Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Field]

I agree. I will develop that point, because the interdepartmental ministerial group lacks statutory powers to request information from all relevant Government authorities. I am sure the Minister will not have difficulties in getting such information, but he lacks the statutory authority to do so. That statutory power could be given to the rapporteur.

As a result, the interdepartmental ministerial group relies heavily on information from what is called the national referral mechanism, which is a data-gathering mechanism that can supply only a snapshot of the reality. It cannot give us a moving picture, as mentioned by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, which we would get in these reports if there were somebody the only point of whose existence, as far as paying the mortgage was concerned, was to report on this great evil.

Where can we look for best practice? In the Netherlands, the Dutch rapporteur is chaired by a former judge and in Finland by a former Member of Parliament and a member of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Both have a small team of staff who sit apart from the Government, the police and public authorities and actively work full time—unlike the ministerial group—at all levels and with all groups in the community. In contrast, the ministerial group only managed to gather information from one public agency, the UK Human Trafficking Centre. That is entirely at odds with what happens, as other hon. Members have said, in other European countries. In Portugal, for example, the Portuguese Observatory collects and manages information from a wide range of sources and sets benchmarks that we should follow. If we had greater and more accurate data, it would be easier to set those benchmarks.

A glaring failure of the Government’s report is the lack of accurate and meaningful data. I accept that the statistics in this area will always be difficult to collect, but the report is undermined by statistical inconsistencies. Let me illustrate. In 2010, the police’s Project Acumen found 2,600 female adult victims of trafficking. How is that consistent with the report’s predicted total figure of 2,000 for human trafficking victims in the UK, which is for 2011, just one year on? The figures do not add up, which again suggests that if one Minister in the ministerial group had had time to read the whole report, they might have actually spotted that.

The report offers a good overall view of activities undertaken by the Government, but it reveals little in terms of analysis of the problem or the impact of the work undertaken. The picture is clearly so much more complicated than can be provided in a snapshot. How can people be imprisoned in this way—for example, in mid-Bedfordshire or Gloucestershire—for such periods without anybody coming across it, without anybody noticing, and with nobody saying anything or raising the matter? Goodness, gracious me! What level of human sympathy do we have when that can occur?

More of these examples would come to light if we had a situational analysis and impact assessment of how we can more effectively combat trafficking. For example, the report lists the training that was delivered, but no information is provided about the impact of training on improvements in services, the numbers of victims identified, and so on. Similarly, in a number of places the report mentions different Departments or authorities being responsible for implementing elements of the policy. Where is all this brought together? However, it does not go into detail about how and whether these responsibilities are carried out, how they are assessed and what the concrete outcomes of the work undertaken were. We need to see an evaluation from each of the Departments and authorities of the implementation work that falls within their areas of responsibility, and for them to report to the Minister, and for the Minister to report to the House of Commons.

We need a much better analysis of what is happening within the various sectors where victims are exploited, including explanations of rises in particular nationalities, of geographic distribution and of flows and movement of the problem across the UK over time. Again, it would appear that the problem is static and that, somehow, we are dealing with a group of people who do not change their approach. People may say, “Why should they change their approach? They are doing so well with a single approach now.” But they will change if the Government get serious. Spotting and guessing the movements are crucial if we are going to save people from slavery. By “various sectors”, I mean areas into which victims are trafficked. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough cited companies whose products we use that are produced by slaves, including in legal sectors such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and care and domestic work, and illegal sectors such as the sex industry and drug production.

We are also provided with little detailed analysis of the methods of recruitment. How are people trapped in this way, and stripped and publicly humiliated in the way that we have heard? How can that go on for decades? In other countries, breakdowns of incidence of trafficking by region are available, as well as an overall view of police force activities, which courts have dealt with cases, what the outcomes of those cases were, and what the sentences were.

Why do I raise these questions? The answer is pretty obvious. Our lack of data is a key barrier to a more effective response. Much effort in combating human trafficking, or slavery, has focused more on anecdote and sensationalism than on analysis of the problems. We simply do not know to what extent industry in this country, or sections of industry, are dependent on slaves to be viable or what the profit margins of using slaves are for those firms and sectors of our economy. If we had such information, that would alert us to where slavery is operating in our country.

Human trafficking, which, as the Government acknowledge, is modern day slavery, today functions for the same purpose as slavery throughout history: to maximise profits by minimising or eliminating the cost of labour. But there are several key differences with modern slavery that make it more expansive and more insidious than ever before. Slaves today can be exploited in dozens of industries that are intrinsically woven into the global economy, as opposed to just domestic service and agriculture, as was the case when Wilberforce dealt with the issue. It is much more difficult now to locate where slavery is going on.

Of course, the costs today of acquiring a slave and the time taken to transport him or her from the point of acquisition to the point of exploitation are minuscule, compared with those of old world slavery. Victims of human trafficking—again, I would insist on the word “slaves”—are more accessible, expendable, exploitable and profitable than ever before. That is why this evil is so terrible, huge and growing.

Two centuries ago, the average slave could generate, we are told by the experts, a 15% to 20% annual return on the investment for his or her exploiters. It is of course vulgar to use such terms when describing victims, but it is not unhelpful, sometimes, to look at the economic power and force behind the problem. Today, the return is several hundred per cent. per year—not over the life of the slave, but per slave per year—and more than 900% per year for those who are trapped as slaves in the sex industry. This is perhaps the primary reason why there is such demand among exploiters to acquire more slaves through the practice of slave trading. There are more people in slavery today than in the entire 350-year history of the slave trade: more today than ever before, collectively. A snapshot is set against that collective total. A lack of detailed understanding of how and why slave-like exploitation functions in various sectors of the global economy is a primary barrier to a more effective response.

That brings me to the all-party group on human trafficking, and NGOs. Perhaps we also need to change the name of the all-party group, so that it is clearer and shorter. Since 2006, the activities of the all-party group, both inside and outside Parliament, have resulted not just in a significant raising of awareness about the extent of human trafficking in the UK, but also a number of concrete achievements. It influenced the previous Administration—our Labour Government—to join the 2005 Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking and persuaded the current Administration to sign the EU directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims. Were I Prime Minister, the thought that I might get the hon. Member for Wellingborough out to support me would have made me sign the directive without even reading what it was about. Were it not for the demands in February of the hon. Gentleman, the chairman of our group, no annual report would have been written, nor would his efforts have been debated. That is, however, only a snapshot of a few of the many important achievements of the group.

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

My right hon. Friend makes a bold statement. Is he suggesting that the Government would not have reported or would have hidden their work had it not been for the all-party group and its chairman with his particular influence? That is quite an accusation—that the Government would have hidden things had they not been pressured into the report before us.

[Mr Field]

Of course that is true—my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and Mrs Bone achieved it—but it might be a good point for the Minister to take up. Would the Government have conceded the report without the pressure from my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough?

Despite the achievements of the all-party group, there is no mention of us in the report—an almost childlike response—and nor is recognition given to the Human Trafficking Foundation, which services our group and of which I am proud to be a co-vice-chairman. The foundation is chaired by the former Member for Totnes, Mr Anthony Steen. We have all, properly, mentioned him, and no current or former Member of this House had done more to put human slavery on the agenda than he has. As others have, I pay the warmest possible tribute to him and to his continued interest since he ceased to be a Member.

The report makes no mention of the extensive work of the foundation to bring together non-governmental organisations throughout the country in forums and related working groups, or of the recognition that NGOs deserve, although their work is essential and a prerequisite for disseminating good practice and for following up with action. There was no acknowledgement of the practical contribution of NGOs in identifying trends and helping victims. Britain is particularly fortunate in the number of NGOs working on human trafficking, so it is disappointing that even in the spirit of the big society such recognition is largely bypassed in the report. In some EU countries, Governments recognise that without NGO involvement as equal partners, with equal status, they would neither make progress nor be able to stem the tide of slavery, let alone help the victims to free themselves. We have yet to see evidence of similar Government recognition in the UK.

What should, therefore, be done? Of course, raising awareness among our voters and everyone else is crucial, but the report omits recent good work. It was silent about the Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010, introduced by the then Member for Totnes. In September of this year, the Council of Europe’s group of experts on action against trafficking in human beings—GRETA—published a report analysing the UK’s trafficking strategy. The GRETA report recommended that much more needs to be done to raise awareness about internal trafficking and the risks that British nationals face of being trafficked around the world.

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

Mr Havard, I have been on the rugby field with you, where I think you have given me one or two suicide passes, in your time, but it is a thrill indeed to be here under your chairmanship.

It is important that this debate has been called and that the Government have produced a report. If the abilities of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) are up to persuading Ministers to do things that others cannot persuade them to do, I commend him for that; but I wonder—and he knows this—whether it is a two-way street, and whether things that we should press the Government on are not happening, while they concede small benefits like producing a report.

I wish the Minister well. I hope that his career flourishes for the few years the Conservatives and the coalition are in power, but I hope that he takes on the admonition of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) that, with an issue such as the one we are debating, there should be times when the Minister asks things of his Government that they have not asked him to carry out, in his remit. I do not think that his predecessor did so. It is unfortunate, as he knows, in my view, that the issue is given entirely to a Minister in the Home Office, who also has responsibility for immigration, because it is not an immigration issue. It is not about immigration: it is about justice, victimhood and a business model perpetrated by people around the world and in this country, in which human beings are the products and the things of commerce, regardless of how they have to be dehumanised and degraded. It is in those terms that I always approach the matter.

To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), there is a massive problem of exploitation of people. It is a form of slavery and is sometimes related to trafficking into the country; but I remarked on the fact, at a recent forum, that of the people and groups named as being trafficked the vast majority were people who live in the EU and have the right, under the Single European Act, to come here freely, without anyone having to bring them in secretly; there is no requirement for a visa. They still end up, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough said, by the use of lover-boy tactics or promises of jobs, moving slowly but surely into other degrading forms of work—particularly the sex trade.

I have Human Trafficking Foundation correspondence dated 1 November 2012, about London, where it is stated:

“Officers from the London Regional Intelligence Unit and the Metropolitan Police’s SCD9 (Human Exploitation and Organised Crime) unit collected 43 newspapers from across 32 London boroughs and over 3000 cards from telephone boxes.”

All of those newspapers and cards were advertising sexual services. The letter continues:

“Additionally, 380 premises were identified from police databases, and 268 premises and 44 escort agencies from internet research”—

in London alone.

It went on:

“All the data was analysed to remove duplicates”,

so those are net figures for London alone. The Human Trafficking Foundation has asked for those premises to be publicly exposed—and all the addresses on the cards and in the adverts—and for follow-up, so that those are made public, and people are made aware.

There is something that I find happens when anyone raises the question of human trafficking. For example, a young woman came down here because of a BBC Scotland blog. They were looking for people who were critical of MPs—who regarded them as a waste of time and so on—and they invited a couple to come down and meet their Member of Parliament. One of them came to meet me. She had been well trained by reading The Sun and all the other newspapers that spread the malicious rumours that all we do here is hang about the bars and line our pockets. When I asked her about human trafficking, and told her about the work we do on it, she said, “What’s that to do with me?” I pointed out that in two towns in my constituency—the town she lived in, and another one—brothels had been broken up by the police, and women were found who had been trafficked from the EU and from as far afield as China. They were working in those brothels under constraint. She still did not seem to think it was anything to do with her, which perhaps shows a great divide between such people and a young woman from a middle-class family who does not have such pressures. I tried to convince her that these are not people who volunteer or have no other option; they are entrapped into that life, thinking they are going to do something else. I think she began to see the point.

The Minister has to ask himself whether he is really appointed by the Government to protect the Government—Ministers often feel that is their first task, and that it is how to get up the greasy pole—or to protect those who are trafficked and trapped into what was correctly defined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead as modern-day slavery. Which side is the Minister on, at the end of the day? It might not be the one that gets him up the promotion ladder quickly, but I hope, when he looks at what is available, what has been spoken of, and what has been revealed, particularly by the Human Trafficking Foundation and all the non-governmental organisations working in that field, he will decide that he is on the side of the victims, and not necessarily those who wish to see migration figures go down.

We know that the Government are under great pressure. There is no doubt about that. The economic clouds are very thick above their head and everyone else’s, but when I talk about this issue to people who give their lives to fighting human trafficking, they see something much brighter. I wonder whether the Government’s obsession with the migration element of the public perception of Government is blinding them to the vision that they should have of what this is about. It comes down to the question of who is afraid of an independent rapporteur. When we signed up to the convention of the Council of Europe and—eventually—to the directive against human trafficking, the elements I have described were clearly in it.

The Government basically say that a committee of Ministers—where most do not bother turning up—that met once in nine months is a substitute for a rapporteur. We have met a number of rapporteurs—I have met rapporteurs from Finland and the Netherlands—but there is also the fabulous example of what has happened in Portugal with its observatory, which has had the backing of the Government over 10 years. I met one of the Ministers who was involved in it yesterday on a Council of Europe committee. He was there for another reason, but he remembers the beginning of it, when people said, “You cannot do it. It is impossible. How can you track people?” What they are using is technology for the movement of shipping and other transport, and they are able to map the movement of people for trafficking to different areas for different reasons. People often go into the cities for labour and on to the tourist areas, and others go to those same areas for prostitution, for satisfying the demands of the tourist trade, which often seems to be connected in many areas.

There is a vast array of non-governmental organisations, and the Government report clearly does not reflect that. It relies on the UK Human Trafficking Centre, which is a worthy organisation. I have visited SOCA—I have just finished a second attachment to the police—and I have talked to people in that context as well as through the all-party group on human trafficking. The Human Trafficking Centre is the only organisation the Minister relies on, yet there is a large number of NGOs. For example, at the Human Trafficking Foundation’s forum, which I and the hon. Member for Wellingborough attended, there were over 50 NGOs, all dealing with victims in all their forms—domestic slavery, and exploitation for employment and for sexual favours. Only three or four of those NGOs have responded to the UKHTC’s request for information, because they do not see such formal organisations, attached to Government, as being independent enough. They are looking after and protecting victims—people who have been traumatised—and they fear that people will then be criminalised and sent out of the country.

One of the conclusions of the Human Trafficking Foundation’s report is that the fear of being turned from a victim of trafficking into an illegal immigrant makes many people run away from formal institutions. The Government think they can deal with the matter through a committee of Ministers, which is responsible to Ministers and the Government, who are under pressure for other reasons—we accept that. Because immigration is an emotive subject, political parties, red-tops and broadsheets can use it to make people prejudiced against the policies of a Government. How much better would it be if the people doing this work were independent of Government, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead said, supported by Ministers?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is an excellent vice-chairman of the all-party group, and he is making a powerful point about the rapporteur. As he rightly says, many of these people do not have any immigration problems anyway, because they are EU citizens. However, the great example from the Netherlands to the Government, who have not grasped this point, is that a rapporteur is hugely to a Government’s benefit. The rapporteur is able to prove what the Government are doing independently, and the Netherlands has found it to be so good that it now has two more rapporteurs in different fields.

[Michael Connarty]

That is very true. The hon. Gentleman and I met the rapporteur from the Netherlands at a meeting; interestingly, he had been given the additional responsibility of protection of children from abuse; that relates to another Council of Europe convention—the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. That role has been extended, so that it is much wider. One of the great criticisms of the way in which we deal with human trafficking is that we do not deal well with children. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

I want to quote some other organisations, because when it comes to this subject, I am probably a bit too subjective at times; that can happen when a person decides to immerse themselves in an organisation such as the all-party group, or to work alongside someone like Anthony Steen, who has been doing this work for such a long time. When he was on the European Scrutiny Committee, we would go off with the Committee and stay on extra days, wherever we were, to connect with people who were dealing with the countries of origin and transit. That is why, with support from ECPAT UK—End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes—he has got a project going, called Parliamentarians against Human Trafficking. That is an EU-wide, EU-funded organisation that aims to build these networks in every area. However, it is possible to become somewhat frustrated, and to see things a little bit too emotionally.

The Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking has produced a review of the rapporteur for trafficking. It talks about the Finnish, the Dutch and the observatory in Portugal, which we have been to, and we had discussions there. It also talks about the UK, and what it says is not flattering. It argues that it should follow Finland and the Netherlands in appointing a designated national rapporteur on trafficking in human beings. It discusses the independence of the role from Government, with the ability to call the Government to account. I know that the Minister has a promising career. He has a style that will probably take him far, but he is not yet powerful enough to hold his own Government to account, because that is not what happens in junior Ministers’ careers. If they try to hold their Government to account, they find that they are soon on the Back Benches. It is a very nice place, the Back Benches—I have been here for 20 years—and, in fact, it is probably more effective than toadying up to any Minister. It is the death knell of their career if a junior Minister thinks that he can hold the Government to account, but a rapporteur can do that, which is why we must have one.

The review discusses

“A place where the widest possible information can be gleaned on the numbers considered to be trafficked”.

That is the point that we found in the Netherlands. We are talking about being surrounded by non-governmental organisations that clearly believe in the purposefulness of the rapporteur and their ability to make a difference to the issues to which people in NGOs give their lives, even though they probably do not have a great incentive in terms of money or career. That means people from faith groups, non-faith groups, civic society and elsewhere. It comes down to it being a post

“which clearly defends human rights and acts as an independent monitoring party regardless of party or governmental vicissitudes of attention.”

That is a wonderful idea that we should grasp, and that the Minister should take away from the debate. The report is welcome—no one would doubt that—and it is good that it has been produced, but it shows the inadequacies, rather than the adequacies, of what the Government are doing, and it highlights the problems that we should be dealing with but are not.

I must say a little about domestic slavery, because the report says that one of the rising figures is that for trafficking for domestic slavery or domestic service. Every organisation that I have spoken to outside Parliament has been not just critical but condemnatory of the Government for withdrawing the domestic servants visa, which was brought in after a lot of pressure and discussion, and late in the life of the previous Government, because it was clear that people were being kept as slaves. There were reports of people living on the scraps from the table. They were being fed after the dogs. That was in some of the big, palatial houses in west London, where people from the diplomatic and business communities live.

I have been reading a book put together by Baroness Caroline Cox and Dr John Marks called “This Immoral Trade”. It talks about the 27 million men, women and children in the world who are in slavery. Some in Sudan and Burma are enslaved after a war and are sold on, or traded, to people who willingly hold them and sell them back to their communities. It turns out, when we read the book, that many of those women and men in Burma and Sudan are held in Arab communities. In fact, disturbingly, arguments are made in present-day Islamic law that slavery is all right, is acceptable. That is in sura 16:71 and sura 30:28 of the Koran. Sura 4:3, sura 23:6, sura 33:50-52 and sura 70:30 recognise concubinage, whereby slaves can be held by a master and used as concubines—for sexual favours. The Koran bans the sale of those people for prostitution, but they can be used as concubines. We would think that all these things must be ancient history, because there was also support for slavery in the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, but in fact Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzam has written a religious textbook in the 21st century that is used in Saudi schools that says:

“Slavery is…part of Islam…Slavery is part of jihad”.

The book goes on to say that he argued against the idea that slavery had ever been abolished, and said that those who espoused that view were

“ignorant, not scholars…Whoever says such things is an infidel.”

In the far reaches of the world, slavery is still associated with capture because of war. Clearly, we can do little about that unless we can have a dialogue with people who believe that they can justify slavery. The question of domestic servants—why are people kept in such terrible conditions in the homes of people from those countries who come here as diplomats and business people?—may be too close to that debate for us to talk about comfortably, because saying anything against someone’s beliefs is somehow taken as a form of racism, but it is not. There are human rights that run through everything—that challenge the ethics of any organisation.

The domestic servants visa recognised that. It said that people who were being treated like that should be able to leave a bad master and transfer to another employer. Kalayaan, the organisation that such people could go to, was well known to the police in London. To take that away from people, the Government argue, will expose those who come in as domestic servants and are illegal; it will make them easier to see. It is funny that the hon. Member for Wellingborough agrees with that; I thought that he made a very good point when he said that in Sweden, when people are told that they cannot sell their body for sex, the practice goes underground. If we say to people, “You can’t leave a bad master because you don’t have a visa,” that does not mean that people are not brought in. It does not mean that people are not kept in captivity and treated as domestic slaves. It just means that they have no right to leave a bad master. It is important that the Government examine that. I am surprised that there was not a hue and cry about it among the faith groups—perhaps they did not know that it existed—and among people of ethics and principle. What worries me is that the all-party group did not have a debate and come to a conclusion on that. I therefore feel that we are complicit, as an organisation, in not calling for Members of this Parliament to debate the issue and make their voices heard. I hope that at some time in the future we will.

The treatment of children is criticised by everyone who reads this report, because 67% of children who are found to have been trafficked and are put into care run away. They vanish—no one seems to know where they go—and they end up being re-trafficked, and back among groups that re-abuse or reuse them. There are cases of 14-year-olds who are trafficked, caught thieving, put into care and run away. They are found working as “farmers” in houses that are being used for growing cannabis, and are criminalised for being caught taking part in a cannabis-growing organisation. There is no question that at the age of 14, 12 or even earlier—whenever it started—these people decided to have the life of a criminal.

As has been said, some people get involved in prostitution at a very early age. One of our colleagues came back from India recently. He came along to one of our forum meetings—brought by the chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Wellingborough—and he said that, in India, children were being kidnapped or taken from their parents on the promise of a better life and brought to cities to have sex with men who thought that if they had sex with a virgin, they would have a cure for HIV. The vast majority of those children were of primary school age, and some were under school age—under five years old—when they were kidnapped. There are things going on in the world, but that does not mean that they are not going on in our communities and within the EU.

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend mentions an example of what is happening beyond these shores, which is truly shocking, but is it not also truly shocking that the evidence we have—I think there is even Home Office evidence—is that about half the people involved in prostitution started before they could legally consent to sex? That is how young they were.

[Michael Connarty]

That is shocking. It is an indictment of the society that we live in, at every level. I am married to a former director of education and social services in the city of Glasgow who was also the head of education in Southend-on-Sea in England. That was a Conservative authority, I should say, but the principle there seemed to be better, in that there was an attempt to create a wrap-around service, including health and social services. That was about looking for the signs early on of chaotic families and children who were not in a responsible social environment. The more we do in that way—the more we do by looking, through all the lenses, at society, and at where children are in communities, in schools and in the home—the more we are likely to expose those things that stick out as clearly indicating errors and dangers, and the more we can probably rescue people.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Order. I would like to give the two Front Benchers the opportunity to start winding up the debate fairly soon, so may I ask the hon. Gentleman to start drawing his remarks to a close?

[Michael Connarty]

I am happy to do so, Mr Havard.

The Minister should read the Children’s Society briefing for this debate. It is very much concerned about trafficked children being detained. The issue of victims being turned into the punished exercises the Children’s Society greatly. It states:

“Due to a lack of documentation, trafficked children are often refused support because their age is disputed.”

That is always a favourite. Those children tend to live unsupervised in hostel accommodation, and end up dropping out or running away. Will the Government commit to reviewing the impact of immigration policy on child protection, as recommended in a report by the Select Committee on Education? Many people other than those in the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office are considering the issue.

The quality of decision making is called into question. The number of people who end up in the national referral mechanism is a low percentage of the number of people found to have been trafficked. I recently met people from organisations that work with those who become asylum or illegal immigration cases, and they say that a high percentage of the people who do not make it into the national referral mechanism are not from the EU or Europe more widely; they are African or Asian. The organisations say that there is a tinge of racism in how the national referral mechanism is being used. The Government must consider that seriously. Some 29% of non-British nationals were accepted as victims of trafficking, whereas 88% of UK nationals were. There is something odd about that. Will the Government undertake an urgent review of the quality of decision making within the national referral mechanism?

Finally, the other major recommendation that the Government have ignored is that children should have guardianship. It is important that children are treated as children. There is a report by Tam Baillie, the Children’s Commissioner for Scotland, called “Scotland: A safe place for child traffickers?” The Minister is now considering Baroness Kennedy’s report for Scotland, which is well ahead of anything brought out by this Government. A Justice Minister said recently that he would introduce a law under which crimes can be aggravated by human trafficking, just as they can be aggravated by racism and, in Scotland, by sectarianism—two major flaws. Will the Minister seriously challenge his own Government? He should not be complacent.

This is a report on where we are, and the Human Trafficking Foundation has not written in complimentary terms. It is nice that the report is there, but the very wide flaws are shown. Will the Minister seriously consider raising this question, or, as I asked in the beginning, is he just here to protect the Government?

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[Kate Green]

It is clearly a terrible irony that we are incapable of looking after children and meeting their needs properly. It is of particular concern that when children are identified as children and enter the state care system their needs are so inadequately met. I hope that the Minister will discuss that, because it is a genuine concern for right hon. and hon. Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South discussed those trafficked for sexual exploitation. Some of his points were also highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who has done powerful work in the field. The debate about how best to protect those engaged in sex work through criminal law is a live one, and there are undoubtedly differences of view about criminalisation. It is important that we learn lessons from international experience, including experiences on our own doorstep, in Scotland. Will the Minister tell us whether the UK Government are considering the criminal law on sex work, particularly its application to trafficked sex workers?

The Minister will also be aware of the Home Office-funded national “ugly mugs” programme, which encourages sex workers to share reports of violent perpetrators. I would welcome his assurance this afternoon that the very modest funding for the programme will continue. I endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough on the shockingly low number of prosecutions and the lenient sentences that result when a prosecution and conviction ensue. I invite the Minister to comment on whether victims’ concerns, which make them hesitant even to report their experiences, can be traced back to that. If they feel that the law will treat them as criminals, rather than victims, and they hear about the lenient sentences and low number of prosecutions when stories are told, they will be unlikely to report their own experiences.

We discussed those trafficked into the labour market—both the formal and the grey labour markets. There are examples of good practice, which we have not talked about. Companies signed up, including during the Olympics, to the tourism child protection code of practice and to take action on corporate supply chains as a mechanism for enforcement, which has been touched on. Those steps are welcome, but I hope that the Minister will say what more the Government will do to encourage more businesses to follow suit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk promoted a Bill to legislate along the lines of the Californian approach. Given the Government’s lack of enthusiasm for regulation, I fear that the Minister will be reluctant to adopt such legislation. He must surely accept that, if Government intervention is to be avoided, business needs to take rigorous and more determined action. There is clearly a role for the Government in promoting that.

[Michael Connarty]

My hon. Friend will be glad to know that I received a letter today from McDonald’s—Big Mac—apologising for being part of the trail. It pointed out that it hired Noble Foods, which then hired a company called McNaught’s—a Gangmasters Licensing Authority licence holder. Other people have now been arrested and charged for using basically gangsters to enslave the workers in the chicken factories that Noble Foods got its eggs from.

[Kate Green]

It is welcome that McDonald’s and other high-profile national and international companies are aware of the issue and prepared to take action and be exemplars. I would be interested to hear what steps the Government are taking to work with business to promote more such action.

The institutional framework was also touched on by hon. Members this afternoon. As was pointed out, the UK is required under the EU directive to implement a national rapporteur function, and the interdepartmental ministerial group is the mechanism created to do that. Many speakers highlighted the deficiencies in the model. It is not clear that a Government body can effectively and independently evaluate the Government’s own policies. Such a body will not necessarily be sufficiently proactive and has no statutory ability to require information from Departments.

The national reporting mechanism appears to be of limited effectiveness in identifying the true scale of the problem. The Government’s wish to withdraw from the EU arrest warrant potentially weakens our ability to deal with people trafficked within the EU, those trafficked within the UK and those trafficked through the UK to other EU countries. I invite the Minister to comment on that.

I hope that the Minister will tell us how the Government intend to monitor, guarantee and strengthen the effectiveness of the structures that have been put in place. Trafficking—slavery—is abhorrent and intolerable. We must have the most robust and effective processes in place to stamp it out. I am glad this important debate has taken place this afternoon. With all right hon. and hon. Members, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Absolutely. Let me just deal with that issue. We have made changes to reduce the numbers of overseas domestic workers who are eligible to come here and to protect them, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation. We can have a debate about it, but it is not fair to say that it is spin. The changes include insisting that domestic workers work for an employer for longer. We have ensured that they have to provide more evidence of that relationship, that they have proper written terms and conditions, that they know their rights and that they are given information in their local language, setting out the position when they apply for their visa. We want them to be properly alert to the position in the United Kingdom. Her specific point was about whether we had given them information produced by Stop the Traffik. I am not sure whether that is the particular document we give them, so I will go away and consider that matter. I think it was the “travel safe” resource that she talked about. If that is good information, I will look into supplying it to the workers as well.

[Michael Connarty]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I need to leave at least three minutes for my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough to sum up the debate.