Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I compliment the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on his excellent analysis of the issues, particularly of prostitution, and of the scale of the problems we face in dealing with what is a very well organised, multinational business in the criminal fraternity. Sometimes that business has technologies way beyond those available to even the forces of Government.

No community is untouched by the problem. Small, peripheral communities on the edges of cities are very attractive to people who are trafficking and setting up brothels. It is amazing where brothels pop up, and how ill-equipped the police are to distinguish between communal living by immigrant workers and the very common phenomenon of people being used for sexual exploitation—people who go into the cities in the evenings to ply their trade and come back to live in houses of multiple occupation.

The debate is about not just prostitution but all types of human trafficking, and I will make my speech in that context. The question for me, and for the Minister, is: are the Government equipped to carry out the responsibilities that they are about to take on by opting into the human trafficking directive and signing up to the directive on sexual exploitation and abuse of children? There are very serious concerns about that. In a debate in the House on 9 May, the Minister said:

“We are confident that the UK is compliant with those measures.”—[Official Report, 9 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 977.]

He was talking particularly about measures to do with trafficked children, and I want to challenge him on that statement. I do not believe that the UK, using local authorities under the present arrangements, is equipped to deal with the problem of the trafficking of children, many of whom are trafficked for other reasons but many of whom, sadly, are trafficked for sexual exploitation of various kinds.

I refer Members to the article in The Sunday Times of 3 April 2011 about a woman who was multiple-trafficked—three or four times—in and out of the UK and back to her home country. She was treated as a criminal and not as a victim, and that also happens with children. On Sunday 15 May 2011, The Observer highlighted something that we have been aware of in the all-party group on human trafficking: the collapse of the Home Office structure to focus on human trafficking. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the specialist police force, which has been absorbed—some say swamped—due to the changes that the Home Office is making.

The all-party group had a meeting last week, during which we were supposed to be addressed by the director who was setting up the response from the Home Office and the UK Border Agency, but we received an apology saying that he had been sacked seven weeks previously as part of the cuts in the Home Office. So the person who is organising the team has gone, and the people who are supposed to be in it have gone. Where are the Government travelling? They are travelling in one direction, because of political pressure, into the EU directives, but in the other direction they seem to be stripping away the very facilities we require, and that troubles me.

ECPAT UK is very keen on having formal guardianship that is not just a local authority’s social work department being given charge of young people and putting them into what Barnardo’s referred to, when it spoke to the all-party group two or three weeks ago, as “just bed and breakfasts”. The young people are not supervised, and many of them run away and are picked up and trafficked into some other environment.

There is a huge ring in the Chinese community. Respectable Chinese businessmen that we meet in our business community meetings often use people who have been trafficked from mainland China, and do not pay them. One man, who came to see me after a speech, had been trafficked out of mainland China 11 and a half years previously. He lives in communal housing. He has been moved all over the UK and now lives in a house in Armadale in my constituency—now that I have said “Armadale”, he will probably be whisked away somewhere else. He does not receive wages; he is told that he is still paying back the cost of his trafficking. There are thousands like him: every time one of my local restaurants is raided, trafficked people are found. The industry is massive, and we are not equipped to deal with it with the facilities that we have.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling argument for the Government looking seriously at the issue of a formal guardianship programme for children.

Some of the statistics have worried me. I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware of the 2007 ECPAT UK report that found that of 80 children trafficked over an 18-month period 56% had gone missing from the north-east, the north-west and the west midlands. That shows the scale of the problem, and although the report is from 2007 I do not believe that things have improved much since. A 2009 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre—CEOP—report identified 325 potential victims, 23% of whom have gone missing without trace. It is unacceptable to carry on with that situation.

[Michael Connarty]

If we had the facilities and the teams, those statistics would pop up in any region in the UK. Voluntary organisations that are in touch with such people, but are not formally responsible for them, can give a large number of worrying figures.

ECPAT UK points out that children from China, Vietnam and Nigeria are consistently ranked highest in CEOP national referral mechanism statistics, but there have been no trafficking convictions of people who traffic child victims from any of those countries, and there are no specialist child trafficking police units left. More trafficked children have been convicted by the courts for cannabis-related and other offences than have child traffickers for trafficking, as the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said earlier. CEOP, the only Government agency to produce reports on child trafficking, has disbanded its child trafficking unit, and the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre has never published any reports on child trafficking. The Government say that they are going to go in and match the best in the EU, if not the world, but they are ill-equipped to do so.

I wish to refer in more detail to something I have mentioned a few times in debates: the report of Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People. Despite being a commissioner in Scotland, the commissioner is part of the UK structure. I hope that the Minister has read the April 2011 report, because it has recommendations for the UK Government. It expresses deep concerns about having multiple responsibilities in the UK Border Agency, and states that with guardianship there is conflict regarding the responsibilities of local authorities.

The report recommends that the UK Government should have a rapporteur and go and look at other European countries that have such people to look at Governments’ performance and oversee whether they are just all talk and no action. It also recommends a guardianship scheme, and clearly refers to the overarching responsibility that we have because we signed up to the Council of Europe convention on sexual abuse and exploitation of children. We have, however, not ratified that convention, and can therefore avoid doing anything. We have put a signature on paper, but have not followed it up with resources.

I hope that many of the report’s recommendations will be considered, including that for an independent rapporteur on trafficking. The report also suggests that the Government should consider the values of the guardianship scheme being run as a pilot by the Scottish Refugee Council and the Aberlour Child Care Trust and seek a guardianship that satisfies ECPAT’s expectations without necessarily being as burdensome as the Government think it will be.

Apart from words on paper, will the Minister give us some examples of why the Government believe that they are capable of dealing with child trafficking and some indication that we can train police forces to see it not as an extra but as fundamental to their duties? They must see trafficked children as victims—I mean children up to the age of 18, not just children of four or five, or as young as Baby P—and treat them as victims, which means looking after them properly.

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[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. This is not an issue that tends to gain huge headlines or create partisan politics, and nor should it. This is, therefore, an opportunity for Ministers and Governments simply to seek to do the right thing by some very vulnerable people.

Let me move on rapidly to address all the individual points that have been made by my hon. Friend and others. I reassure him that the work that was done by the UK Human Trafficking Centre will continue unaffected. The UKHTC plays an important role in our overall efforts to combat trafficking, and the Government are committed to ensuring its continued success. When it became part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, much work was done to ensure that the UKHTC retained its unique role, character and identity. That includes its focus on victim care and its competent authority role in identifying victims as part of the national referral mechanism. Merging the UKHTC into the national crime agency will not affect its important work or change its focus in any way. Specifically, as part of the NCA, the UKHTC will benefit from being able to draw on the resources and intelligence of the wider organisation, while retaining its focus.

During the debate, it struck me that two contradictory demands were often made in the same speech: first, that we need to work much better across different parts of the police, between police forces and between the police and different agencies; and, secondly, that specialist units should be set up. There is clearly a tension between those two entirely legitimate demands. I am sure that hon. Members from all parties recognise that.

[Michael Connarty]

The Scottish commissioner identified that dealing with trafficking is seen as additional work within police forces. If specialist organisations are absorbed inside larger police forces, dealing with the matter will clearly become a marginal activity, particularly for those forces that are currently being slashed and are losing 20% of their resources.

[Damian Green]

That is precisely why it needs to become a mainstream activity, which is what the strategy is designed to achieve.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has referred to the national referral mechanism, as have other hon. Members. The NRM is a framework designed to make it easier for agencies—the police, the UK Border Agency, local authorities and non-governmental organisations—involved in a trafficking case to co-operate, to share information about potential victims and to facilitate their access to support. The framework is designed precisely to achieve the kind of coherence that we are seeking.

The expert decision makers—the competent authorities—are based in the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre and the UK Border Agency, and we are committed to ensuring that there are multi-agency working arrangements in both. I recognise that victim identification is an area that can always be improved, and the NRM was set up by the previous Government for that purpose. In the first 21 months of its operation, more than 1,250 potential trafficking cases were referred to the NRM by a range of front-line agencies, and our expert decision makers went on to grant a period of reflection and recovery in 65% of the cases decided. We remain committed to working with partners to ensure that our arrangements for identifying and protecting victims constantly improve.

My hon. Friend recommended having a one-stop shop to gather intelligence and care for victims. I will obviously think about that but, at the moment, the strategy has been to draw on the expertise of anti-trafficking groups to develop a support system that offers victims a more diverse range of services and enables more providers to support victims of this crime. That has been the basis of the approach up to now. The new victim care arrangements, which have been referred to, will mean that the Salvation Army is responsible for the co-ordination and contracting of victim care and will ensure that all identified victims receive support based on their individual needs. Those arrangements continue to be in line with the standards set out in the Council of Europe convention.

It is important to bear in mind that victims must not be compelled to share information with the police in order to access support services. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) has referred to the POPPY project. I reassure her that money has not been taken away. A new contract is being let and we are having a different model. Rather than one provider doing everything, the Salvation Army will act as a gateway to other providers, so that a wider range of expertise is available.

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[Damian Green]

When he reads the record, the right hon. Gentleman will wish to reflect on what he actually said about the Salvation Army.

The separation between sharing information with the police and access to services is important in ensuring that victims can reflect and recover, and to engage with law enforcement if and when they feel safe enough to do so. The strength of our approach to tackling human trafficking lies in its diversity and in having the UKHTC as our repository for collecting data and the NRM to draw together all those who may be involved in a trafficking case to make the right decisions on victim status. However, I recognise the importance of ease of access to the information that is available to victims of trafficking on how to report their experiences, as a number of hon. Members have mentioned. In that regard, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster recommended having a website for all the relevant information. I suggest that, given the situation in which many victims find themselves, access to a website may not be the most useful solution. Victims of forced prostitution might be locked in basements and will not have access to any basic services, let alone the internet.

In response to my hon. Friend’s points about the Metropolitan police’s human trafficking unit, the previous Government decided to discontinue that funding, which was provided on a time-limited basis, because they believed that trafficking work should be mainstreamed into the Metropolitan Police Service budget, as it is core police business. The team’s expertise was therefore not lost and reorganisation ensured that it retained its capability to support victims and mount investigations against trafficking.

I agree with my hon. Friend in congratulating the team that runs Operation Paladin, which acts as a point of expertise and guidance for all UKBA officers and Metropolitan police officers. It is important to note that although Paladin is a Met-UKBA joint operation, advice is not only restricted to the ports in London. Paladin offers an advisory service and routinely offers support to officers outside the London area. A specific point has been made about St Pancras. Of course, all passengers arriving at St Pancras have been cleared for immigration purposes at juxtaposed controls in France and Belgium. If there is any suspicion that a child arriving at St Pancras is at risk, UKBA will refer to the appropriate authorities. Specifically, Operation Paladin’s coverage extends to St Pancras.

[Michael Connarty]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I have many points to respond to that were made in the debate.

The issue of re-trafficking has been discussed. That is precisely why, as a key part of our new strategy, we will be working much more in the source countries—the sending countries. I am sure that we all accept that prevention is better than cure. That has been lacking, and it is something that we will address in the new strategy. Much criticism has been based on the lack of provision of information across agencies, and another key part of the new strategy will be to improve our performance in putting information around the system.

The right hon. Member for Rotherham has mentioned STOP UK, which is indeed one of the organisations that will be part of the Salvation Army’s supply chain. It has satisfied the procurement requirements so far but, obviously, I will take what he has to say seriously. The hon. Member for Slough asked about NRM decisions and support providers. As I have said, support providers advocate for victims in the provision of care and ensure that competent authorities receive the information that they need to make the right decision. Although there is no appeal system for the NRM, the decisions can be judicially reviewed.

Let me move on to child guardians and the national rapporteur. I know that hon. Members found the previous debate useful. We will, of course, be applying to the European Commission to opt into the directive. The directive contains a number of important provisions on the issue of child guardians. Local authorities already have a statutory duty to ensure that they safeguard and promote the welfare of children. So it is not, as some hon. Members have suggested, an additional burden on them. Can local authorities do it better? Absolutely. I have no doubt that some of them can and should do so.