a human trafficking Bill, we should be enforcing the law as it stands and keeping the mechanisms that work.

Identifying the victims is obviously a big issue. I have had experience of that in my constituency. The national referral mechanism is important, but it should not be an alternative to well briefed local agencies, whether they be social services or schools. There is an opportunity, perhaps not in legislation but certainly in practice, to ensure that schools can recognise and understand trafficked children. Churches and community groups can also have a role. Often, vicars in my constituency meet trafficked people and are able to have a more honest conversation with them than others can. I have met trafficked people, but it has usually been long after they have been trafficked.

Schools in Hackney praise the forced marriage unit for its swift action. If they report a suspected forced marriage, the team is down there straight away. Usually that is the day before the school holidays or very close to them. We need something similar to happen if there is a suspicion of trafficking while the child is in a safe place. Schools and other agencies need to have somewhere they can go. That goes back to what the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire and the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) said about the need for a national approach.

We know that the most trafficked group of people is children. In 2012, 500 children were identified, but we know that the number of trafficked children is likely to be higher. That is one reason why having a commissioner would be a good idea. It would help us to get proper data, which would allow us to see what progress is being made and to highlight the scale of the problem for the public. In reality, a lot of trafficked people live below the radar for many years. That makes it very difficult to track down the perpetrators.

There is a delicate balance to be struck, because if anyone who said that they had been trafficked 10 years ago got to stay in the country, it would provide traffickers with an incentive. I am aware that the Minister has to tread that line. We must not incentivise people to use children as a way to get different treatment in the immigration system. It is important to acknowledge that issue, but that does not mean that we should not take robust action or support trafficked children as much as we can.

My big concern is people who are trafficked and appear many years later. I regularly meet young people in my surgery. Usually they appear at the point when they might want to go to university and therefore need status in this country. On questioning they are vague about what happened—an aunt or friend of the family brought them in, but they have lost touch with that adult. That child is not at fault, but the people who trafficked them have gone—although sometimes we cannot be sure—and they have great difficulty getting through the system.

Sometimes people are not enslaved, as such, although it is difficult to be sure. I spoke to one woman at my surgery, and we eventually got to a point in the conversation where I said, “You have two children, who is the father?”—I was asking about the father’s citizenship. I said, “Did you want to sleep with the father of the children?” and she shrugged and said, “He gave me somewhere to stay.” In some ways she did not consider herself a victim because she had been downtrodden to the point where she needed a roof over her head, and in return the man got what he wanted. There are real challenges in identifying victims who have been under the radar for so long that there is no likely prospect of finding their trafficker. That is a two-pronged issue for the Minister: tackling the perpetrators, but also supporting the victims.

The national reporting mechanism includes a reflection period of 45 days to decide what to do with a potential victim of trafficking, but that does not capture people who have some freedoms but no paperwork or the ability to do what they want, even if they can come and go out of the house and are not locked away. The system also does not cover the needs of those who will be slow to tell their story, often for reasons of fear—I will touch on some issues with African abuse in a moment.

Victims must be eligible for legal aid. I know that is not the Minister’s Department, but we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have criticised much of the Government’s attitude to legal aid, but I recognise that that is where we are. For the purposes of this debate, however, I say to the Minister that I—and Members across the House, I am sure—will be behind him if we can ensure that people have the right advice once they have been identified as a potential victim of trafficking. That is important because it helps the system work better. In the long term it will save the Home Office money, as well as ensuring that that person has the best support possible to get their case across and be relocated home, if appropriate, or supported in the UK.

At the beginning of my remarks I said that prevention was the most important thing. The Home Office is promising to work with source countries, but we need resources for that to happen. We hear that often a law passed in this Parliament helps Nigerians to tackle corruption and so on, and similarly, if we get this issue right we may help tackle it in Nigeria. I think we need a review of our national reporting mechanism.

I said I would touch on issues concerning child abuse in Africa, although adults are trafficked too. Traffickers often use witchcraft and juju as a means of control. Juju priests are held in high esteem and command a great deal of respect which, when combined with a fear of witchcraft, means that many people are very vulnerable. People are afraid of what will happen to them if they declare they have been trafficked. That fear is hard to understand from the perspective of many Members in the Chamber today, but it is very real. People are much controlled and will not escape even if given the chance—it is as much of a ball and chain as a physical one would be. Trafficking victims in the UK often display signs that are identifiable with juju and witchcraft, and the torso of Adam, found floating in the Thames, first highlighted that very spectacularly to the UK.

The key issue is identifying victims, as too often that is a barrier. I hope that an anti-slavery commissioner can be genuinely empowered with investigation arms and good links to the National Crime Agency and other police as appropriate, and I will be watching the Government on that issue. The modern slavery unit should not be a passing fad in the Home Office, but something real that will engage people. I commend my colleagues for initiating this debate, and look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.