Modern Slavery Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian, but he knows that there were problems with that visa prior to 2012. We need to root out those problems. We need to find a solution, but the way to do that is not to return to the system under which the abuse occurred. The answer is to find out how to stop the abuse in the first place.
Michael Connarty
I have been listening to what the Minister is saying. In the past, under the Labour Government’s visa arrangements, a large number of people reported being abused because they knew that they could leave a bad employer. The Minister boasts that the figure has gone down to 60, but that has happened because people are now trapped with the same employer and can do only one of two things: they can go home, or they can run away. They are not protected under the present visa system, and that is why the number has fallen.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman will also know that we have reviewed the national referral mechanism and that we are ensuring that it is being extended to all victims of slavery, not just to victims of trafficking. An argument that was always put forward about overseas domestic workers was that they could not qualify for the national referral mechanism because they had not been trafficked. We are changing that, with the Bill and the modern slavery strategy, to ensure that support is available to all victims of slavery. I want to make it clear that anyone who is here on an overseas domestic workers visa can come forward, confident in the knowledge that they will get the support they need and that they will not simply be deported, as the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. They will be able to go through the national referral mechanism. At the end of that process, they will be able to work in this country for a minimum of six months to help them to get back on their feet. When we have the evidence from the review, we will be able to determine our final, definitive position on the visa, but I want to make it absolutely clear to anyone who is here on the visa and to any victim of slavery that the Bill, which I want to see become an Act of Parliament, is there to support and protect them.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend sums it up perfectly—I could not sum it up better. The problem we have with a system that just allows somebody to change employer is we are brushing the abuse under the carpet; we are not bringing it out into the light. That flies in the face of what we are trying to do through this Bill, which is find the victim.
Karen Bradley
I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind but I am going to make some progress.
The victims of slavery I have met are incredibly vulnerable people. We have a duty to give them support, look after them, and make sure that they take control of their lives and make the right decisions. I have met too many victims in domestic servitude who were not on visas and who have gone from one abusive employer to another because they were not brought out into the open—we did not find those victims—and we did not give them the support they need.
Suggesting that somebody who has been through the kind of suffering we are talking about could just walk out and find another employer and their life will be okay is disingenuous; it does not reflect the realities of this horrendous crime and the vulnerabilities of these victims. I want to find these victims and give them the specialist support the NRM offers, and I want to make sure they then have control of their own lives to move forward and do the right thing.
Karen Bradley
I said that I was going to make progress, but I will give way to the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman, and then do so.
Karen Bradley
Let me be clear: this is not about coming forward to the police; it is about victims coming forward to a professional first responder who will refer them into the NRM. If someone chooses to give evidence that allows the police to instigate inquiries, they may be eligible for the 12 months and a day of discretionary leave. But what we are saying is, “You don’t need to come to the police. If you are a victim of slavery, you can come forward to a first responder—a professional—and a charity such as Kalayaan can help you by putting you into the NRM. And if at the end of the specialist support you are given a conclusive grounds decision, you will be allowed to stay and work for six months while you get your life back on track.” If the matter was as simple as someone changing employer, we would not have UK or EEA nationals being victims of slavery. It is not that simple to solve; it is a far more complicated problem. We are talking about 15,000 people who are, on average, here for 15 days. How do we make sure we find those victims? That is the challenge we face and that is what I want the review to deal with.
Michael Connarty
The Minister is trying to explain a difficult subject. The difficulty I have is that she seems to be saying that, regardless of how someone leaves an abusive employer, they end up in a white van heading for some place they are put by the NRM.
Michael Connarty
That is what happens to victims now. They are transferred from a caring organisation such as Kalayaan into what people see as a sterile organisation. Unfortunately, at the moment all the evidence shows that when people went to the police under the last Labour Government’s policy—the three-year visa— the police would send them to Kalayaan and it would then find their escape route. It was something people cared about, supported and had confidence in. Sadly, at the moment the official line—the police line, which is contained in the Government’s amendment—is not attractive to people who are in these situations. Whether the Minister likes it or not, escaping from an abusive employer and finding other employment where their employer does not abuse them is the solution for many people I have spoken to—the ones I met outside, when they presented me with flowers. Their solution is not to be put into some organisation where they are in an official system they do not trust.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the shadow Minister for that assurance.
My constituents who have contacted me on this issue want to know that there will be additional evidence of legal employer-employee relationships and a confirmation that employers will be forced to pay the minimum wage. The current rules stop employees changing employer, and vice versa, during the term of their visa. Amendment 72 would permit someone on an overseas domestic worker visa to change employer without having to go to the authorities.
Michael Connarty
Is the hon. Lady aware that under the previous Government, who brought in the three-year visa, people could change their employer, but her Government took that right away? Will she apologise to her constituents for that?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. Let me make the point that his Government had 13 years in which to introduce such legislation. In fact, we have had to wait 200 years for a piece of modern day slavery legislation.
Fiona Mactaggart
Actually, Lords amendment 72 would make exactly the change that the hon. Lady says we need. It would support victims and trust them to take control of their own lives, whereas, frankly, there is a real risk that the Minister’s amendment (a) will infantilise victims. I know from working with victims of abuse that the best way to make them agree to be witnesses and to give them control over their own lives is to support them in taking the lead, not to tell them that as long as they collaborate, they can get this, that or the other.
I welcome the involvement of the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and I am glad to see other people focusing on this issue, but those of us who have focused on it for a long time and who argued that ending the ability to switch visas would produce the kind of kafala system now common in Britain have been proved right. We are very sad to have been proved right, but I am glad that Members from every party, including Conservative Members, have regretted their former decisions and recognised that what the Lords are seeking is a better way to protect such vulnerable victims than the proposal the Minister has tried to sell us. If we trust and protect the victims in such a way, we will significantly reduce the level of slavery in Britain today.
Michael Connarty
The Minister has become much more skilful at arguing her brief than she was at the beginning of the process on the Bill. We forgave her for reading her text line by line in the beginning, but we will not forgive her for what she has done today. She rose to excuse a police-drafted clause with a fixation on criminality and catching bad people. Catching bad people is fine: I totally support it, as I have in the campaign that I have run for a long time and since long before there was engagement by the Minister or her colleague, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who is sitting smiling on the second Bench. The reality, however, is that if we substitute the rights of victims with the overarching demand to catch criminals or bad people, we sometimes sacrifice the victims in that pursuit. Government amendment (a) takes the that line.
If an overseas domestic worker coming forward in relation to an employment situation is not paid, are they a slave? If they are held by somebody who has their passport but does not give it back and does not pay them—perhaps feeds them, and perhaps does not beat them—they are still slaves. Are the police likely to take information from those people to pursue the employer? Probably not. Will those people be able to leave their employer and say, “I want to go somewhere where I will be paid and treated correctly; where I will be treated with respect, not as a slave, but as a worker”? A worker expects to be treated properly. If people are treated badly by their employer who has brought them to this country, it is still slavery as far as I am concerned.
Karen Bradley
I say again that, yes, I want victims to provide information that enables us to catch the perpetrators and increase the number of prosecutions. However, when somebody comes forward and is referred to the national referral mechanism, it does not require the involvement of the police at any point in the process. The UK Human Trafficking Centre and UK Visas and Immigration make those decisions at the moment. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have reviewed the national referral mechanism and will be piloting the use of panels to make those decisions. Those will not be law enforcement bodies. Law enforcement will be involved only if people can provide evidence that will enable us to catch the perpetrator. If somebody goes through the national referral mechanism and gets a conclusive grounds decision, they will be granted a minimum of six months to stay and work in the country for any employer. That does not need to involve the police at any stage in the process.
Michael Connarty
The Minister did not answer the question that I asked. If someone is not paid and their employer holds their passport, are they enslaved? I ask her to clarify that. It seems that she is not willing to speak about that. Of course, that is not likely to lead the police to prosecute the person who kept their passport and kept them in a domestic home in the UK. We might be talking about longer than 15 days. The Minister mentioned people who live with the staff of embassies. She did not elucidate on that point, but that is where some of the worst malpractice has happened.
Amendment (a) states that leave to remain will be granted to an overseas domestic worker
“who has been determined to be a victim of slavery or human trafficking, and…in relation to whom such other requirements are met as may be provided for by the rules.”
It goes on to specify what the rules must provide for. My concern is for the victim. My second concern is to create the conditions in which the victim wants to deal with an abusive employer. It might not be someone who beats them up. It might be somebody who refuses to pay them or who gives them just a small allowance like pocket money that is not adequate to live on, which is what many domestic workers get when they come here. Will we prosecute those employers? I hope we will, because that is a breach of our laws.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is a breach of our employment laws. HMRC is pursuing the employers of overseas domestic workers to ensure that they pay the national minimum wage and observe our employment laws. However, where somebody is the victim of slavery, qualifies under the national referral mechanism for specialist support and gets conclusive grounds, amendment (a) will enable them to work here for six months.
Michael Connarty
Amendment (a) is deficient. Lords amendment 72 is simple and states that people can
“change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom”.
That is the first choice they should be able to make. If a domestic worker who comes here is a victim and is not treated properly, they should be able to move to another employer while their visa is running. That was the basis of what was put forward by the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill. That was the basis of what was proposed in the Public Bill Committee. However, it was not carried. We know about the deficiencies in the Liberal view at that time. I hope that the Liberal Democrats have changed their mind. Today, we can support the simple Lords amendment and carry the spirit of what was recommended by the Joint Committee.
My second point on the protection of victims is about the way in which we encourage people to take up the right to stay. The hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said that nothing had been done in that respect. In 2009, the Labour Government brought in a three-year visa that allowed domestic workers to leave unacceptable or abusive employers, including the kind of employer I have described who does not pay wages or respect people properly as workers. The current Government overturned that and closed that door to people.
It is unlikely that the people I have met through Kalayaan and other organisations who work with these victims will go into the national referral mechanism, because they have an aversion to formal institutions. We know that. Through the Human Trafficking Foundation, we have talked to 60 or 70 non-governmental organisations, all of which have the same problem: the victims do not trust the institutions of the state in this country. Whether we like it or not, the Government’s proposal says that if people are willing to be a witness and help the police to prosecute their former employer, they will get support and be able to stay for up to a year. That is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to allow people to move employer and to create a structure that allows them afterwards to go willingly to those organisations that are willing to give them a bit of muscle if they feel aggrieved enough about the abuse they have suffered.
Most people who have not been paid or have just been paid pocket money are not likely to want to pursue their employer, but they have the same right to move as someone who is willing to go up against an employer who has beaten or stabbed them or treated them abusively. Why should we distinguish between these two sets of people? Legally, they are not being treated as they should be as workers, or are we to distinguish between foreign workers and our workers?
Heather Wheeler
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman genuinely misunderstands what is going on here. He is an experienced Member, but I wonder whether people really understand that what he is saying is that if somebody comes here on this sort of visa, he will give them carte blanche to go and do something else.
Heather Wheeler
That is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. He is going into realms that are not to do with protecting people from modern slavery, which is what the Bill is about.
Michael Connarty
As I am the person who forced the Prime Minister eventually to sign up to the directive on human trafficking, which he had refused to do for several months, during which he wiggled and wriggled, I do not have to apologise to anybody and I do not need it explained to me what the Bill is about. It is a good Bill, but it could be improved immensely. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read Lords amendment 72, but it says that people should be able to
“change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom”.
It is quite clear that it is about people going from domestic work into domestic work. I hope that the House will agree to the amendment.
Finally, I want to question the whole idea of creating this rather tortuous process. It has always been a problem that the Government have seen the Bill as, first and foremost, a criminal Bill to chase people who abuse others through human trafficking and slavery. Many of us hold the view that we should first protect those who are enslaved or abused and then convince them to become witnesses and to help in that secondary programme. If we get the two things back to front, what happens? The victims do not become witnesses and the people who abuse others escape, as they have been escaping. I believe that if we agree to amendment (a), we will have another tortuous process that will become another barrier that makes people stay away from the institutions, because it is not about protecting the victims; it is about the Government’s obsession with catching the bad people.
Emily Thornberry
I remember welcoming the Government’s move to opt into the EU directive on human trafficking in March 2011. I learned this afternoon that that was the result of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). I congratulate him on that.
It seemed to me that the Government were putting themselves in a contradictory position by signing up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The European Court of Justice has said that any country signing up to the directive
“must refrain from taking any measures liable seriously to compromise the result prescribed.”
It seems to me that signing up to a directive is about more than putting our country’s name to a piece of paper; we must sign up to the spirit of it, too. As I have said, the European Court of Justice has said that we must not go backwards.
I read with interest the speech of the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), to City university about the role of UK law as a model for combating human trafficking and slavery, in which he summarised the progress that had been made. I was very concerned that it was entirely contradictory for the Government on the one hand to sign up to the directive and trumpet the work that had been done to combat human trafficking and slavery, yet on the other hand to change the immigration rules to make life much more difficult for domestic workers. That seemed a complete contradiction, so on 30 April 2012 I wrote to the former Attorney-General to point that out. He referred me to the Home Office, which wrote back. I am glad that it has moved on from the position that it adopted on 16 June 2012, when it stated:
“The position is that, if an ODW has been granted a visa to come to the UK to work for their overseas employer while that employer is visiting the UK, the ODW will have leave to remain in the UK in line with that granted to the employer—ie, up to 6 months’ leave (the maximum grant of leave for visitors). If an ODW leaves their employer during the time of the visit to the UK, the ODW will retain whatever time remains of the original leave granted and so will not be in the UK illegally during that time.”
That did not seem terribly generous. Let us suppose an overseas domestic worker came with a visa to stay in the UK for a certain amount of time. If they left their employer because of abuse, they could remain until their visa ran out but then they had to go. The letter continued:
“The ODW will not be entitled to work for another employer, but they will not be in the UK illegally unless or until the leave expires.”
As I said, we have moved on from that, but it seems that alarm bells have been ringing about abused and exploited overseas domestic workers for many years. Many of those who have raised the alarm have spoken today in the House, and many organisations outside have done so. The Government have spent a number of years preparing such a Bill, and I am disappointed and surprised that, to try to get the Bill through the House today, they are putting this matter back for yet another review. Many people with much greater experience in this issue have been assisting the Government as best they can for some time. They have coalesced around this amendment in the House of Lords, and although I listened carefully to the Minister when she explained why the amendment is not satisfactory, I still do not understand. Not to accept the Lords amendment seems to fly in the face of the collective common sense in this place.
Perhaps I can add my ha’pence worth. We have heard a great deal about how important it is for victims to give evidence against their employers in court, and that to encourage them to come forward it is important they understand that their continued presence within the United Kingdom will be dependent on their giving evidence against their employers, or assisting the police to ensure that those employers are prosecuted. I hear and understand that point, but it makes no sense.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have been confused. I thought we were discussing modern slavery, yet I have heard that this is about opening up immigration rules.
Michael Connarty
The Minister is setting up a straw man to knock it down. In the specific case I mentioned, someone is brought to this country and not paid—or given only pocket money, which many of the Kalayaan victims tell me is what happens. They are not physically abused, locked in a cupboard and fed the scraps the dog does not want—they are just not paid. There is a kafala system, in that the domestic visa and passport are held by the employer. Is such a person enslaved or not? I would say yes; does the Minister say no?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman will know that it would depend on the individual circumstances. It is clear, however, that in the situation he describes, British laws have been broken, so I would expect action to be taken to ensure that that was rectified. The point remains that the right hon. Member for Delyn, speaking for the Opposition, said that he wants the tie to be removed for all employees, even if they are not being abused. That sounds a strange and surprising position to take, given that there is so much concern about loopholes and other ways through which immigration rules can be flouted.
Michael Connarty
In taking evidence about Qatar in the Committee I chair at the Council of Europe, I heard about a case mentioned by the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, in which people had their passports taken off them by their employers and were not paid. The person giving evidence said that these people were slaves, and I agree. If that is happening in Qatar and the same is happening in this country—people not being paid by their employers, who are holding their passports—I would say that it is an exact example of slavery in the modern world.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I do not intend to speak for very long at all, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just want to touch on a few aspects, particularly around the supply chain amendments and how they relate to our commitment as a country and as a Government to our international development obligations. It is right that we seek to increase opportunity right across the world, but we have to accept that many of the systems we adopt domestically perpetuate poverty and the cycle of deprivation in some of the poorest and most vulnerable places around the world. One example of that is supply chains.
This debate comes between Fairtrade fortnight and the anniversary of the Rana plaza disaster, when 1,200 workers lost their lives putting together garments, many of which were going to be worn in Britain. That is why these amendments are so important, and I welcome many of the changes that have come from the Government, although I agree with the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), that they could have gone a lot further.
The fact that 80 billion garments a year are produced globally, that there are 168 million child workers and that 85 million of them are working in hazardous conditions and that over 4 million aged between four and 14 are working in India alone shows the scale of the challenge. If we are to be serious about our international obligations, we must make sure our domestic legislation helps to shape and fight for the right things across the world. We must ensure that everyone has access to a decent job, fair pay and the right to join a trade union.
On that point, it is unacceptable in the midst of such a debate, in which I welcome many of the Government’s proposals, that we see the ideological scrapping of central budget support for the International Labour Organisation, which helps to promote workers’ rights around the globe. If we come into government on 7 May—as I hope we will—I am sure we will reverse that funding cut, and I hope a Government of any other colour would do so, too.
I want to say a bit about the sustainability of putting not only voluntary but mandatory entitlements on companies. Companies must meet their full obligations and there should be some kind of certification mechanism for well-behaved companies to be recognised, but bad practice must be exposed and outlawed. That will give the public the same confidence that they have about cocoa, chocolate and wine through Fairtrade fortnight. We should have the same confidence about all those things we acquire from across the globe.
I see that my three minutes have arrived, Madam Deputy Speaker. In closing, I welcome the Government amendments. They could have gone a lot further, but let us hope that this is the start of an opportunity to improve life chances of workers not just here, but across the globe.
Michael Connarty
I echo the positive and cautionary comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) has made today. We have done much to progress this issue, but we still have a long way to go. I want to mark the fact that we did not take the advice of Lord Judge and Peter Carter and that we will not have a cascade of serious offences, so that people will know exactly what they are being judged on and so that judges will know what we want them to do, rather than having to interpret the previous collection of crimes. That, for me, is the most important thing.
I want to talk also about the Connarty-Mactaggart clause. We might even be able to call it the Connarty-Mactaggart-Bradley clause if the Minister were to attach herself to it. If I were to put that in alphabetical order, I would have to put the Minister’s name first, but I do not want to do that as the issue was initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) in her ten-minute rule Bill and by me in my private Member’s Bill.
I thank the Minister for putting into amendment 73 the six areas of information that an organisation’s slavery and human trafficking statement must include and disclose. The amendment also states that the board of a company must approve such a statement and that it will have to be signed by a director. That provision came from debates in the Bill Committee and in the Joint Committee. Those provisions give strength to what we have been trying to do.
Modern Slavery Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to stand up on Report and commend the Government for the progress we have made, but let us be clear that we are a little way along the journey. It is not as if the exploiters of women and children—whether for cheap labour, slave labour or sexual exploitation—are going to quake at the knees because we are passing this Bill, so let us be honest about that. As we try to close the loopholes, increase vigilance, and impose discipline on the trade that the exploiters are involved in, they will change the way they run that trade.
I spent time with the Serious Organised Crime Agency as part of the Government’s great police service parliamentary scheme. It showed us a model that it has drawn up of much of the trafficking that goes on throughout Europe and that it is trying to combat. It looked like a five-dimensional or 10-dimensional spaceship, and had been drawn up by the London School of Economics to show exactly how such organisations work. They are multinational and beyond any discipline; they have no morals and think only about the money at the end of the chain.
In reality, for many people at the “murky” end of the supply chain—that is how it was described by some of the witnesses from whom the Joint Committee took evidence—that is where the abuse takes place. To reach into that is very difficult as we get further and further from the first payment of money from a customer to a company, and the first payment from a company to its supplier, who supplies in a nice neat box with a nice label—it might be a nice T-shirt, for example, that costs £45 but is made by people who get paid 62p an hour and are locked in the factory and not allowed out in case, as the owner said, “They might come back hung-over and not able to work well the next day”. That is what we are dealing with.
We have made some strides, and many people were mentioned in the Joint Committee and the Bill Committee. Some, however, will not be mentioned—the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) has unfortunately left her place, but she took an interest in this matter and went to see the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to talk about the need to include this measure on the supply chain, at a time when we were getting the resistance referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). People of good will saw that a Bill that did not refer to supply chains was not in the spirit of the efforts that have been made over the past 10 years by people such as Anthony Steen and the Human Trafficking Foundation, and the EU Parliamentarians against Human Trafficking, who were involved in trying to deal with an international, pan-European and pan-world trade.
When I saw new clause 11, which followed a generous promise by the Minister in the final Committee sitting to introduce a measure on supply chains, I was impressed. It is fairly thorough. There is a lot of bureaucratic writing that I would not necessarily have put into my Bill, not knowing how the mechanisms of the Government’s legislation works in all its depth, but part after part reflects the matters I referred to in my private Member’s Bill in 2012. I thank the Minister and all those who supported that measure for what has been done. We are on a journey and we have a long way to go, even if we pass the Bill and it is effective. We know that there are reservations. They will come up again in the other place to deal with the things that are not dealt with in the amendments and new clauses tabled here.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point that some people will seek to avoid the provisions, but does he accept that that is the case with all forms of criminality, and that the Bill gives us a platform, for the first time, to tackle some of the worst cases of modern-day slavery?
Michael Connarty
I have absolutely no reservation in supporting that as a principle. We are doing the right thing. We have set together a number of pieces of legislation in the Bill that will deal with those who will wish to avoid its provisions, and I will mention some of the measures in new clause 11 that I think are effective and welcome.
I am glad that Government amendment 62 says there will be an affirmative resolution for regulations, because it is right that we will go into a Statutory Instrument Committee with them, and that we are given the chance to debate them with the Minister. I will mention some of the things I hope we will discuss when we get there.
New clause 5, which was tabled by my hon. Friends on the use of the Companies Act 2006, is something we should look at, because it is right. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) made the point that we need as many tools as possible as well as the court of public and business displeasure when people do not act as we want. Therefore, we should look at how we can put some firmer things in the Bill, but I think that the big change in the Government’s thinking is to be welcomed, because they are using the principle of the California Act, which is much wider than the Companies Act.
By the way, I notice that the British Retail Consortium wants to include smaller companies. When I introduced my Bill, I used the figure of £100 million. In California, the figure was $100 million, and my amendment used £60 million, which is the equivalent. Clearly, quoted companies under the Companies Act are likely to be well outwith that in size. We want to respond to that and use the same reporting structures as the Act would use.
I tabled amendment (a) to new clause 11 because we should look at international standards. I have respect for the Secretary of State and the civil servants who advise her, but international organisations have looked at the issues again and again. In my Bill, I had a reference to the 1999 International Labour Organisation convention No. 182, which is about the definition of the worst form of child labour, because there can be difficulties with that in other countries.
I will tell a quick tale. When I was 10, I went out and found a job as a milk boy. I wanted to go out and become useful to my family. My brother had a job delivering rolls. I got 10 shillings—50p now—and about 1 shilling and sixpence in tips a week. I walked from the centre of town home and gave my mother 11 shillings and sixpence for the family budget. There were five of us and basically one labourer’s wage. It was not easy to survive. Was that child labour? I did not feel exploited. I loved it—I loved every bit of it. I am sure it is why I am so healthy now in my older age. I ran and ran, and perhaps built up the infrastructure for a long life. It was great and I loved it.
In other situations, people say, “If a woman takes a child with her when she is making bricks in India, at what age does that become a breach of child labour? When is that child able to contribute to a very low family budget and when do they want to do so?” The ILO has looked at those questions but we have not looked at them in great detail in the House. Hopefully, the ILO’s considerations will be used in the recommendations made under new clause 11(8), which is about giving guidance on the information that should be reported.
There is a bit missing from this Bill that was in my Bill: my clause 3 said that there should be some way of ensuring that the company that is found to use such labour provides assistance and protection for the victims of slavery. The guidance should continue that. It should say what a company should do as a benchmark. We should not just say, “We’ll not use that company any more,” but do something about it.
Mention was made of consumers. When I went around talking to people in supermarket networks—Mumdex is in many supermarkets in my area—they had a concern about slavery and the things that bothered their conscience, but they said, “If you’ve got four or five kids coming up to the summer, you buy the cheapest stuff you can get that is going to last the summer, because most of it’s going to be thrown in the bin by the end of the summer anyway. It is the company’s job to make sure I am not buying something that is contaminated by slave labour.” That is totally right. Perhaps some people who go up the high street and buy very highly priced goods ask themselves about that, but most people in my constituents’ environment will not.
I therefore welcome new clause 11(9). It is fantastic to see. If hon. Members read what is on the net about the Bill, they will see that people in Scotland think it has nothing to do with them. They think it is an English Bill. People should look at the new clauses to realise that it is a trans-border, transnational Bill. Subsection (9) states that people in Scotland can take an organisation to the Court of Session to enforce the fact that it is not carrying out the duty in the Bill. That will be very welcome.
I do not know whether the new clause covers Northern Ireland—I had that question in mind because it does not mention Northern Ireland. Do people there go to the Court of Session? Where do they go? Do people in Northern Ireland go to the High Court in England if they feel that a company in Northern Ireland is not doing something they should be doing? I am grateful to the Minister for including Scotland. That is an important measure.
We are making progress and I welcome the proposals. I hope the Government are listening when the Bill goes to the other place because they could add other things to it.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
I, too, was a milk boy, and a butcher’s boy and a paper boy, in my younger days. My hon. Friend has raised the subject of tips many times over the years. My wife and I booked a cruise two years ago through a British travel agent company. The cruise sailed from Southampton. When we spoke to the staff on the cruise, they said they did not receive any wages, and that they only got tips. If that is not modern slavery, I do not know what is. I was not fortunate enough to be on the Joint Committee. Does the Bill cover that?
Michael Connarty
I could not quote the legal detail, but I would think that if a company based in the UK did things like that, it could be taken to the Court of Session in Scotland or the High Court in England and found not to be complying with the law.
As a Scot and as an economist, I read Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”. It talks about comparative advantage, but before that, he wrote a document about the morals of competition. The good thing about the Bill is that it says, “We believe in competition.” We are not talking about pricing people out of the market entirely. We are saying that it must be morally justifiable as well as economically justifiable.
I want to finish with a response to one of my constituents, who, when it was reported that we were discussing the Bill, wrote in an e-mail blog: “What’s that got to do with creating employment in Scotland and your constituency?” The reality is that, if we can stop people using cheap labour, and particularly slave labour at the worst end, we give British companies the chance to compete better. That is why the BRC is behind the Bill. If there is a voluntary code, the bad companies just will not comply, whereas if there is a mandatory code and if we can take people to law to enforce it, everyone must do the right thing or be held to account.
Karen Bradley
I will not detain the House for long as we have other matters to come on to, but I want to make a few closing remarks.
This has been a very good debate and I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to it. I think we can safely say that all those who have made contributions are great campaigners on this issue. They all deserve credit for getting us to this point, and they have changed the views of so many.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
I will take your advice on brevity, Mr Speaker. I rise to support my party’s new clause 1 on gangmasters.
Before I do so, I want to thank many people. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, I had the privilege of introducing the private Member’s Bill that became the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. I was greatly supported in that by a number of individuals and organisations, none more so that my own union, Unite, which was absolutely terrific in giving me the support and research that I needed to try to get the Bill through. The National Farmers Union was also extremely helpful in getting it through and in championing the ethical trading initiatives that were around at the time.
One individual who was particularly helpful during that period was the then Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale, Geraldine Smith, who was extremely supportive in helping me as regards what happened to the cockle pickers. Another individual who was greatly supportive was the then national secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, now my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who offered his experience in trying to get the Bill through. Also very helpful and supportive were the legal gangmasters—the guys who operated on a legal basis—because they had operated in a legal field while the other people were undermining them by trying to get labour at cheap prices.
Some organisations, I have to say, were dragged to the negotiations by their fingernails—namely, the major retailers, who really did not want to get involved in this and wanted to exploit the farmers who were engaged in the industry. The farmers were getting a very bad deal from the major retailers, so we made sure that the retailers played ball.
To correct a fact about the gangmasters legislation, the myth is that it was drawn up in response to the tragedy of the Morecambe bay cockle pickers, but in fact it was introduced before that unfortunate incident because Unite had already experienced the inequities that were happening in the construction industry, the care industry, and so on. That is why the Bill was launched some months before the dreadful situation surrounding the Chinese cockle pickers.
Nevertheless, what happened to the cockle pickers was the catalyst in getting support for the Bill. Just imagine, if you will, that you are on a cold, sandy beach surrounded by water that is coming to drown you, you cannot speak English, and there is no one there to take any responsibility for you. All that was left for these people was to use their mobile phones to phone home to China to tell their relatives that they were in the process of dying. The gangmasters who took them on did nothing to help them. That is why the gangmasters Bill was a good and effective piece of legislation, and even now, as we speak, it has the potential to be even better and more effective.
Michael Connarty
Everything that my hon. Friend said about the struggle that he had to convince a number of organisations at the time is true. Does he know that on 21 August the Ethical Trading Initiative and the British Retail Consortium wrote to the Prime Minister in support of proposed amendments to the Bill, and, as part of that submission, called for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to be strengthened and extended to cover hospitality, construction, and many other industries? My hon. Friend has converted a lot of people by showing that his legislation made a difference to people involved with gangmasters.
Jim Sheridan
There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the legislation must be extended.
We introduced the gangmasters legislation under a Labour Government, and I have to say that it was extremely difficult to try to convince Ministers that it was the right way to go. We decided to go with it as it stood in terms of the shellfish and agriculture industries, arguing that it should subsequently be extended to other sectors, and the Government said that we could extend it if it worked. In my view, it did work, and we set up the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Prior to that, the gangmasters never paid any tax or national insurance, and neither did the exploited workers. The GLA cleaned its face: it got people to pay income tax and the workers to pay national insurance. In effect, it was a self-funding process. If that rationale were extended to take in construction and the service and hospitality sectors, I think the GLA would be a more effective organisation. The Modern Slavery Bill could have sought to prevent exploitation of forced labour by expanding the remit of the GLA.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
We are really short of time in this debate, so I apologise for taking more, Madam Deputy Speaker. If there are any talent spotters on the Government Front Bench, I think the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) has an excellent role in the other place.
I chair the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group—we are writing to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority about the new clauses in this group—but let me say that we have now gone beyond the stage at which we can continue to will the objectives without willing the means. Adequate staff and resources are needed to ensure that the GLA is effective.
To turn briefly to the new clauses and the amendment tabled in relation to prostitution, I apologise to all Members of the House for inundating them with briefings over the past 48 hours. I am very sorry, but this debate came up in a hurry, and it was important to give people the chance to express their views. I have always respected my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is very well intentioned. I support new clause 7 because developing a strategy is critical, and amendment 1, which is the decriminalisation amendment, but I am fundamentally opposed to new clause 6, because it is worrying, counter-productive and dangerous. New clause 22 would give us the opportunity and enough time to undertake a proper review.
I know that sex work is abhorrent for some Members. I must say that in the years since I convened some of the first meetings of the Ipswich Safety First campaign in this House, after five women were killed there, I have met a number of men and women who were not coerced into sex work and do not want their livelihoods to be curtailed by the proposed criminalisation of their clients. It is true that I have met many others who entered prostitution to overcome economic disadvantage—they suffered in poverty to enable them to pay the rent and put food on the table for their children—but that has been made worse by welfare benefit cuts, escalating housing costs and energy bills. The answer is not to criminalise any of their activities, but to tackle the underlying cause by not cutting welfare benefits and ensuring people have an affordable roof over their heads and giving them access to decent, paid employment.
The whole issue has focused on the idea that by stopping the supply of clients, prostitution will somehow disappear, as will all the exploitation, trafficking and violent abuse. The Swedish model has been suggested as an example, but there was absolutely overwhelming opposition to it in the briefings that I have circulated. Those briefings have come from charities such as Scot-Pep—the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project—which is funded by the state; the Royal College of Nursing, the nurses themselves; and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, which is another Government-funded organisation to get women and others off the game, that nevertheless says that the Swedish model would be counter-productive.
The Home Office has commissioned academic research, and I have circulated a letter from 30 academics from universities around the country that basically says that the proposed legislation is dangerous. We must listen to sex workers: the English Collective of Prostitutes, the Sex Worker Open University, the Harlots collective, the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe—flamboyant names, but they represent sex workers, and all are opposed to the criminalisation of clients.
Michael Connarty
Could my hon. Friend quote some sources from Sweden? I understand that in Sweden they do not take that view.
John McDonnell
I will come straight to that point, but let me go through the other organisations we have listened to: lawyers, human rights bodies such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UN Aid, and even the women’s institute down in Hampshire—I warn hon. Members never to cross the women’s institute anywhere—as well as members of the Ipswich Safety First coalition who dealt with the deaths those years ago.
What is the consensus? It is that there is no evidence that criminalising clients as in the Swedish legislation reduces the number of either clients or sex workers. I could quote at length—time we have not got—from the Swedish Government’s report that demonstrates that there is no correlation between the legislation they introduced and a reduction in numbers of clients or sex workers.
Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. He highlights one of the reasons why it is important to pass this Bill and retain this capability in relation to communications data and lawful intercept. He is absolutely right: because the Republic of Ireland brought its communications data regulations into primary legislation, it does not have to respond to the ECJ judgment. It is because ours were in secondary legislation that we have to respond to the judgment.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Using headlines like “Terrorism” or “Organised crime” and so on obviously chimes with the public, but I have never understood why one of the reasons for retention, in section 22(2)(c) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, is if it is necessary
“in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.
There are accusations that these data-gathering exercises are in fact used for industrial and economic espionage by countries in the “Five Eyes”.
Mrs May
One point that I mentioned earlier, which was made by the European Court of Justice, was in relation to the scope of the Bill. We are making it absolutely clear that the purposes are serious and organised crime, national security and economic well-being, and we are clarifying the definition of economic well-being in so far as it relates to national security.
Michael Connarty
It says in the Bill that a retention notice may be necessary for one or more of the purposes
“falling within paragraphs (a) to (h) of section 22(2) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000”.
It is, as I said, economic espionage.
Mrs May
Clause 3 (1) states:
“Section 5 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (power to issue necessary and proportionate interception warrants in interests of national security, to prevent or detect serious crime or to safeguard the UK’s economic well-being) is amended as set out in subsection (2).”
Subsection (2) reads:
“(economic well-being of the UK), after ‘purpose’ insert, ‘in circumstances appearing to the Secretary of State to be relevant to the interests of national security’”.
The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
We discussed the measure the right hon. Gentleman refers to in front of his Committee and other Committees. There are a number ways in which we deal with these matters in terms of exchanging information. I want to be sure that I am looking at the measures to which he is referring and I think that they are Council framework decisions 2009/315/JHA and 2009/316/JHA. They require member states to inform each other about convictions of EU nationals and are an important tool for sharing data. The reason I am hesitating here is that we were certainly discussing the possibility of rejoining this particular measure. [Interruption.] It is in the 35. Yes, that is why I was hesitating. The right hon. Gentleman said we were not in it and I thought it was in the 35 measures we are rejoining, precisely because it gives us the opportunity to share this information.
We also wish to rejoin the Naples II convention, the principal tool for customs co-operation. Operation Stoplamp, which used this measure to exchange vital information with our partners, resulted in the seizure of 1.2 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of about £300 million—again, an outcome I am sure everyone in this House will welcome. We are also seeking to rejoin Europol, which played a key role in helping our law enforcement agencies to fight those criminals who tried to exploit British customers by adulterating our food with horsemeat. It is doing excellent work under the leadership of its British director, Rob Wainwright.
Those are just a handful of examples that illustrate why our participation in these measures is in our national interest. Today’s debate is not about the flawed treaty to which the previous Labour Government signed us up; it is about the decisions we must take now to protect the public and keep the British people safe. The Government’s policy is clear: we have exercised the opt-out and negotiated a deal to rejoin a limited number of measures that we believe it is in the national interest for us to remain part of.
I look forward with interest to the speech from the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as it would be helpful to know the Opposition’s position on these various measures. Every time we debate them, we see a slightly different position coming forward. I am sorry that the shadow Home Secretary is not here to tell us herself, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us whether they would have exercised the opt-out that they negotiated. Would they have remained bound by all 130-plus measures, rather than negotiating a limited number in the national interest? Would they have changed the law to protect British citizens, as we have done in relation to the European arrest warrant? Would they have risked infraction proceedings by rejoining Prüm without fully considering the facts?
The evidence suggests that the Opposition do not share the determination of this party and this Government to reduce the control Brussels has on our criminal justice system. Their position has always been to say one thing and do another. There was a manifesto promise for a vote on the Lisbon treaty, but they refused to hold a referendum. They said they would protect British red lines, but they gave up our veto in policing and criminal justice matters. They negotiated an opt-out and then voted against using it. That contrasts with the position taken by this Government. We support, and have exercised, the United Kingdom’s opt-out. We support the return of powers from Brussels to the UK. We support acting in the national interest by rejoining a limited number of measures to protect British citizens and the victims of crime. This is consistent with our approach to the Europe Union as a whole.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I notice that the title of the debate actually refers to opt-outs. Apart from Prüm, can the Home Secretary name one thing that they are not opting into that will make a significant difference in repatriating competence to the UK—one single issue apart from Prüm?
Mr Hanson
The right hon. Gentleman will know that, as a Welsh Member of Parliament, I take a great interest in such matters. I will look at this from the perspective that I think the Home Secretary is looking at it from, which is: what is in the interests of reducing organised crime, child trafficking, prostitution, drug running and terrorist activities, and ensuring that we prevent future victims and have the best possible protections in place for the United Kingdom across Europe following negotiations?
Michael Connarty
My right hon. Friend has not dealt with the terrible accusation, which the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has just made, that the EU is a foreign power. We are one of the 30 countries that control the EU. It is part of what we are. Idle talk of it as a “foreign power” shows where the right hon. Gentleman is. He should be in the United Kingdom Independence party, not the Tory party.
Mr Hanson
The Justice Secretary says that they did, but he needs to reflect more on the record. The Home Secretary has tried to indicate that some of these matters might be up for discussion, but ultimately, as she knows, they are in the interests of crime fighting, the interests of victim prevention and the interests of ensuring that we bring criminals to justice.
Michael Connarty
I think that my right hon. Friend is being kind to the Opposition and, probably correctly, to the Home Secretary, who has worked hard on this issue. The Justice Secretary, however, defended the position previously. They will accept minimum standards on organised crime, but they will not accept minimum standards on terrorism. It is totally illogical. The Justice Secretary has forgotten about that. I raised the issue on the Floor of the House previously and the right hon. Gentleman could not reply then and he cannot reply now.
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend raises important issues, but my chief point to the Home Secretary is that she could have indicated her commitment to opting in to these issues more strongly and earlier, which would have put her in a much better place in the negotiations. [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady says she did, but I do not think she did. We will have to disagree and reflect on the issues again. The Home Secretary has tried to be Eurosceptic and to compromise with her Eurosceptic Back Benchers, but they will never compromise on these issues. She needs to take a firm stance to ensure that the House has a vote and agrees these measures because they are good for crime prevention, good for victims and good for bringing people to justice. She needs to bring the vote forward as quickly as possible so that we can shake off the Eurosceptics and show that we in Britain are committed to working with our European partners to crack down on crime and ensure that both Britain and Europe become safer places.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
As could be imagined, tailgating the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on these issues in the European Scrutiny Committee on behalf of the Labour party is a tortuous but enlightening process. It is interesting to note that the original Command Paper 8671, which was published in July 2013 and which we discussed on the Floor of the House, has been slightly amended. Most people probably do not realise that what we are discussing now is a similar, but not identical, list of 35 measures set out in Command Paper 8897 on 3 July 2014, so there have been some small amendments along the way.
I recommend that interested people outside the House not only listen to the debates, which are enlightening but repetitive, but read the relevant documents from the European Scrutiny Committee, the Justice Committee and the Home Affairs Committee. Those documents give a flavour of the minutiae about which the European Scrutiny Committee in general differs from the Government. Although I have my concerns about the European Union, and particularly about the behaviour of the Commission, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not support the hon. Gentleman’s often-repeated analysis that it has been set out in a dark room somewhere in the European Commission that this will all eventually lead to a united states of Europe controlled by a bureaucracy in Brussels that is helped by the European Court of Justice and many other manipulative organs of the European Union.
The fact is that the European Commission, at its heart, tends to have a competence creep mentality. In many areas the Commission is making everyone do things according to its will when those things do not require such direction. I am a great supporter of devolution in Scotland and other parts of the UK, and I am a great supporter of subsidiarity, but not the subsidiarity set out in the Lisbon treaty. It is a falsehood to say that the Lisbon treaty has given more power to Parliaments.
In that sense, I wonder about the Government’s approach to the opt-outs that we are debating. We know there is a block opt-out on all 133 measures, most of which, as has been articulately stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), have been superseded or are redundant. On a few issues, we might want to argue about the final details of whether we should have opted in to certain justice standards, but at the heart of the debate is a feeling that the Government have not been willing to be open enough about that fact, which was a point raised by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). The reality is that there have been no massively significant changes to the competences that have been drawn back to the UK, because most of the 133 measures have been superseded, are redundant or have never been used. Therefore, the myth being created, which is that this process is about repatriating powers to the UK—one that has been put forward by the Government—is such an obvious falsehood that the public are becoming more and more disillusioned and sceptical about the Government’s position.
I think that the majority of the coalition Government are pro-EU and want to see us solidly at the heart of the EU and influencing it. I think that they are deeply committed, as I think we on the Opposition side are, to reforming the EU, making it more relevant and finding a way to draw back to the member states the powers that they wish to apply in their own right. But that is not what people are seeing in this debate.
For example, the Justice Committee reached the conclusion—on page 6 of its eighth report of the 2013-14 Session—that in the previous debate the House was not being asked at that stage to endorse the list of 35 measures that the Government intended to opt back into, but the Home Secretary used the debate again and again to claim that the Government had the support of the House of Commons for what they were doing. She gave the impression again and again, in writing and in the spoken word, that that is what we did. We started a process and considered a Command Paper, but we did not conclude that it was correct or endorse it; the public were given the impression that somehow we had.
The position taken by the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee is supported by its members—certainly the 13 who were there, including myself. We think that the House should debate and vote on each of the 35 measures—I saw you flinch, Madam Deputy Speaker, when that was suggested. They might be all in the same order and, as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out, there are key issues, so it might be possible to group them in such a way that Members can express their opinions by voting on groups.
However, I certainly agree that we should have some kind of debate—it is a pity that it is being done in this context—about the European arrest warrant, because I think that it is the right kind of measure. We would not want to replace it with a country-by-country arrangement based on applications to bring people back individually. I will give an example. I hope that my friend—and I do regard him as a friend—the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is listening. After the 7 July bombings, the fact that we could return one of the bombers to this country within three weeks was a massive example of why such an arrangement is fundamentally sound. However, it might have to be modified in some ways to stop the nonsense of having applications for cases of wheelbarrow theft or £200 loans with the wrong details and all sorts of trivia.
I want to expand on a case from my constituency. It concerns a family with a custody order over a child. The father, who is Polish, abducted the child and took it to Poland, so the grandfather and a friend went to Poland, took the child and brought it back to Scotland. The father then claimed that he had been assaulted during that process. A European arrest warrant was sought and the case was taken to a Scottish court, but it ruled that the warrant was not valid because the witness was clear that no assault had taken place and that what they had done was to apply the court’s ruling that the mother, who is Scottish, had the right to custody of the child and that the father had abducted the child. That seemed to be the end of the matter, and it sounded sensible to me. However, something went wrong with the process. Only last year the grandfather, who is now not in good health, and his wife decided to take a holiday in the Netherlands. When he stepped off the plane in Amsterdam, he was arrested and sent to Poland. He had a heart attack there and ended up in hospital. When the court in Poland eventually looked at the case, it concluded that there was no case to answer and that the European arrest warrant was not valid, so he was released. Now his health is even worse.
Why is there no process—I have asked the Home Secretary this—whereby all the agencies that sign up to the European arrest warrant can be informed when a court rules against an attempt to use it in the country in which it is attempted to be served? Why is there no transmission of that information? The grandfather could have gone on holiday anyway in the EU and he would probably have been arrested and sent to Poland, and for a European arrest warrant that a court had already ruled was invalid. It makes no sense to me that these things still stand. Apart from the trivia, it is the mechanism of how they are applied that worries me.
The basic fact of this debate is that the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee felt that the Government were not giving enough information and that they were not willing to accept that it is not enough to bring back one blockbuster motion stating, “We’ve had a negotiation and signed up to 35 items. Take it or leave it.” It cannot be done like that. If it is done like that, it will undermine the Government’s credibility. The Opposition would then be in a difficult situation, because we would have to either support the motion, if it was all that was available, table a counter-motion of some kind in order to divide up the 35 items, or use some other process in order to respond to what the British public, Parliament and the three Committees want, which is a debate on the fundamental issues in the package so that we can vote on them individually and say, as I hope we will, “Yes, we are behind this move to sign up to the 35 items.”
Some of us might like to see some other things opted into, with a little bit of finessing by the Government so that we keep progressing along the path that I think we are on with justice and home affairs. My worry is not about justice and home affairs and a corpus juris for Europe; my worry is with the economics of the European Union that are destroying the economies of the subservient countries that have come into it and are under the fiscal compact and the eurozone’s stability and growth pact. That, to me, is what is damaging the project for Europe, not justice and home affairs. I am not worried about the fact—this was put to me in a private conversation with another hon. Member—that the Queen has to register and prove that she is a real British citizen so that her bank account can be used across Europe. What worries me is that we are damaging other people in Europe for the power of the economic giants, including us—we are a much-diminished giant, but we are still benefiting from it. I want the debate to take place in such a way that people can say afterwards that there is a united feeling in this House that the European Union is a good thing.
I will also put down a marker for those on my Front Bench. I want to see us sign up to a referendum on the European Union and to go out with like-minded people across the House and win a yes vote to remain in the European Union and build Europe for the benefit of British citizens.
Sir Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I have been in this House for seven Parliaments. Each has seemed to have a different character, but there has been one consistent thread across all that time: the integration within European processes. That has had support on high days, on holidays and in opposition. I see it as a fundamental task of the House of Commons to challenge perceived wisdoms and reflect the responsibilities and interests of those we are elected to represent.
I have also seen the continuing theme of membership of the European Union over all that time. It has never quite been a settled issue. For all the trumpets and bands, all the songs and the universal praise, there is a deep underlying tug. It is really about a sense of country. Who are we? It has always been about that. That, after all, is the first duty of a sovereign state, I would argue: to protect the interests, freedoms and liberties that we have enjoyed under our form of constitutional arrangements. What we are really seeing is a struggle over the British constitution. Oh, but does it not evolve over time? Yet, looking back, there has been one constant theme, which is that people profoundly believed in many of the central precepts of what constitutes a sovereign state. I am driven in my memory by certain observations, too. The German constitutional court made the observation that democracy lies not in the institutions of the community, the European Union, but in the national state, and yet everything that this House seems to do in recent years is to surrender and denigrate that nation state—the very concept by which we have authority in this House.
What is the criticism of the European arrest warrant? It is that it is promoted on the basis of a benefit, but to many people it is actually a degradation of the security of the British people. The fact that they can be taken away from within this jurisdiction by almost a mandate, which will, in time, be governed by the European Court of Justice is a loss of the authority of our own legal and justice system.
The House is well aware that, in recent months, a series of High Court and Supreme Court judges have been writing essays, making a plea about the way in which the discretion and the interpretation of human rights is conducted. The most central purpose of a Government is law and order and the effectiveness with which they protect the citizen, and no one can dispute that our Home Secretary is fierce in her determination to protect the British citizen. But, actually, the greatest protection of a citizen and a coherent society, which is what we call the sovereign state, lies within the commitment of the people to their institutions and their way of self-government, and that is what this measure undermines.
Michael Connarty
I am concerned about the nationalist tone of the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. Under his logic, Scotland should vote yes to independence in September, and I am totally opposed to breaking up the United Kingdom, which I happen to think respects Scottish subsidiarity.
Sir Richard Shepherd
I will not trade remarks on this matter. I was also born in Scotland, and I am deprived of a vote on something that affects my cousins and my relatives. This has been a Union for 300 years, and we have been united by the sentiments of those people. Not so very long ago—70 years—the Scots, the English, the Welsh and those from Northern Ireland stood together against the greatest danger of our time: the monolithic power of Germany. I see this not as nationalistic but as a reflection and a pride in who we are, what we are, what this nation has accomplished and our ability to govern ourselves. The Scots will make their own decision; I am not involved in that because I do not have a residence in Scotland. Anyone passing through who might temporarily have a residence there can have a vote. No, no that is not democratic, and it is not the spirit of the Union. The Union has fought together, worked together and made something together, and that is the Union I am concerned about, not the European Union. When we come to deal with these matters, we will find that we have surrendered our very sense of “these are our people.”
As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we looked at these extradition orders. The Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee have looked at these matters, too. No one has made any mention of this, but one of the best things in the process were the groups that have spoken and given testimony to those Committees. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee talked about those who are genuinely concerned about the way in which all of this has happened. I half expected to hear mention of the Staffordshire case in Genoa in which a man, under these extradition endeavours, was found guilty of murder, although he had never been there or even near there. No, the integrity of a nation is founded on its institutions and also the law. In this country, I maintain that we have a pretty high degree of acceptance of the process of law and judgment and the way in which it is made. What we are now confronted with is the triviality of a central bureaucracy that sets out to be a great state, which I know the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) for honourable reasons passionately believes in, but who in the end will protect us? That can only be the people of our own country and our own institutions.
I find no comfort in this succession of cases, which have been listed by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and which the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk also knows well enough about. We have all had constituents who have expressed a concern that the British Government—Parliament—seem to have no effectiveness in the world. I do not blame anyone for that. It is a crisis in our nation that we have to question who really governs us. I maintain that it is us who should govern us, and by that I mean our own Union.
I was deeply distressed when I heard the words of the Home Secretary, who fiercely defends us, in impossible cases, against treaty after treaty into which British Governments have entered. I even consider the United States treaty on extradition to be grotesquely misjudged. Of course the wonderful thing is that there will always be a judge who will find good merit in whatever the British Government are proposing. I will take issue, because my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is undoubtedly a doughty, valiant and fierce fighter, has achieved very little in the face of these international organisations that we have so joyously, easily and with great hallelujahs joined, and yet those organisations all sting us, because in the end they have taken away from the very sovereignty of our people. When we talk about the sovereignty of Parliament, we mean the people, and ultimately all of our fates are decided by them. In our grotesque shifting away from the authority of the people, we lose them, and that is why there is such a great disconnect.
I am glad to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) is in his place. He has catalogued many of these cases and understands their interconnectivity with what has happened. This is a bound Parliament now. It is bound not by the people but by our own passing views of the great affairs of the world. I fear that we have lost our nerve in some way. I watched a celebration of the end of war in Europe 70 years ago, and I saw elderly people, who had lost friends and colleagues, showing such pride that even alone Britain could stand for something; and we do stand for something. It does not need the buying of votes or the passing over of great sums of money. I listened with alarm that Albania will be “brought up”. This is a union that has been founded on the transfer of payments. Now, I believe, and my dad taught me, that we earn our own living. That is the truth that this country seems to be waving away. We pass over money in vast sums. I wonder why we are giving £9 billion net a year to fund European integration. We watched Ireland—I feel tremendously for Ireland—which had a near transfer of 5% of GDP to support the move to the future. It did that on its own, and the way it has come through the crisis has been an amazing feat of self-discipline and obedience to European precepts.
So we come to the substance of the debate. We are giving over to others the ultimate rule on the protection of our own citizens. This will come under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which most people would agree is an integrationist court, governed by the central proposition of ever-closer union. I think of the glory of Europe historically—the nation states of Europe, the cultures, the universities, the interconnectivity, but not the throttling blanket that the European Union now represents to many of us.
Many people knock us and say, “But wasn’t there something we could have done?” We had a constitution that never doubted who was in charge—the people. We have transferred that role to international friction-making devices such as the European Union. We should be seen by our people as defending the interests of the people. I have always been cautious about a declaration from the Front Bench—any Front Bench—that says, “We act in the national interest.” The national interest is what this House decides, and ultimately what the people decide.
The whole course of the European project has been to avoid any engagement with the people over what is a non-democratic and largely unsuccessful Union, other than for the transfer of vast sums of money. We have to do something about that, and these opt-ins, opt-outs, see-all-round-abouts amount, in the end, to what the Government disguise and pretend is not really happening, as if it were a grand scheme. I have lost all confidence in understanding what central Government or the Foreign Office do these days, other than remaining quiet.
Modern Slavery Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
The current intention is that an interim report will be published, which should be available before the Committee stage is completed, but the final review will be published in the autumn alongside the Government’s strategy.
We have listened carefully to the findings of the pre-legislative Committee and, where practicable, we have addressed its key concerns. We can all play a part in tackling this scourge. As Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said at the modern slavery conference at the Vatican in April:
“We need to make combating human trafficking part of everyone’s consciousness. As with our fight against terrorism, prevention is better than cure. … Much misery and distress can be prevented if more of us pay attention to something that does not look or feel right, then care enough to do something about it.”
The Modern Slavery Bill will help ensure that we can tackle slavery in its modern form. With cross-party support, we have an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of today’s victims.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has published a Bill that goes in the right direction, but she appears to have ignored the fact that slavery that we benefit from happens outwith this country. In the supply chains of the goods that we buy, people are enslaved on a daily basis. We know about some of those people because of disasters that have occurred, but the slavery still goes on. The Secretary of State appears to have ignored those people, so she has cut off the greatest power that the Bill could have to reach out and stop them being enslaved on our behalf.
Mrs May
I am sorry about the tone in which the hon. Gentleman puts his question. The issue of supply chains has been raised by many people. We have not ignored the issue. I and other Ministers, including my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State have had a round table meeting with businesses and business—
Mrs May
I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s question, if he would like to listen to my answer. Not everything that we think we can do to tackle modern slavery will be in the legislation. Legislation is not the answer to everything, but we recognise the issue of supply chains. We have been working with businesses. Many big businesses already take this responsibility seriously and make every effort to ensure that they do not see slavery in their supply chains.
I was asked about supply chains in Home Office questions yesterday, and I made the point that companies have a social responsibility. Companies should consider their reputation as well as potential victims of slavery. We have held a round table with business. We are talking to businesses about the action that they can take to address the issue.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right. One of the things that pleased me about the conference at the Vatican was that I could meet people from other countries—both those countries that are more naturally destination countries and those that are source countries—to talk about the work that can be done to deal with this problem. We have to deal with it internationally. That is why I am pleased that at the conference we set up the Santa Marta group, an international group of senior law enforcement officers who will meet again towards the end of this year in London, to share best practice to ensure that we do all we can to deal with this issue.
Michael Connarty
Has the Home Secretary received, as I have, a copy of the letter from the Ethical Trading Initiative, to which we spoke just before the last mini recess? It says that it wishes to have legislation on supply chains. That is a major change in attitude since I introduced my private Member’s Bill. It wants to see all the good companies supported by legislation so that the poor companies do not get away with undermining them.
Mrs May
The hon. Lady and I have discussed this important matter before, and I will talk about what we can do to protect victims. The strategy that the Government will publish as the Bill progresses through Parliament will be important, because not everything is about legislation; many issues relating to the protection of victims are about some of the other ways we can ensure that support is provided. Yes, of course we need victims to be willing to come forward in order to prosecute, but one of the areas that I do not think has been given sufficient attention in the past is the question of law enforcement, prosecution and the need to ensure that the police and prosecutors are sufficiently aware of these crimes and have a sensible legislative framework and offences framework that means they will be more likely to bring perpetrators to justice. The more perpetrators who are brought to justice, the fewer victims there will be in future.
Michael Connarty
As a vice-chair of the all-party group I am very happy to play a supportive role to the group’s chair. The question raised by subsections (3), (4) and (5) of clause 35 is about the Home Secretary’s ability to call for the commissioner to omit from the report anything the Home Secretary does not agree with. Given that people will base decisions on what she says in this House, can she give us a categorical assurance that, even if the commissioner criticises the Government’s performance, there will be no question of the Home Secretary being able to ask for anything to be omitted from her or his reports?
Mrs May
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman reread the Bill. The intention is not that the Home Secretary will be able to prevent the printing of something with which they do not agree, but that nothing that is published could be a national security concern or jeopardise ongoing criminal investigations. I would have hoped that every Member accepts the importance of that. There may be circumstances in which it would not be appropriate to publish certain information because of the impact it would have on an individual. Those are matters that will be discussed with the anti-slavery commissioner in their reports, but certainly we should ensure that their reports do not jeopardise criminal investigations, because we should all want to see more perpetrators being brought to justice.
Modern slavery is a crime that inflicts immense suffering and misery. At the heart of the Bill and all our work is the desire to ensure that victims receive the protection and support they deserve, as well as help to recover from their traumatic ordeal. We must also ensure that victims, who have already suffered so much, do not suffer again through the criminal justice system.
Victims of modern slavery are sometimes forced by organised criminals to commit crimes such as cannabis cultivation. Fear of prosecution can deter victims from coming forward to help the police with investigations and from acting as witnesses in court. It is vital that we give them the confidence to come forward without the fear of prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service already has guidance in place to prevent the prosecution of victims who have been forced to commit crime, but I think we can, and should, go further.
That is why the Bill includes a statutory defence for victims. The defence includes substantial safeguards against abuse and it will not apply to a number of serious offences—mainly violent and sexual offences—which are set out in the Bill. However, even in cases where the defence does not apply, prosecutors will still need to look carefully at all the circumstances to see whether it is in the public interest to prosecute victims.
Helping more victims to testify in court is crucial in our fight against the perpetrators. We need to give victims—who can face threats and intimidation—greater assurance that they can access special measures, such as giving evidence by video link or behind a screen. The Bill therefore extends to all modern slavery victims existing provisions that help trafficking victims gain access to special measures.
Whether victims appear in court or not, we need to identify them so that they can receive help and support. As I said in response to earlier interventions, I have set in motion a review of the national referral mechanism, to ensure that the care and support provided is effective and that all agencies work together in the best interests of victims. The review will issue its final report in the autumn. In addition, the Bill includes a provision for statutory guidance for the identification and support of victims, to ensure a consistent and effective approach.
Modern slavery crushes lives and causes immeasurable damage to victims of all ages. One of the most heinous aspects of this crime is the exploitation and enslavement of children—robbing them of their childhood and casting a long shadow over their future. Child trafficking victims are exceptionally vulnerable and require specialist support and care. We are therefore putting in place trial schemes of child trafficking advocates, who will ensure that the child victims’ voices are heard and that they receive the support and assistance they need in relation to the social care, immigration and criminal justice systems. The Bill includes a power to place these advocates on a statutory footing, once the trials have established how we can best give trafficked children the support they need.
The Bill also ensures that where the age of a trafficking victim is uncertain and there are reasons to believe that they are a child, public authorities will presume that victim to be a child for the purposes of providing assistance and support.
Finally, we need to ensure that law enforcement has good data on this largely hidden crime, so that we can develop an effective, strategic response. We are therefore placing a legal duty on public bodies to report suspected victims of slavery or human trafficking to the National Crime Agency. Safeguards will be put in place to ensure there is no adverse effect on victims. Adult victims will remain anonymous unless they consent to having their personal details shared. Non-governmental organisations will not be part of the statutory duty.
Modern slavery is an evil against which this Government are determined to take a stand. This Bill provides a comprehensive range of measures to punish effectively the criminals and organised gangs behind this appalling crime, to ensure victims receive the protection and support that they deserve, and to help prevent other vulnerable people from becoming victims.
As I indicated earlier, however, I am under no illusion about the scale of the task ahead. Stamping out modern slavery will not happen overnight. I have made tackling this crime a priority for the National Crime Agency, and, as I also said earlier, we are working with international law enforcement agencies to target organised criminal gangs. The Santa Marta group is being led by the United Kingdom, and that will strengthen our response to modern slavery globally. This autumn I will publish a comprehensive strategy that will include cross-Government and law enforcement action to tackle modern slavery and set out how we will continue to support and protect victims.
Today I urge Members on both sides of the House to work together so that we can pass the Modern Slavery Bill in this short Session. We have a rare moment of consensus on the principle that action needs to be taken. We must not—for any reason—repeat the mistakes of those Parliaments that were asked to tackle the historic evil of slavery but found reasons to put off the issue. It took William Wilberforce almost 18 years to pass his Bill to abolish the slave trade, and another 26 years passed before Parliament agreed to abolish all slavery in the British empire.
We must not delay. Let us act now—together—and send a powerful message to all traffickers and slave drivers that they will not get away with their crimes: we will track them down, prosecute, and lock them up, and ensure that the victims of their appalling crimes are returned to freedom. I commend this Bill to the House.
Yvette Cooper
I am very interested in looking further at that idea. My hon. Friend is right that the most complicated and difficult cases are sometimes hard for the legal system to address. It is obviously important to have clear frameworks of family law and of immigration law, but he is right that complex cases sometimes end up falling between the two systems and not getting the kind of recognition that they deserve.
We want the anti-slavery commissioner’s work to have more emphasis on supporting victims. The Bill talks of the anti-slavery commissioner’s obligation to identify victims, not of the need to support victims or to make recommendations to all Departments, not just the Home Office, on victim support, which would be helpful.
Michael Connarty
A matter that has puzzled me since I went to the launch of the Scottish report is a point made by the Justice Secretary there: when the Border Force changes people’s status from victim to criminal, those people very soon leave Scotland and end up in Yarl’s Wood, which is outwith Scotland’s jurisdiction. He told me that the problem is the Border Force, or what was called the UK Border Agency. How can we give some comfort to people in the devolved parts of the UK that they will be allowed to decide whether they are dealing with a victim or a criminal, and that they will not be overruled by the Bill and what is basically a UK authority, not a devolved authority?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which goes wider than devolution. Wherever across the United Kingdom trafficking victims are identified, we must make sure that they are properly supported as victims of trafficking throughout the system, and that they are not simply identified by one agency as needing support as victims because they have been abused and enslaved, but end up being treated by another agency as criminals or illegal migrants, with the abuse effectively being multiplied because their vulnerability and experiences are simply not identified within the system. Such a purpose is vital. The Home Secretary is right that this is not simply about legislation, but about the way in which organisations operate, the training given to staff and how staff respond. My hon. Friend’s point is therefore extremely important.
That is particularly important for children, about whom many hon. Members intervened on the Home Secretary to raise concerns. Trafficking is an evil trade, but it can exploit weak systems of child protection. Of the 2,000 potential victims of human trafficking identified in 2012, 550 were children, but that is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Some 65% of those cases were not recorded on the national system, which would have increased the protection of those children. Too often, they are treated as immigration cases, not as trafficking victims. Several of my hon. Friends made important points about the way in which such children can, in practice, be abused, including by being told what to say by their traffickers.
Most appalling of all is the figure that shows that almost two thirds of rescued children go missing again. They have been found, rescued by the authorities, put into care and they simply disappear again, presumably picked up by the same or other trafficking gangs. Already abused, they are let down by a system that is supposed to keep them safe.
Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
I draw attention to my entry in the Members’ register as trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation.
One of the problems with being called to speak in the middle and later stages of a debate is that all the things one wants to say have been said, but this is such an important issue that I think they bear repeating, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) because I will address again many of the points he made.
In the 17 years I have been in this place, I have seen the passage of much legislation—some of it good, some excellent and some less good—but it is an absolute privilege to speak in today’s Second Reading debate on the Modern Slavery Bill. The Prime Minister and in particular the Home Secretary should be congratulated on introducing it. We heard in her excellent opening speech the obvious sincerity and enthusiasm with which she is embracing this subject. I know that she and the Minister have engaged and continue to engage constructively with the issues we are raising now as helpful criticism of the Bill.
As has been said probably by every speaker today, a large part of the reason we have this Bill is the hard work and evangelical zeal of notable people both inside and outside Parliament. As we have discovered, no discussion of modern-day slavery can avoid mentioning my erstwhile hon. Friend Anthony Steen. In fact, this feels a bit like Banquo’s ghost. I remember sitting behind him on the Opposition Benches as he was putting through a private Member’s Bill to recognise anti-slavery day in the dying stages of the last Parliament. As a Whip, I was encouraging him to stop speaking because there was a danger that he might just talk out his own Bill. Anybody who knows Anthony well knows that, sometimes, getting him to stop speaking is the hardest thing. He is passionate, persistent and persuasive on this subject and always puts the victims first. However, unlike Banquo’s ghost, whose presence is all around us, he is very much alive and kicking.
There are others too in this House who took this issue on when it was very much a Cinderella issue. I have chosen my words carefully: Cinderella is a potent example of slavery and forced labour, one that ordinary people and children can understand. Unfortunately, as we know and have heard today, existences such as Cinderella’s have been going on for some time and have not been eradicated. Here, I should also mention my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who always speaks passionately on this issue, and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), whom I hope we will hear from shortly. He speaks passionately about issues such as supply chains and the need for transparency, and he is a little bit like Anthony Steen, in that sometimes it is difficult to shut him up on this subject, but that is only because of his passionate determination to get his message across. That is something we in this House should be proud of.
Someone I became associated with on the draft Bill and during the Home Secretary’s evidence review was the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whom I found an inspiration. His reasonableness and ability to get things through without going over the top was remarkable. He is another person who should be noted on today’s roll of honour. I should also mention Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, who will head the Government’s historical child abuse inquiry. I know she will do an excellent job, but I hope she will have time to deal with the Bill when it goes to the other place. Without her drive and abilities, the Bill would not be served well.
I came rather late to this issue, because I had other duties. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead referred to the job my former comrades do as Whips, but when we sit on the Bench silently it does not mean that we do not listen to what is going on. Our silence is not always for bad reasons; we absorb the debate. One thing I have found is that the more someone understands this issue, realising the enormity and barbarity of it, the more they become involved with it and they end up not being able to let it go. I would put myself in that position. One thing I was pleased to discover in the Bill, and generally, is that we are using the term “modern slavery”, because the term “human trafficking” does not quite convey exactly what we are talking about. To a lot of our constituents “human trafficking” might mean something a little different; it might just mean illegal immigration in some respects. As we have discovered, and as most in this House will know, we are talking about something that is far, far more than that.
I am not just congratulating the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), and the Home Secretary because I am hoping that by buttering them up they will listen more to our arguments; the Under-Secretary has only recently been appointed, she has been immersing herself completely in the subject and getting up to speed, and she has been a valuable asset to the whole process. I could also mention lots of non-governmental organisations here, but, as has been said, an amazing number of people out there in all sorts of sectors are involved in this field and they do a fantastic job. Again, they are powerful advocates, and the number of hon. Members who have spoken today having obviously been talking to their local NGOs, or to other NGOs that have been pressing their case, is testimony to that.
Like everybody else, I want the Bill to be the best we can produce. I believe it was the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) who said that there was no problem on the time scales, but I have to take slight issue with that. There is a problem with time scales, because we are off in August and we come back only briefly in September, before an extended period away because of the referendum in Scotland. We have to get the Bill out of this House—we are okay in this House because we have timetabling—and into the other House, which has lots of experts in lots of these fields and no timetabling. That is why we have to ration ourselves as to what we do and how we want to get it achieved.
We have heard about most of the things that most Members think we could improve the Bill with, the most obvious one being transparency in supply chains, which I shall speak about briefly—I have a feeling there is a better speech coming on that. Businesses would welcome that and the idea that we amend section 414C of the Companies Act 2006 to include modern slavery in the provision is a good start. One person who has not been mentioned and who is backing this is Sir Richard Branson—a powerful name to add to our campaign. One thing we have to get over to businesses is that we are not trying to penalise them; we are actually trying to help them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) eloquently said, they do not want to be tarnished or tainted with having slavery in their supply chain. It is not a matter of sneaking around, finding out, exposing them and then penalising them; we want them to have the ability to go down their supply chain. One problem with all these things is that they will ask somebody, who will ask somebody else, and somebody in some far-distant land may say, “Don’t worry about this, it is all okay.” We want to be able to give businesses the information that it is far from okay, because they may not have the resources to check all the way down the supply chain.
There are other things that we want to do on this issue, but they probably relate more to policy than to legislation, and we must not get the two confused. We have heard quite a lot about the work of Kalayaan and the change in the visa rules for overseas domestic workers. I have to say that a lot of those arguments are powerful, but there is a debate to be had on that matter, and I am not sure whether it should be in the Bill. I know that I get harangued for this view, but I just wonder why so many people are coming here to be domestic workers when possibly there are people here who could fulfil those roles. I am not sure; all I am saying is that we should debate this matter. Changing the visa rules had a detrimental effect, and we can see that, but we must look at it in more detail.
We have talked about the national referral mechanism and the 45 days. There is a review going on, and we should wait to see what happens with that. It is obviously bizarre to think that, after 45 days, a victim is in a fit state to be effectively thrown on to the street and to have us say, “That’s it. Job done. Off you go.” Different victims will need different assistance and different lengths of time.
A little while ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said that some people might want to go back to their country of origin. We must remember though that not all victims are from abroad; there are also victims who are in the UK and UK citizens who are being trafficked abroad.
I went to Albania with Anthony Steen, because we wanted to see whether the many Albanians who have been trafficked here—they are one of the largest groups at the moment—could go back to their own country. Sadly, the state of the country is not conducive to people going back. There is still a huge stigma, certainly in some parts of the country, about people who have been trafficked and who have been used in the sex trade in particular. The idea that we could simply return people home is not right. We have to help these countries improve their infrastructure so that there is something for people to go back to.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said that she had seen some comments on a blog—it is always unwise to look at the comments on blogs—that effectively said that these measures were for left-wing feminstas. Obviously, those people do not understand the issues involved. I say to them that if they had been lucky enough to speak to victims—I say lucky because when one speaks to them and hears what they have been through one’s life is suddenly changed—they would find that slavery is probably going on within half of mile of where they live. If they realised that, they would not say such things.
One problem is education. I often speak at local meetings; sometimes I am asked to speak on a subject that is close to my heart. It is probably easier in my constituency to talk about modern slavery than it is about HS2, the expansion of the airport or some of the other issues that might raise hackles. In those meetings, I have been pleasantly surprised by people’s reactions. It is almost as if their eyes have been opened. They say, “Yes, I know what you mean now.”
I spoke at St Margaret’s church in Uxbridge a few months ago. It was not a particularly religious meeting but it was held in a church. When I mentioned the subject, some policemen said, “Yes, we are looking at that. We recognise it.” A representative from the church said that they thought that someone was coming in who was a victim. One thing that each one of us in this House can do is to be an advocate and get this subject out to the public—to our constituents and to our families and friends.
My son is an actor and he was part of a project that took a play called “Sold”, which was all about human trafficking and for which they had spoken to people involved, to the Edinburgh festival. All those young people, who knew very little about the issue beforehand, have become complete advocates, spreading the message. That is what we must do. We can pass legislation, help all sorts of people and do wonderful things, but unless the public can help us by understanding and recognising the problem, we will not be able to get it reported.
I am involved with another organisation, just in a casual way, called Just Enough UK, which is going around schools to explain the issue. It has used the Cinderella model as well as Fagin, with all the boys being made to steal. That still goes on. The youngsters—they are in primary schools as well as secondary schools—suddenly twig.
Michael Connarty
I am enjoying the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, but I think I need to intervene to point out that there was never a Fagin. Fagin is a mythical character. The true story, which was recorded in the courts, involved a group of Italian men who brought young boys who thought they were going to apprenticeships in Milan to the UK and trained them to steal. Anti-Semitism allowed Dickens to create Fagin as the Jew exploiting boys, and it is incorrect to repeat that.
Sir John Randall
I am only repeating what Dickens said. I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which I think makes another point entirely, but what I am saying is that a lot of people will be acquainted with the story of Oliver Twist, not just from the novel but from the musical. It might be regrettable that it has become a symbol of anti-Semitism, but the fact is that young people can understand the concept of youngsters being made to steal. We must ensure that young people are aware of the issue. They are incredibly observant and good at recognising strange behaviour among other kids and at seeing other things that are going on.
That is all I want to say at this stage. I look forward to the further stages of the Bill, because I think it can be improved. There are things that we have to do and I hope that the mood of consensual but friendly criticism can continue. So far, what I have heard and seen from the Home Secretary, the Minister and Home Office officials has been consistent with that. We will differ on one or two points and that is where there might be room for powerful debates, powerful arguments and powerful speeches. I am afraid that they are not my forte, but I might be able to do the right thing in the Division Lobby.
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.
Home Affairs
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
I can absolutely assure the hon. Lady that we are very aware of the major period of summer holidays coming up and the need for us to ensure that the facilities and resources are there in the Passport Office to deal with this matter. I do not know whether it is appropriate to give a plug for a debate that is due to take place in the House, but tonight’s Adjournment debate will be on this matter. My hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration will be responding, and he will be able to go into some of these matters in more detail.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
On a very simple point, I have many cases similar to those of my colleagues, but people are being told that the target cannot be met, so if they want a passport they should pay £70 to have it express delivered. Will those people now be given their money back? If the Passport Office has failed to meet the standard set by the Department, those people should not be charged for that service.
Mrs May
I have indicated that even given the unprecedented levels of demand during the first few months of this year, we have been able to meet our service standards. People can pay for the premium service, but there has been good news in relation to passport fees: the Government were able to reduce the regular fee for passports, partly owing to changes in the Passport Office that resulted from our decision to scrap the identity card proposal of the last Government.
Overall, we see that our reforms and legislative changes are working. Now, in the fourth and final Session of this Parliament, we are bringing forward legislation to ensure that more organised criminals can be brought to justice, and to further the significant and far-reaching reforms of our criminal justice system.
The Gracious Speech included a Modern Slavery Bill to tackle the appalling crime of modern slavery. In few other crimes are the effects of organised criminals and gangs more pernicious than in the trade of human beings for profit. In towns and cities across the country, behind closed doors and hidden from plain sight, there are men, women and children who endure a horrendous existence of servitude and abuse. forced to work inhumane hours in terrible conditions, forced to live a life of crime and forced into degrading sexual exploitation. The misery and trauma experienced by victims are immense. Held against their will and with no means of escape, they often endure rape, violence and psychological torture.
In 2013, 1,746 potential victims of trafficking were referred to the national referral mechanism, but modern slavery is largely a hidden crime, so in reality this figure most likely does not represent or reflect the true number of people enduring slavery in Britain today. Slavery is a crime that includes not only those trafficked into the UK but vulnerable British nationals who are preyed upon and exploited by people living here.
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am sure he is right that his constituents will welcome this Bill; indeed, I hope that it will be welcomed, as it has been in the Joint Scrutiny Committee, by Members of all parties. If he will indulge me, I will say a little bit about what is in the Bill, which will explain to him how we are going to deal with this crime, particularly by toughening up sentencing and enabling the law enforcement agencies to be in an even better position to deal with it.
Michael Connarty
There have been many criticisms of how the national referral mechanism works, and the Government promised six months ago that there would be a review of it. Will there be detail of how this review has been carried out or how it will be carried out? What will we do with people when they leave the NRM? Once they have been in it for a certain time, they are pitched out into what would appear to be oblivion.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes a point that is often made about people coming to the end of their permitted period within the NRM. In fact, a lot of work is done with other providers to ensure that people are able to move on to other facilities at the end of that time, but crucially that will be one of the issues that of course the review of the NRM will look at. That review is ongoing. Yesterday, I saw the individual who is undertaking it. He said that he is getting on well with it; and of course we will bring the results of the review into the public domain, so that we can show what issues have been identified and what our response to them will be.
I said that I would come on to exactly what is in the Bill. If we are to stamp out this crime and expunge it from this country, we must arrest, prosecute and imprison the criminals and organised groups that systematically exploit people and that lie behind the majority of the modern-day slave trade.
Mrs May
The Bill will provide the enabling legislation that we undertook to provide when the Immigration Act 2014 was going through this House, following an amendment made in another place. We are doing it that way because we want to see what the best model is for child advocates; there are differences of opinion over which model will work best. We are therefore including an enabling power to ensure that we adopt the best model when that becomes clear from the trials.
Michael Connarty
Is the Home Secretary proposing a separate and more serious crime of trafficking or exploiting children? She has not made that clear.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We have had considerable discussions with the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. We have also had discussions with the Welsh Assembly, because most of the Bill’s provisions cover England and Wales. We are still in discussions with the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. The Scottish Government made it clear a few months ago that they wanted to introduce their own legislation in this area. As he says, there are also legislative proposals in the Northern Ireland Assembly. We are talking about how we can ensure that they all mesh together so that we have a comprehensive approach. As a result of further discussions, it is possible that I might wish to bring forward amendments relating to Scotland and Northern Ireland, but detailed discussions are still ongoing on what legislative arrangements will work best.
Moving on from the Modern Slavery Bill—
Michael Connarty
I think that the Home Secretary might have mentioned the fact that the biggest problem in Scotland—I am sure that the same is true in Northern Ireland—as has been said in public by the Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, is the criminalisation of victims by the UK Border Agency, which treats people as criminals because they have broken immigration laws. Rather than being treated as victims, they are taken to court for breaching immigration laws. Will that be resolved? Will the UK Border Agency stop victimising people by criminalising them for breaches of immigration laws?
Mrs May
I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the UK Border Agency will not be doing anything, because I abolished it over a year ago. He has taken a great interest in the issue over the years and has developed a great understanding of it, so he will know that one of the issues raised about the national referral mechanism is precisely the operation of immigration officials in relation to it. However, I think that the largest numbers of referrals made to the NRM still come from people within the immigration system who have spotted people who might have been trafficked. This is not an either/or issue; it is one that we have to explore very carefully, to ensure that all those who come into contact with people who might have been enslaved or trafficked can spot the signs and know how to refer, so that a case can be dealt with appropriately. Indeed, the Bill will include a clause about a duty on first responders to report a case when they see someone who has been the victim of slavery or trafficking.
For justice to be done, we must have a criminal justice system that properly punishes offenders and protects the public. The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, carried over from the third Session, is the next stage in the Government’s significant reforms to the justice system to make sure that offenders receive suitable sentences, to improve court processes and to reduce the financial burden on the taxpayer. It includes a package of sentencing and criminal law reforms aimed at ensuring that the public are kept safe from serious and repeat offenders.
Once this Bill gets Royal Assent, no one convicted of certain serious violent and sexual offences, such as the rape of a child or a serious terrorism offence, will be entitled to automatic release at the halfway point of their sentence, and they will get early release only if they no longer present a risk to the public. The Bill will ensure that when offenders are released on licence we can properly monitor their whereabouts using modern technology. It will also crack down on those who abscond after being recalled to custody by creating a new offence of being unlawfully at large. In addition, it will ensure that anyone who murders a police or prison officer in the course of their duty faces a whole life sentence, and it will introduce tougher sentences for those who cause death or serious injury by driving while disqualified.
While the proper punishment of offences is important, so too is rehabilitation. This is particularly true of young offenders. We are therefore putting education at the heart of youth custody and ensuring that young offenders are given an opportunity to turn their lives around. The Bill will provide for secure colleges to be created, so that we can trial a new approach to youth custody that gives young offenders the skills, support and qualifications that they need to turn their backs on crime and become productive, hard-working members of society.
Dr Huppert
I do not in any sense think that the economy is in a perfect place. The hon. Lady did not mention the fact that the last Government tried to suppress people getting help from food banks. I am very pleased that there are food banks to help people. The problem is not people getting help from food banks; it is people who are unable to get help from food banks because they do not know about them or because there is not a food bank available for them. The hon. Lady should have a look at why it was that under the last Government, whom she presumably supported for 13 years, inequality increased. Why did the richest pay less of the share of taxation? This Government have changed that. Why did unemployment go up under the last Government? I have a lot of sympathy for many of the stated aims of the Labour party on equality, but the problem is that they simply did not deliver it.
Let me return to the Queen’s Speech, which contained very good things. There was a shared agreement that we needed to do much more to help small businesses to thrive, something which we can agree will make a big difference. Small businesses make a huge difference to our economy, and will build our prosperity. I have been working hard on issues to do with local independent shops in particular, and this will be very helpful.
I am particularly pleased by the announcement on pub reform, which will make a big difference to people who have tied pubs across England and Wales. It is a great tribute to the fantastic work by a number of people who have campaigned. The statutory code and the independent adjudicator will make a big difference to keeping pubs open. My constituents have been able to open pubs again. We have been praised by everybody from the Campaign for Real Ale to the Labour shadow Minister for our work to try to save pubs. This will help us to do it.
We are also helping people who have any sort of income to be able to spend money in those pubs, businesses or anywhere else by increasing the personal allowance to £10,500. That is 26.6 million people who have had their income tax cut, making them better off and allowing those on low incomes to pay no income tax at all. The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) prompts me to point out that the last Government increased the tax on the very low-paid when they got rid of the 10p tax rate; they doubled the tax rate paid by some of the lowest earners. I am proud that we have reduced it instead. That is a much fairer and more progressive system, and I am proud that somebody on £10,000 a year will not pay anything. I am proud that we managed to persuade the Prime Minister, who originally opposed it, to go ahead with the proposal.
We are also making a difference on apprenticeships, something my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is very proud of. We should aim—this is a shared aspiration—for 2 million apprentices by the end of the Parliament. In my constituency I am seeing the difference that that is making, with the fantastic Cambridge regional college now having something like 5,000 apprentices studying. I have gone to see many of them to see how much of a difference it makes to their lives. It is helping them to get on.
Dr Huppert
If the hon. Gentleman would like to congratulate my regional college, he is very welcome to do so.
Michael Connarty
I would congratulate anyone who introduced proper apprenticeships, particularly the 5,000 in his constituency. How many of those people are doing three-year courses that will be recognised by City and Guilds to make them tradesmen, which we are very short of? How many are bogus apprenticeships with people doing short-term courses that are basically work experience?
Dr Huppert
I am very sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman attack these people. I look forward to his meeting some of the apprentices he thinks are bogus. He can come to see them and the programmes that they think are making a difference in enabling them to get training, to set up their own businesses and to make money, and tell them that he thinks what they are doing is bogus. I do not have the exact number of how many apprenticeships are for three years. I am sure that he can find out, but I find it depressing that he is so obsessed with attacking what the Government are doing about apprentices that he will attack the people who are making something of their lives by doing apprenticeships. Unfortunately we saw for many years—this predates the last Government—that apprenticeships and vocational education were simply not given the importance and standing they deserve. That is something we absolutely have to change.
Let me move on to some of the Home Office Bills. We have a Serious Crime Bill. Serious crime costs us something like £24 billion a year, so it is essential that we make more progress in dealing with it. We have huge problems with our confiscation legislation. Matrix Chambers has said:
“The confiscation legislation of the United Kingdom is complex and difficult to construe.”
That is absolutely right. We should be making sure that we can recover more money. That has been a weak link for a long time.
It is right to clarify the Children and Young Persons Act 1933—something for which Liberal Democrat Members including my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) have long campaigned—to make it clear that emotional cruelty that is likely to cause psychological harm to a child should be an offence. The current law on neglect is outdated and goes back to Victorian times. It is right to transform it.
Extending FGM-related offences to acts done outside the UK by UK nationals and residents is also very much welcome. My hon. Friends the Under-Secretary of State for International Development and the Minister for Crime Prevention have been working very hard on this issue. We should finally take action on female genital mutilation.
We also see progress on a sensible drugs policy aimed at reducing harm, which should be our aim for all of what we are trying to do through our drugs policy. We see decisive action on trying to deal with the cutting agent. A huge amount of the harm caused by illegal substances is, in fact, caused by the cutting agent with which they are mixed. By taking action against them, we will make a difference to people’s lives and stop the harm. I hope we can go even further. I am looking forward to the international comparative study on drugs policy and on new psychoactive substances, on which my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention is also working hard. We should do what works, and what will reduce the harm caused to thousands of people around the country—not do just what sounds as though it is tough. We need to do things that actually make a difference.
That is also the case with modern-day slavery, on which I hope we will see cross-party agreement. We are definitely not dealing well enough with trafficking at the moment; we have to get it right. UNICEF estimates that something like 10 children a week are being trafficked into the UK, which is simply unacceptable. It is right that the Government face scrutiny by the Joint Committee. I wish all Bills could go through a proper scrutiny process because I think this House is at its best when it discusses things rationally, rather than there being two sides having a row.
I was pleased that there were various things we did not see in the Queen’s Speech. We did not see another immigration Bill. We have already had some discussion of this, but immigration, like many issues, is not always about passing more legislation; it is about getting things right. To my mind, the biggest problems surrounding immigration are not about our laws; they are about whether the right decisions are made—by what used to be the Border Agency, but is now back in the Home Office—correctly and promptly. Bringing back exit checks will, I think, make more difference to public certainty and the control of our borders than any piece of legislation we could propose in this area.
There is much more I could say about data retention directives and cybercrime, but I would like to raise one issue about which I have been concerned. I have spoken to a number of colleagues about it—my hon. Friends and also, for example, the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton). I was approached by someone about the issue of revenge porn, which is happening more and more often. People take naked or indecent images of partners and then, once the relationship ends, they share them online, publishing them very widely—to the great mental torment of the people concerned. It is mostly but not always women who have agreed to have an explicit photo taken, but never agreed for it to be broadcast to all and sundry on the web as a means of revenge. It destroys people’s lives because of the psychological effect, the shame and the great humiliation caused when these images can be seen by anyone. The problem is getting worse, as Women’s Aid, the National Stalking Helpline, UK Safer Internet Centre and everybody increasingly accept.
Talking recently to a constituent of the hon. Member for Guildford, I was shocked to discover that there is currently no sanction to deal with this problem. At the moment it is not a criminal offence to share the image because the photo was taken legitimately. Consent was given for the photo or the film, but not for it to be shared. Typically, the problem is not covered under the harassment legislation, which requires something to have happened more than once, but once the image has been published online, it is broadcast for ever more. Reputable websites will take down these images when asked, but the person involved has to ask each website to do so, and for that to happen they normally have to prove that it is them in the photo, which means going through the rather humiliating process of taking a photo of oneself with a sign and sending it off. That makes the whole process much worse.
I do not often call for new criminal sanctions—it is not my natural style. In this case, however, I think we need to make a criminal sanction available when people share indecent images in the knowledge that consent would not have been given. I hope that the House will look further at this. It will need careful work to get the details right, ensuring that we do not accidentally criminalise activities that should be allowed, but we do need to take action in this area.
It will be an interesting year. I do not think this Parliament is over. If it focuses on scrutinising what is happening and ensuring that we look carefully at legislation rather than rushing it through in an effort to pass more and more Bills, that would be helpful. Over the last four years, we have contributed to a more liberal and fairer Britain, but there is much more to do. Some of it will happen this year; some of it will happen in later years.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The debate has been very interesting so far. In my speech, I shall take up the theme of immigration, which I think has been the central issue today. Let me say first, however, that I do not consider this to be a zombie Parliament. I think that some very important pieces of legislation are being introduced. There are some with which I do not agree and for which I will not vote—such as the recall Bill, which undermines parliamentary sovereignty—but others are fantastically important, such as the Serious Crime and Modern Slavery Bills.
I am inordinately proud of this Government’s achievements, in view of the very difficult financial inheritance and legacy that we were left by the last Government. That was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). We are building a sustainable economy, and moving 5 million people from out-of-work benefits into meaningful work. In my opinion, the fact that more than 1,000 people in my constituency were parked on incapacity benefit in 2010 constitutes a badge of shame. We are now developing university technical colleges for technical and vocational education, all over the country. We are opening new free schools and academies, and creating new apprenticeship programmes.
Mr Jackson
They are not bogus, as my hon. Friend said. I think it unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman should denigrate young people who are, in good faith, seeking to improve their life chances and skills by taking worthwhile courses. If he can suggest any alternative, let him do so, but in 13 years the Labour party did very little to tackle the issues. It was happy to leave thousands, if not millions, of young people innumerate and illiterate when they left secondary school, and primary school, too.
We are focusing on infrastructure; we are reforming welfare; and we are reducing the deficit, which is the major imperative for the nation. I pay tribute to the Liberal Democrats for being far-sighted enough to join us in our efforts to do what was right for our country and our constituents, rather than aiming for short-term, partisan party advantage.
Listening to the shadow Home Secretary’s speech was a pitiful experience. Rolling out examples of Passport Office failures does not speak of a party which, in 11 months’ time, will seek to govern this country. It is bandwagon jumping, and it is pitiful that it does not have a more coherent home affairs programme to put before the House, not least because it is the party that told us 15,000 Polish people would come to the UK after 2004, and it was only out by a factor of about 100. It completely underestimated the numbers that were coming to this country. It is the party that is not believed on immigration. Some 77% of people say that it is a very important concern to them, and the only reason the Labour party is interested in it now is because of the election results in places like Doncaster and elsewhere across the country, where its own core blue-collar, working-class vote does not believe it and does not believe that it has the solutions to deal, long term in a sustainable way, with the problem that it created when in government, which was open-door, unrestricted, unfettered immigration. Incidentally, we will not take any lectures from a party that lost both a Minister of State and a Home Secretary because of its cack-handed mismanagement of the immigration system when it was last in government.
I am not wholly critical of the Labour party, however, because we heard a very considered, erudite and typically thoughtful speech from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). He touched on an important point. The issue of immigration can be almost directly linked to a feeling of a crisis of authority and to the estrangement of ordinary people—voters who are not that interested in the minutiae of politics—and the lack of faith and trust that they have in the political system. That is a function of the European Union and of how distant and unaccountable it is, but it is also a function of the fact that they do not believe in the institutions of our country to get things done in a timely way that affects their lives for the better. The right hon. Gentleman was right to make that point.
The Government have done a good job in very difficult circumstances. They were right to concentrate on reducing the net migration figure as a policy priority. I hope they achieve that, and at least they are trying. Interestingly, when the shadow Home Secretary was grilled by John Humphrys on the “Today” programme a few weeks ago, she was big on motherhood and apple pie, saying we should reduce immigration, but she was not specific on whether Labour would adhere to any target number. It is incumbent upon a responsible Opposition to offer proper alternatives, and she was somewhat remiss in that respect.
We have clamped down on bogus colleges; we are doing something about health tourism; and we are also looking at access to benefits, English language skills and the income earnings threshold—all policy issues that could have been looked at and acted upon in the previous Parliament.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). He has been largely a lonely voice over a number of years in voicing these issues. Some people came close in the past to as good as calling him and others xenophobic or racist for doing so, but he has been proved right. It is important that we have a proper, balanced and reasonable debate on the level—the unprecedented scale—of migration. Between 2004 and 2011, 34,000 people came to my constituency and were granted national insurance numbers. In two schools in my constituency no children speak English as their first language, and there are over 40 schools where the rate is well over 50%. That is an issue of resources and resource allocation, and it is very important. It is nothing to do with xenophobia or racism. It is about keeping the bargain of trust and faith with our constituents.
That brings me on to my European Union Free Movement Directive 2004 (Disapplication) Bill, a ten-minute rule Bill that I put to the House in October 2012. I think that in many respects I was ahead of my time. I will put my cards on the table: I am a member of Better off Out and I will campaign actively to leave the EU, but I will respect whatever decision the British people take when we have a referendum under a majority Conservative Government in 2017. However, I respectfully say to the Government that they need to look at what I was proposing in that Bill 18 months or so ago, which was not to rip up the free movement directive. It is not a tablet of stone; it is not a holy grail. It is a piece of living European law. The Spanish looked at registration controls—registration when people entered the country, when they changed jobs, when they married, when they had children—as a way of reducing the pull factor, and we should be looking at that, too, complementing and building on the announcements we have already made and the regulations we have laid on matters such as welfare tourism and access to social housing.
I ask the Prime Minister to look at that again and perhaps to introduce further regulations that finesse and nuance the free movement directive, not because we are xenophobic—not because we do not want decent, hard-working Polish citizens, Lithuanians and people from the Czech Republic coming to our country, contributing and adding to the variety and diversity of the country—but because many of the people we represent are concerned about large-scale immigration and the length of time that it has been going on.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee), who may have one of the most unusual-sounding constituencies. She must be commended for her work on modern slavery and on children in particular.
I want to address what we now refer to as “the Scotland bit” in the Queen’s Speech. We are always grateful to Her Majesty for acknowledging Scotland in her Gracious Speech; it usually comes about two thirds of the way through, and again this year we were not disappointed. In the Queen’s Speech Her Majesty confirmed that her Government will
“make the case for Scotland to remain a part of the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 June 2014; Vol. 754, c. 4.]
No surprise there; that is what we would expect her to say. In fact, it would have been quite remarkable had she said something else. Imagine if, for example, she had said, “I look forward to my subjects in Scotland securing the normal powers of an independent nation. I look forward to them enjoying the resources that will make their country one of the most dynamic and prosperous in the world.” Of course, she did not say that. Her Majesty knows, as we all know in Scotland, that the whole range of facilities available to this Government and this House will be pitted against Scotland in the next few months to try to influence the vote.
All the donors and cronies down the corridor will be engaged in trying to make sure that Scotland remains in the United Kingdom. All the resources available to all the Opposition parties will be engaged in ensuring that Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom. All of Whitehall, all Government Committees and all Select Committees will be engaged in trying to ensure that Scotland remains a part of the United Kingdom. I am one of six Scottish National party Members, so I am very much aware of the range of forces pitted against us. Out of 650 Members of the House there are maybe 10 of us calling for Scottish independence, and thank goodness for the hon. Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie), who has now joined the call. If we add the 800 Members from down the corridor, there are 1,400 Westminster parliamentarians who are against Scottish independence versus the six of us. That seems like reasonable odds to me. It is reasonably fair. What we have to do now is recognise, as the Queen did in the Speech, that the entire resources of Westminster—the whole of the House of Commons and the whole House of Lords—will be ranged against Scotland. Last week they even enlisted Lego figures in their fight to stop Scotland becoming independent, to much laughter and ridicule.
In the Scotland bit of her speech, Her Majesty confirmed that the Government
“will continue to implement new financial powers for the Scottish Parliament”.
These are not the new financial powers that the Prime Minister apparently signed up to only last week. These are the remaining consequential issues from the Scotland Act 2012 that need to be tidied up.
More devolution is all the rage in Scotland. We cannot walk around one of our big cities without tripping over some Unionist or UK commission looking into the issue. It is like the proverbial buses all turning up at once. It has got me and all the other people in Scotland wondering why they are doing it now. Is it anything to do with the prospect of a referendum on independence? Surely not. Yet that is almost certainly the case. It is curious because our Unionist friends did everything to keep a “more powers” option off the ballot paper for the referendum in September. They would give us anything else, such as the right to administer the referendum. They even allowed us to frame the question. It is we who were in charge of the franchise. The one thing they did not want was a “more powers” option on the ballot paper. Now we are expected to accept that they are sincere in delivering all these shiny new powers, when they did so much to keep them off the ballot paper. There are two things that we say about that: “Aye. Right. Fool us once and we’ll blame you. Fool us twice and it’s our fault.”
Michael Connarty
Might not the logic be to expose the fact that what has been offered by the Scottish National party was the lunacy of independence, as against staying within the Union where we could negotiate changes, and to expose the paucity of the hon. Gentleman’s argument that independence might be better for the people of Scotland, whereas we know that it would be a disaster for them?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman has his own view, but why not offer the option on the ballot paper? There was accommodation with the Scottish Government about that. We were quite happy and relaxed about a third question being put forward. The Scottish people should always get what they want. That is my view and I am sure it is the hon. Gentleman’s view, so the question could have appeared on the ballot paper, but it was rejected. It was the one thing that the Government did not want included.
We have been here before. The hon. Gentleman will remember this. It was in my own constituency—Alec Douglas-Home trooping up to Perth city hall in 1979. What did he say to the Scottish people? “Vote no and we’ll give you something better. We’ll give you a better Parliament” than was on offer in 1979. What did we get? Eighteen years of Thatcherism, the destruction of our industrial base, and Tory obscenities like the poll tax. We will not be fooled by that again.
One of the funny consequences of all this—it is quite ironic—is that the party that so defiantly opposed the Scottish Parliament in any form of Scottish devolution is now the party of more devolution. It has made a more substantial offer than the party of devolution, the Labour party. We might be in the ridiculous situation whereby in the next Parliament, Labour Members oppose a Conservative Government offering many more powers than they ever intended to offer. Incredible, but that may be the case.
There is only one way for the Scottish Parliament to get more powers. There is only one way to ensure we get the powers that Scotland needs, and that is to vote yes in the independence referendum. If we do not, we leave it up to this House. We leave it up to the largesse of predominantly English Members to give us more powers. I know lots of English Members. Some of them are very good friends of mine. I do not detect a mood around the House that if Scotland votes no, they will rush in to give us more powers to reward us. I get the sense that they are much more interested in issues such as the Barnett formula. They believe their own propaganda and are concerned that Scotland gets more than the rest of their English regions. They are more concerned about that than about giving us power over income tax or more powers over welfare.
The other thing that consumes English Members is the West Lothian question about what Scottish Members could do here. Maybe it is just me, but I do not see a groundswell of English Members of Parliament queuing up to reward Scotland for turning down the prospect of independence. They are more likely to be thinking, “Scotland’s had its chance. It’s time for my region for a change.”
Other than the Scotland stuff, there were no other constitutional issues in the Queen’s Speech. That means that we will leave this Parliament with the House of Lords commanding the same position in our democracy as when the great reforming Liberals took part in government. What a disgrace. That unelected, crony-stuffed, donor-inhabited affront to democracy will remain in the same condition as when we came into Parliament.
The Liberals had lots of red lines when it came to the constitutional debate. I am not blaming the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) personally, although he is looking at me as though I am. They could have made much more of reforming the House of Lords. They went for AV—the inconsequential mouse of a reform measure—when they could have done something about that place, so we are left with it. In his parting shot, the Liberals’ Lord Oakeshott hinted that cash for honours is still very much a feature of securing a place next door. It is an absurd place and I hope that the next Queen’s Speech will enable us to do something about that affront to democracy. This Government this time round have done nothing.
Some have described the Queen’s Speech this year as a speech for a zombie Parliament. If it is a zombie Parliament, it must be a phantom Queen’s Speech, because it does not address the political dynamic that exists throughout the United Kingdom, what is going on and what should be debated. A few Members have said that. I think I am the only Member to raise the subject of UKIP. The party won an election a couple of weeks ago and made significant gains. Nobody wants to talk about UKIP here. Nobody will address the issue of what it has done. UKIP is pulling the strings of this Government and they are responding in the only way they know how—pandering to UKIP’s agenda instead of challenging it.
I am much more interested in what Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are going to do. I challenged the shadow Home Secretary on that today. They are at a defining point. They are at a critical and crucial moment. The Labour party has two choices in relation to the immigration/UKIP agenda. It can challenge the assumptions that it is based on, do something about it, take it on, risk not being the favourite of the right-wing press and maybe alienating a few voters who have bought into this pernicious agenda; or it can pander to it and accommodate it.
I have seen the letters from Labour Members encouraging the party leadership to accommodate the UKIP agenda and saying that it could be addressed. They must reject it, stand tall and do the right thing. I know it is difficult sometimes for the Labour party to do this but it must offer leadership. If the Opposition offer leadership on immigration and challenge UKIP on its agenda, they will get my support. I will help them out. But they must not give in to it. They are in a critical position on the immigration/UKIP question. Don’t blow it, Labour. The nation is watching. Labour cannot face two ways on this—it either takes UKIP on or accommodates it. I very much hope Labour does the right thing.
Labour has let itself be bullied by the Tories and UKIP. It is appalling. Labour has been bullied into apologising for its years of immigration. That is one of the best things the Labour Government did and I cannot believe that the Opposition have been bullied like this. Stand up to them, for goodness sake! They should not be afraid to say that they got it right on immigration. It has been fantastic for the whole of the United Kingdom. It has made the city we are in one of the greatest cities in the world. Only about 30% of the people who live and work in London came from this place; the rest are from overseas. What has immigration done for us, as Monty Python might have asked? Look at this place and see what it has achieved, then try and argue that immigration is not good. Come on, Labour. Get on with it. Stand up to them and do the right thing.
I shall deal quickly with Home Office issues, few of which affect Scotland. We are practically independent when it comes to policing and judiciary arrangements. Thank goodness for that. When the Home Secretary turns up to the Police Federation for their annual meeting, she is booed, jeered and shouted down. Then I see our Cabinet Secretary turning up to the Scottish Police Federation and being cheered to the rafters for what we are doing for police officers in Scotland, compared with what this lot are doing here.
I welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. Even though it is for England and Wales only, I hope it is successful and I pay tribute to the many Members who have spoken in support of the measure. In Scotland we have our own people-trafficking Bill and we will continue to work with the UK on the matter, particularly in areas such as extra-territorial intervention and maritime policing.
Legislative consent motions will be required for some of the measures in the serious crime Bill, and I know that again, my colleagues in the Scottish Government will work closely with the Home Office to ensure a co-ordinated response to serious crime. But Scottish National party Members want more than that. Grateful as we are to Her Majesty, we want more than the Scotland bit. It is great that in every Session of Parliament it is included, and we look forward to it, but we do not want the insignificant wee bits here and there, the bits of Bills that apply to Scotland. We want a legislative programme for Scotland in the interests of the people according to our agenda and our priorities. We do not want to be dictated to by a Government for whom we did not vote. That is what we will get on 18 September. That is what the Scottish people will vote for.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
May I just say to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) that I am told the police are so good at monitoring calls from mobile phones in prisons that if a criminal does not have one, they will throw him one over the wall, because they will then know what crimes are going on. I was told by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, before it disappeared, that it used such monitoring to trace people’s criminality, their money and criminal attachments outside prison when they leave. The hon. Gentleman should therefore not worry about mobile phones, as long as the police have the numbers.
I turn to the Queen’s Speech and issues relating to the Home Office and, partly, to the Ministry of Justice. The debate has focused on two main Bills, but there is a context. I was disappointed when the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) mocked those who raised the question of the passports fiasco. The reality is that that fiasco demonstrates to people that there is something wrong with the Government’s policy on cuts if they are affecting people’s ability to get passports in the normal time frame.
It irritates my constituents greatly when they have given plenty of time and are told that if they pay more, they can still meet the deadlines. In the case of one of my constituents, the process started in March, and eventually they had to pay £70 to get their passport sent to them. There is something wrong with that. The Government must accept that in that context people see the Home Office as failing in the delivery of a day-to-day service—it is often the day-to-day things on which people will make judgments. It is a sign of a Department that is not coping.
Another issue that, sadly, is brought up regularly in my constituency is the abuse of the marital route for residence in the UK by people applying for spousal visas. Then, when they eventually get through the process and claim to have the documents—I have documents here that seem to have been bought rather than won by endeavour; people can buy documents to say that they have passed the test—unfortunately, young men appear just to abandon their spouse and child or children, and head for the big city. I know the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) would love them to stay in Scotland, but in reality they head for the conurbations of England. I have a case at the moment where that is happening and someone has recently abandoned their wife and child. It is a member of the Pakistani community, so I hope they take as dim a view of that as I do.
I also think there is something wrong with a Government who promise again and again that they will do something about the use of wild animals in circuses, and then abandon that in the last phase of their government. Many people have campaigned on that issue in my constituency for a number of years, but I think that those who claim to be Conservative voters will not be doing that in the next election, given that betrayal.
In reality, the context in which the Government are acting is one in which they are falsifying their credentials. Violent crime has risen and is up from 607,000 offences in England and Wales to 614,000, whereas the number of prosecuted criminals has gone down from 141,000 convictions to 134,000. That does not give the public any sense that the Government are serious about looking after people’s safety. Reports of rape, domestic violence and child abuse are up, but again, convictions are not matching those rising reports.
I wish to mention something that is not specifically this Government’s remit, but that of all Governments including the Scottish Government. At midnight last night in Glasgow there was a march of women to reclaim the streets. There have been three serious rapes in the public streets of Glasgow in the past week. I heard the police officer—just as we often hear from the Government—come on and give statistics, stating that numbers of crimes were higher last year and that clear-up rates are higher in percentage terms than in the year before. However, that does not convince people that they are safer on the streets, or convince women that we are changing society and policing it properly for them. If crime is not prevented entirely, the streets are not safe, and if all perpetrators are not convicted, the trauma and sense of betrayal remains.
The unacceptable fear of walking in the streets of a city cannot be endured in 2014. I know that because we are, unfortunately, a much blighted extended family. My young cousin, Agnes Cooney was murdered in 1981. They have never solved the crime; they have never found out who did it. One reason is that Strathclyde police lost the evidence box or the production box, and therefore could never use the modern technology of DNA. That trauma has never gone away from my family. My mother died with a photograph of Agnes on the mantelpiece, and her sisters berate me regularly for the failure of Governments, the police and the authorities to deal with that crime. That is what the women of Glasgow feel at the moment. It is not safe to walk in the streets of Glasgow, and all the statistics and all the little pledges will not be accepted. The Government have to accept that when they are not clearing up serious violent crime at that rate, something is wrong.
I have been involved with the Modern Slavery Bill for some time—[Interruption.] I see the Minister flapping on the Benches, but if the Government stand up and tell people that they are doing better on crime but statistics show they are not, they are clearly trying to mislead the public.
The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)
The hon. Gentleman accuses the Government of misleading the public, but I gently point out that, as I think he acknowledged, policing in Scotland and Glasgow is not the responsibility of the UK Government; it is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Drawing conclusions from that that the UK Government are misleading anyone is itself pretty disingenuous.
Michael Connarty
In fact I drew the conclusion from the statistics for England and Wales, which I quoted to the Minister and he will read in the record. Those are not statistics that the Government like to put out but they are the facts. Violent crime is going up in England and Wales, and convictions are going down. There is something wrong with policing under the Minister’s watch.
I would like to thank a number of people who put in so much effort on the Modern Slavery Bill. We have heard about Anthony Steen, and when he becomes Sir Anthony Steen I think he will be adequately rewarded for his amazing efforts in making this an issue that we all accepted. We all know about anti-slavery day in the UK, which everyone recognises.
There are many others I wish to thank. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) asked me to give her apologies because she arranged a study visit to another country before she knew the subject for debate today. She has done amazing work on this issue, including tabling the first ten-minute rule Bill on the supply chain issue, and she chairs the all-party group, which has now become much more inclusive.
I also wish to mention Andrew Wallis, who has not so far been mentioned, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) mentioned the Centre for Social Justice. Andrew and the centre have done a lot of work to pull together the issue to make people in all parties realise that we cannot deal with slavery in a UK context; it must be dealt with in an international context. If the Wilberforce legislation had freed all the slaves in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, it would have freed only a couple of hundred. It was freeing slaves across the nations with which we traded—using slaves as barter—that changed the face of slavery from Africa.
I also wish to thank two colleagues, Jenny Marra, the MSP from Dundee, who has tabled a Bill on this issue in the Scottish Parliament, and Lord Morrow of Clogher Valley, who has made similar proposals in Northern Ireland. I also commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who took on the task of chairing the Joint Committee of both Houses and all parties—including the Cross Benchers—that considered the draft Bill. I hope that the Bill has been improved by our proposals.
I am pleased that we will have legislation on human trafficking and modern slavery, but it must be measured against what we aspire to see after 10 weeks of evidence-gathering, as set out in the Joint Committee’s report. Our proposals included a reoriented definition of the crime of slavery; a focus on children, with a specific offence of enslaving and exploiting children, and the introduction of guardianship for children; support for victims; and decriminalisation. The latter is important in the context of Northern Ireland and Scotland. The big criticism made when the draft Bill was launched in Scotland was that it could not deliver on its promise as long as the Border Force—it used to be called the UK Border Agency—criminalises people who are trafficked to this country and commit no offence other than breaking the laws on immigration.
The Committee went to meet a group of people who had been trafficked and were now being looked after by the POPPY Project. One young woman had been brought here in a ship without knowing where she was going. She landed in Liverpool and was forced into prostitution. She ended up in London, where she ran away. She went to a police station and told her story, but she was locked in a cell and accused of lying about how she came to Britain. Eventually she ended up in Yarl’s Wood to be deported. One of the people there knew someone from POPPY and introduced the young woman. POPPY investigated her story and found it to be true and undeniable, but the police treated her as a criminal. As she said, she thought she would get justice in the United Kingdom, of all places. People in her country, in Africa, thought of the British police as not corrupt, but they turned on her and she was traumatised by that experience. But people who work in the field say that experience has been repeated thousands of times.
We need to improve asset recovery, and we want an independent assessment of the performance of the Government under the legislation. We want an anti-slavery commissioner who is independent and not the Home Secretary’s poodle—I wrote that phrase myself. We also want something done about supply chain legislation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead said, protection for migrant domestic workers does not need legislation, but it must be addressed. We want sentencing strengthened. Of those measures, five are in the Bill—I read a draft of the Bill while I was waiting to speak.
The evidence in the 2014 Human Rights Watch report “Hidden Away”, on what happens to people who are domestic servants in this country, often in very rich houses or with people involved in an overseas ambassadorial role, is unassailable. The report states:
“Most of the migrant domestic workers…described at least some of the elements that constitute forced labour under international law.”
The report makes a number of recommendations that it appears the Government want to ignore, for example, to
“Ratify the ILO Domestic Worker Convention and bring national laws and practices into compliance”
and to include a provision in the Modern Slavery Bill to amend immigration rules to defend these workers:
“Amend the visa rules to allow all migrant domestic workers, including those working in diplomatic households, to change employer.”
That is not allowed. Workers can be locked up and treated like a dog and go back to their own country, but they cannot seek a better employer in this country, which they used to be able to do under the visa arrangements we made.
What is missing from the Bill, and what it will be judged on—we will be able to debate in detail what is in the Bill on Second Reading—is, for example, the omission of independence for the proposed anti-slavery commissioner. Reading the clauses, it is clear that the commissioner is likely to be the Home Secretary’s poodle. The Home Secretary can decide what can be reported on and how it can be reported. There is no question of independence. Basically, the Bill will appoint a civil servant to work for the Home Secretary, who will decide what can be reported. The reports have to go through the Home Secretary before they can be published. There is no structure for independent assessment of Government performance—there is nothing at all on that in the Bill.
There is a failure to address slavery in the supply chains of UK companies. Luis CdeBaca, the US ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, said:
“We can’t prosecute our way out of this crime.”
Luis CdeBaca has prosecuted more traffickers than anyone else in the world. In his evidence to the Committee, he told us that he saw more benefit in the California law—statutory auditing and statutory reporting by companies in California of the whole of the supply chain—than in prosecution. Another supporter of that, and of my private Member’s Bill, was Andrew Forrest, who I understand is one of the richest men in Australia. He set up Walk Free when he found trafficked children in his own quarries in Nepal. Walk Free now has more than 2 million members and campaigns on this issue across the world. David Arkless of ArkLight, who was the former international president of the Manpower company, audited to the third level millions of suppliers to that company. He offers training to anyone who wants to do that for their own company.
The Joint Committee will recommend what I think is a very moderate clause—the Committee did not recommend everything that was in my private Member’s Bill. It is a simple recommendation that should have been accepted and included in the Bill. Section 414C(7)(iii) of the Companies Act 2006 should be amended:
“Before ‘social’ insert ‘modern slavery’.”
The five elements of the California Act should be taken on by companies. They should: verify and evaluate supply chains; audit suppliers to certify goods and services purchased from suppliers; maintain accountability with regard to distribution; and train staff. That is not too burdensome, but none of it appears in the Bill.
That moderate move was not supported by everyone. My very good friend—I hope he remains my very good friend—and respected campaigner Aidan McQuade, the director of Anti-slavery International, argued, and still champions the idea, that we should use the Bribery Act model, so that knowing about and allowing modern slavery at any point in the company’s supply chain should be a criminal offence for the chief executive of the company. He stands by that as the solution that he wants.
But what is interesting is the people who now supported the proposal when it came before the Joint Committee who did not support the Bill that I put forward. The number of supermarkets that were reluctant to come forward was amazing. In fact, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s wrote to me to say that it was really a matter for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, and it was not for his company to audit the supply chain. Now Amazon, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, Primark, Sainsbury’s and Tesco have all written to tell us that they would support legislation if it was not unduly burdensome. That is an amazing step forward from those companies. I hope that the House will commend them for doing that and encourage them to lobby the Government to get legislation that they can use.
I encourage our friends on the Government Benches and in the House of Lords; I assume the support of people on the Labour Benches. But if we really do want to modernise the anti-slavery principles of William Wilberforce’s legislation of 200 years ago, we should adopt the auditing and reporting of supply chains as a minimum. Slavery does not just happen in the UK; it happens for the UK in other countries.
The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)
I, too, thank all those whom the shadow Attorney-General, the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), thanked for participating in this debate. Even by the standards of debates on the Queen’s Speech, it has been wide-ranging and instructive in a number of fields. We have covered fracking, pensions, parliamentary recall and—at some length—plastic bags. However, I hope that the House will be happy if I seek to respond within the limits and scope of the debate on home affairs and justice matters.
There is a good deal of important legislation in this area, covering both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The Modern Slavery Bill, which is the first of its kind in Europe, will substantially strengthen our powers to tackle this appalling crime, by ensuring that perpetrators can receive suitably severe punishments, creating an anti-slavery commissioner and enhancing protection and support for victims.
The Serious Crime Bill will disrupt all those who engage in, support and profit from all forms of organised crime, guard against the threat of terrorism and protect vulnerable women and children.
The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is carried over from the previous Session, is the next stage in this Government’s significant reforms of the justice system, to ensure that serious and repeat offenders receive suitable sentences, to improve court processes and to reduce the financial burden on the taxpayer.
The social action, responsibility and heroism Bill will reassure the public that if they act for the benefit of society, demonstrate a generally responsible approach towards the safety of others, or assist someone in an emergency, the courts will always consider the context of their actions in the event that they are sued for negligence.
In the first four years of this Parliament, the Government have made great strides to transform and strengthen the country’s justice system, improve support for victims, rehabilitate offenders and make prisons more effective while reducing the cost to the taxpayer.
I should pause on the point about prisons to address what I thought was an interesting and thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), and assure him that the Offender Rehabilitation Bill, which was introduced in a previous Session, is precisely designed to transform the system and address the point that he rightly identified about reoffending and particularly those reoffending who had only short sentences in prison. For the first time, they will now have rehabilitative help both while they are in prison and when they come through the prison gate. He was absolutely right to have identified that weakness in the previous system, and the Bill will address precisely that weakness.
At the same time as making those reforms, we have strengthened the immigration system, making it fairer for British citizens and legitimate migrants but tougher on those who abuse it.
Crime has continued to fall. We continue to implement our programme of bold police reform, and we have set up the National Crime Agency to tackle the evils of organised crime and further protect our country.
Let me turn to the substance of the debate and the details of the legislation that we intend to introduce this Session. I am glad that the Modern Slavery Bill was broadly welcomed, not least by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd). We all agree on both sides of the House that modern slavery is an appalling crime. It is completely unacceptable that traffickers and slave masters are able to operate in this country, coercing and deceiving individuals into a life of abuse, servitude and inhumane treatment.
This Government are determined to take action against modern slavery. The Modern Slavery Bill will give law enforcement agencies the tools that they need to tackle modern slavery. It will ensure that perpetrators can be severely punished for these awful crimes, and it will improve support and protection for victims. Clearly, we will need to address a number of detailed points, some of which are very important, as the Bill passes through the House and the other place.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead and others, including the shadow Attorney-General, talked about the importance of transparency in supply chains. Of course we are committed to tackling exploitation in private sector supply chains, and we support businesses to tackle the issue. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is meeting business leaders tomorrow as part of the Government’s commitment to work with business to develop the most effective approach, because it is clear that businesses that take no action risk both their reputation and, in the long run, their profits. I do not think that that should divide us in this House. We would prefer to persuade businesses that it is in their interests to take action, rather than placing additional legal and regulatory burdens on them. Clearly, that will be a matter for continuing debate.
Michael Connarty
I just wonder whether anyone in the Home Office has read the evidence that was put before the Joint Committee. Everyone, including the people running the California rules, said quite clearly that it is not enough to have a voluntary code and that statutory obligations are needed, because otherwise it will not work.
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman, who follows these matters closely, will be aware that changes to UK company reporting arrangements that require disclosure on human rights issues came into force last October. It is sensible to look at the effect of that change before coming to a firm conclusion. It is also sensible to let such reforms bed down before reaching a firm conclusion, which he seems to have reached already.
The shadow Home Secretary and several other hon. Members talked about domestic workers and visa abuse. The Government are taking action to help stop practices that exploit vulnerable workers and undercut local businesses that play by the rules. Various provisions in the Modern Slavery Bill will help to end that kind of exploitation, which frankly runs into slavery.
Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Sadiq Khan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding us all of his excellent memory of historical facts and dates. I am afraid that I cannot comment on that particular remark by Tony Blair, although I can comment on most of his remarks.
There is clearly concern about the way in which the Government have gone about seeking—or rather not seeking—the views of Parliament, and the lack of votes on this matter. Today we heard from three Select Committee Chairs: the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). I shall not repeat the unprecedented criticisms of the Government’s approach by not one but three Select Committees, namely the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) expressed concern about the lack of consultation with the Scottish Government, and a number of other Members in all parts of the House referred to the lack of scrutiny being given to the decisions on which the Government are embarking.
Labour Members will approach the substance of the issues on the basis of what will help us in the fight against crime, rather than what will help us to ensure that our Back Benchers are soothed and reassured, which has been the Government’s approach. I wait to hear what the Justice Secretary has to say on the issues that have been raised today, but I live in hope that, rather than hearing the usual EU-bashing or ECHR-trashing, we shall hear a considered response to the important issues raised by Government Back Benchers and, indeed, by other Members in all parts of the House.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford has already described in detail our views on many of the measures that the Government are proposing to opt back into. Let me now touch briefly on some of the measures that fall into my own area of responsibility. They were dealt with in the Justice Committee’s report, and, today, in the excellent speech of its Chair, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed.
The Government propose to opt back in to five of the six mutual recognition measures, which we welcome. On the financial penalties framework decision, it is right that member states collect financial penalties regardless of which country the offender lives in. There should be no hiding place for offenders just because they live in a different country from where their crime was committed. The measure has been used considerably over the last few years. The Justice Committee confirmed that in just the short period between June 2010 and September 2012 we received penalties collected by other member states of £90,000 and collected for other members £50,000 in penalties.
On the previous convictions framework decision, courts must take account of a defendant’s previous conviction in other member states. Even the Justice Secretary has conceded that this measure was needed and is not part of a Europeanisation of our justice system, but is in fact central to our efforts in fighting crime. This is a key tool in helping us to fight crime and allowing our courts to have access to information from other member states on previous convictions.
Prison transfers are a massive issue, and not only within the European Union. Just last week Jamaica refused to ratify a transfer agreement with the UK which would have seen many of the Jamaicans behind bars in our jails sent back home to serve their sentences. We know it costs around £40,000 a year to keep someone in a UK prison, and with more than 10,000 foreign nationals behind bars—1 in 8 of the whole prison population—that represents a cost of £400 million a year to keep foreign criminals in British jails. If for nothing else, for purely financial reasons we should be doing more to send back to their home countries those foreign nationals who have committed crimes on our soil. The Prime Minister made big and wild promises back in 2010 personally to intervene to send back tens of thousands of criminals, but that is yet another broken promise to add to the long list. Since then, only a handful have been returned to their home countries.
To be fair, I accept that there are difficulties in negotiating prisoner transfer agreements with other countries. The setting up of the EU prisoner transfer framework, signed in November 2008 and brought into force in December 2011, was not a walk in the park, and I sympathise with the problems all Governments have had in negotiating these agreements. However, with about one third of all foreign nationals in our prisons being from the EU, this ought to make a difference to the numbers behind bars. I note that the Justice Committee reports that more needs to be done, and the Justice Secretary might want to tell us about some of the problems he has been having in negotiating these agreements in relation to the opt-in.
It would also be useful if the Justice Secretary were to tell us what else he is doing to make sure other member countries are stepping up to the plate on this issue. To date, too many are not playing a full part in the scheme, meaning that the scheme as originally planned and the agreement that has been signed have not borne the fruit we all would have liked to see.
The Government also propose to opt back into the judgments in absentia framework decision and the European supervision order, both of which play a key role in stopping criminals evading justice and allowing citizens to be returned to their home country for a period of non-custodial pre-trial supervision. Out of the mutual recognition instruments, the only measure the Government have chosen not to opt back into is the probation measures framework decision, but from reading the explanation given by Ministers it is clear that there is not a principled objection to this framework decision; there is rather a concern about how it might operate in practice. Will the Justice Secretary tell us more about his views on where the concerns may lie in practice rather than in principle?
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Unfortunately, I did not have time to give notice that I would participate in this debate; we only got notice of it yesterday.
I have a constituent whose father went to the courts in this country under the European arrest warrant and was told that the EAW was not to be enacted here and it was not valid. He thought he was free and he travelled to the Netherlands with his wife, but was arrested on arriving there. He is now in Poland. He is a seriously ill man in hospital, but it would appear that the Government have not put in place measures to allow the courts of this country to make a decision on an EAW and then to make it clear to other countries that they do not believe it to be valid. It gives people in this country the odd feeling that they are not likely to be arrested throughout Europe under an EAW which can then still be enacted elsewhere.
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend gives one of the many examples of how there can be problems operating the EAW in practice. We hope that during the course of the negotiations on the changes to which the Home Secretary referred, some of the problems that have been shown in real time are addressed.
The Government have chosen not to rejoin all six of the minimum standard measures. They cover corruption involving officials; counterfeiting of the euro—there are two on this; fraud; counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment; and corruption in the private sector. In these cases, the Government argue that UK law is already of a sufficiently high standard to meet or exceed the requirements. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary went through some of the other areas the Government have chosen not to opt back into, which are redundant because of the progress made over the past few years.
The Chairs of the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee reminded us that for the first time in history three Select Committees have come together with a joint report, all expressing unhappiness with how the Government have approached the process of the opt-out and opt-in. I am not going to rehearse the points they made. They have concerns about the lack of impact assessments, the fact that there is no motion that can be amended let alone voted on, and the fact that colleagues in the House of Commons will not get a chance to debate and vote on the measures the Government decide to opt into or out of until it is too late.
The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made an honest and refreshing speech about the different perspective he has from those who speak on behalf of his party in government. He explained his support for the opt-out and not the opt-in. His speech was followed by the most different speech we could have heard. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire explained his unhappiness about the fact that the Government had not consulted the Scottish Government. He lives in hope that the referendum in September may lead to a different perspective for the people of Scotland, but he also, in a weird part of his speech, sought to argue that we are better together with the EU but that Scotland was not better together with the rest of the UK. That was an interesting argument.
The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) made a very interesting speech, too. She is one of the founders of the Fresh Start group and expressed concern about the lack of democratic accountability and flexibility, and referred to the House of Lords scrutiny Committee. I agreed with her when she said that the status quo with the EU is not an option, however. She made a useful speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was scathing in his critique of the Government, which is nothing less than we would all expect. He talked about his concerns about the priorities and processes by which we got to where we are, and he repeated the question he posed in the Home Secretary’s speech about what Parliament would be allowed to vote on and when. He referred to the options the Government have—primary legislation, a statutory instrument, a treaty or a motion with the ability for it to be amended or not.
I am not sure whether the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary should be worried that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said he agreed with and supported the approach they were taking. He mentioned his concerns about the impact on Europol in particular if there was any time lag, and also about the benefits of co-operation.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) will not thank me for saying this, but I thoroughly enjoyed his speech. He said he was speaking up for the authentic voice of the Eurosceptic Conservative party, and he reminded us of his analysis of whether the opt-in would be a transfer of power and why in his view that demands a referendum. He argued that, because the European Commission and the ECJ were now in play, that should involve a transfer of power. I am sure that the Justice Secretary will respond directly to that point.
I also enjoyed the speech from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who used his six years’ experience as a Foreign Office lawyer to explain why he felt that these matters were more about political will than about the advice given by civil servants. He gave examples of some of the real-life cases that had been challenged as a consequence of the European arrest warrant. I hope that we can seek improvement now that we have that empirical evidence. He challenged all of us to provide empirical evidence to persuade the British public of the need for better co-operation with our European partners. That is a challenge that we all need to take up, especially in the light of the Deputy Prime Minister having been trounced by Nigel Farage in their two recent debates. We need to have the facts at our fingertips when we have this debate.
The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) also made an interesting speech. He reminded us of what I am sure he will not mind me calling the miscarriages of justice in the past few years as a consequence of the European arrest warrant. He was scathing in his attack on the approach to the European Union taken by his friends, the Liberal Democrats. I am sure he will not mind me saying that we expect nothing less from him.
We have had a good debate, which has lasted just over four hours. A lot of questions have been asked, and I look forward to hearing the answers from the Justice Secretary over the next 15 minutes. Let us hope he can finally answer them.
Chris Grayling
Let us be clear: what the last Government said about the charter of fundamental rights was simply an untruth. There are many quotes in which they clearly talked about an opt-out from the charter, but that opt-out does not exist. We on the Government Benches have our differences on aspects of human rights law, but there is unity across the coalition on the role and presence of the charter of fundamental rights. None of us wishes to see it become part of UK law, and none of us wishes the ambitions of some in Brussels who talk about it being extended into national law come to pass. We will resist that absolutely. As my hon. Friend knows, we are testing the current legal position in the courts, and I have no doubt that I will be giving further evidence on this subject to his Committee in the near future.
Michael Connarty
I am sure that we will debate the charter of fundamental rights report, which divided the European Scrutiny Committee when it was finally read. To return to a question I asked earlier: why are the Government still in the situation where a UK court can decide that a European arrest warrant is not valid and that the person does not have to return to the country demanding their return—in the case I am interested in, that country is Poland—but when they leave the UK to go on holiday elsewhere in Europe, it appears that the Government have not put in place the ability to have that judgment recognised in other countries. I have a constituent whose father is very ill, and who is now in Poland, having been arrested in the Netherlands—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We have got the point. Let us not make these interventions too long.
Modern-day Slavery
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir John Randall
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, who has been involved in the campaign longer than I have and has extensive knowledge.
The sort of things that my hon. Friend is describing give us a sense of the wide variety of horrible, ghastly things that are happening. The hon. Member for Slough mentioned prostitution and brothels; a lot of people think that is it, but there is much more—but that too is awful. The lives of the victims of all these crimes are miserable and appalling, and it is scarcely credible that this could be happening, in this country and in nearly every other country in the world. Most countries in Europe may think that they are a transit country; they may think that they have some connection, but they do not realise that everything is interconnected. It is truly a hideous crime.
We have heard about the Government’s draft Bill. I was honoured to be asked to sit on a draft Bill evidence panel with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), Baroness Butler-Sloss and some people not involved in Parliament. It has been an eye-opener. I have been privileged to hear and speak to the NGOs, which hold diverse views on what should be done. We share the same goal, but sometimes they differ slightly.
I would say to the Minister that I agree with the hon. Member for Slough that the domestic worker visa should be re-examined. I can understand entirely why it was brought in, and if we did not know about the abuses that might result from it—the unforeseen consequences—we might have said it was a very good thing. However, there is compelling evidence to support the view that it must be looked at again, because far from discouraging slavery it could well be helping the people enslaving domestic workers.
The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) spoke of introducing some private Members’ Bills. I became a bit of an expert on private Members’ Bills on Fridays—I brought one in myself many years ago—and I understand the difficulties of introducing private Members’ legislation. The problem of supply chains is a live issue. We must use the Bill to try to sell the idea of scrutinising supply chains. Instead of saying, “this is extra red tape and bureaucracy,” we should point out that this is a way of protecting companies from having in their supply chains things that they do not want, and would be appalled to find.
This country has a wonderful opportunity, once again, to take a lead in this area. In California there is a law, although I believe it is more of a voluntary code. The issue is sensitive, and because of the late stage in the electoral cycle we cannot be too ambitious—we must get the Bill through. We got Anthony Steen’s private Member’s Bill enacted on almost the last day of the Parliament in 2010, so we have to make concessions here and there. I am a pragmatist, although I am becoming a bit more evangelical about some of these issues. We have to be pragmatic sometimes. We shall deliver our report on the day that, I believe, the Government are presenting their own draft Bill. We must all get together and try to see what we can do.
Education is also important. By that I mean the education of everyone—not just parliamentarians but, equally important, our constituents. It may be invidious to single out one group, but I want to pay tribute to a group called Just Enough. The charismatic young man in charge, Phil Knight, goes into schools to educate them about modern-day slavery. It was with him that I suddenly realised the blindingly obvious—that modern-day slavery appears in folk tales. Cinderella—what better example could there be of latter-day slavery, as opposed to the mental images of the terrible ships going backwards and forwards across the Atlantic? Another example, quite relevant today, would be “Oliver Twist”—the boys who were entrapped and made to do criminal action.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that that is a true story. “Oliver Twist” is not fiction. The court reports of that time show that Italian men would go to the south of Italy and promise families to take the young boys to the north of Italy and train them to be, perhaps, a watchmaker, but instead they brought them to London and taught them to be pickpockets. There was never a Fagin—that was a piece of anti-Semitism in the writing of the novel—but it was a true story. It was repeated here with the Roma children pickpocketing on south-east trains four or five years ago. They were rounded up—more than 150 young people from Roma families.
Sir John Randall
I am grateful for that intervention. I am aware that most of Dickens, although sometimes slightly over-caricatured, is based on the times. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, that is why I say that “Oliver Twist” is such a good example for today, because such practices are going on today. Although we should not frighten kids with some of the more horrific things, if in school they are gradually made aware of modern-day slavery from an early age, they might be able to spot what is going on. Then, with their friends, they might notice something untoward. There are some incredibly good initiatives out there, a bit like Childline, but providing a point of contact if it is thought that someone is being trafficked or held against their will; but first we must educate people.
A few years ago, a neighbour in suburban Uxbridge told me that the lady down the road was a bit concerned; she thought there was something going on in one of the houses. I went to see her. She was a youngish mother. She was concerned that the lady next door had too many male visitors. We have Brunel university there; I thought perhaps she was being a little bit unkind because some young lady was entertaining, but I did my duty: I went to the police and asked if they would check it out. They came back to me at the end of the day and said, “You are absolutely right, Mr Randall—there is a brothel there.” That is in my own road, which I have lived in nearly all my life. They were moved on; I am not sure they were trafficked. But I am saying that it is so hidden, as the hon. Member for Slough said. This is a hidden crime. It is actually a hidden abomination, and we must do something about it.
I pay tribute to my own London borough of Hillingdon, which on this issue, as on many others, is very active—in modernspeak, I would say a beacon, but it is just a very good example. We have refuges. Of course, we have Heathrow airport in our constituency, but that is not the only reason. The borough takes trafficking and modern-day slavery very seriously.
Police forces are under lots of pressures. We have an incredibly good set of police officers around the country—in the Met, I have come across, in particular, Kevin Hyland, but there are many others. Your ordinary policeman has so many things to consider. That is why I think the Bill will be very important, to put all the legislation together so that they can understand the crimes and give them higher priority.
The hon. Member for Slough was absolutely right. For most of my constituents, human trafficking would not even appear on a list of priorities, because few people know it exists in their area. They would think it was some high falutin’ thing that was being put around by well meaning but misguided people. My constituents are more concerned about street crime, burglary, car crime and so on. We must get that message across.
I know for a fact that the Prime Minister has taken a keen interest in the issue. I want to see my Government, this Parliament and this country taking the moral lead. We know and we will repeat that Wilberforce did that 200 years ago, but this is a modern abomination in our world. I hope that we can lead efforts to do something about it.
I conclude with what has moved me more than anything else. I briefly mentioned that I could almost become evangelical on this, which most people who know me would say does not fit in my normal idiom. Just speak to some victims. Listen to them. See the people and what has happened to them—the hideous nature of it—and what has happened to them afterwards. The hon. Member for Slough is right. Is 45 days enough? It might be in some cases, but mostly probably not. Where do the victims go afterwards? They are let out of a refuge and they are on the street. Who are the first people to contact them? The traffickers. The victims do not know where to go for safety and security. We have had evidence that some want to go back to their country, but some do not. In some cases they are frightened because the traffickers know where their families are. They know who they are and they will find them again. The traffickers are very evil people.
Once again, I am delighted to take part in the debate. I am delighted that the Government are going to take action. Some of us would hold their feet up to the fire on this, although we would probably let them go just before they burn. We must get rid of trafficking. We must make the public aware that slavery is alive and kicking in our day-to-day surroundings.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
It is a great honour to speak for the first time with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Scottish Members in particular will miss your wonderful interventions in Scottish business, which reflected your part-Scottish background and your knowledge. It was such a pleasure to see you upset the Scottish nationalists so often in Scotland questions; we will miss that greatly.
Let me turn now to the terrible topic of modern-day slavery, and the fact that the Government have announced a Bill. I underline the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that this is not a party political matter; it never has been. We have always urged the Government, regardless of who they are, to do more and to do better. After studying this topic and spending time at the Serious Organised Crime Agency, when I was part of the police service parliamentary scheme, I found that as we change our attack on the business—it is a worldwide business and a seriously organised crime network—the perpetrators change their business model. Women used to be forced into slavery and brought here by force. Now, they are being offered a new life. They are often EU citizens who have a right to come here. They are promised good jobs and a career and then find themselves entrapped in slavery and sexual exploitation. As we change our attack, we will find that the perpetrators change. It is a matter that every Government will have to deal with.
The decade of work commenced when Anthony Steen, who has been mentioned often, took an interest in the trafficking of Roma children, who were trained to thieve on South-east trains and on the underground. There were large numbers of them, and they were clearly organised. They were all swept up by police and the social services and returned to their country of origin. Very few went into any form of support system in the UK. From that episode came Anthony’s interest, which infected all of us, and many of us became involved in the pre-2010 activities.
I was also struck by a book by Baroness Cox called “This Immoral Trade”. It is a study of what happened in Burma and Sudan where people were trafficked in the old way. They were put into slave gangs and taken to slavers in the north of Africa where they were sold. They are now being bought back from those very slavers by their communities. It is a replication of what used to happen when people were taken to the colonies of the European countries. That practice is still going on. I spoke at the re-launch of the second edition of Baroness Cox’s book in the House of Lords last month. It was said that between 11 million and 17 million people are enslaved in the world at the moment. A number of types of slavery are used. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) mentioned the horrific practice whereby infants between the ages of three and eight are trafficked within their own country for sexual exploitation. It is a massive problem, but it is also a business and organised crime and we must treat it as such.
The European dimension has been driven strongly by the Parliamentarians against Human Trafficking project, which is organised through ECPAT UK—End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes—and the Human Trafficking Foundation. We have travelled from country to country—and I have travelled as the lead Labour member without a political hat on—and spoken to people who have been working on the matter, to try to understand the dimensions and the methodology of the crime.
A monitoring office in Bucharest looks at many of the countries around the Balkans, and it provided me with reports which I took back to the Human Trafficking Foundation. There are also people in Moldova, who are not yet in the EU but who are closely connected with Romania. The Portuguese have developed an amazing mapping and monitoring process. Using a mapping system used for the movement of traffic—the movement of lorries—they can map the movement of people and are becoming adept at watching the movement of people from Brazil into Portugal for the summer trade on the beaches. Then, in the winter, the traffickers move them into the cities, into indoor brothels. The Portuguese can cut that movement off and deal with the process there.
The Netherlands has a good example of an ombudsperson who is responsible not just for human trafficking but for human trafficking and child exploitation. That is a dual role in a powerful, well-resourced independent organisation working with a lot of the NGOs and care organisations. The work is often spontaneous, as one incident leads to involvement in further exploration and the bringing of information into the system.
Whatever the Government do, it is key for us to keep very close to a network of NGOs. Unfortunately, at the moment the NGOs—all the numerous organisations that were written to—do not trust the system we have. I have been at a foundation NGO day with 50 different NGOs, and only half a dozen have ever replied when a Government organisation has asked them for information because they feel that they have a responsibility to protect the victims they have helped release and who they are looking after. They worry that if those victims get into the system, they will immediately be treated as criminals, either for immigration reasons or for some other form of criminal activity they were exploited and trafficked for, and that they will therefore be sent home and treated as criminals.
The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) talked about people in cannabis farms. There was a cannabis farm in a big house next door to me just a year ago. The house had first been used by people from Lithuania who would go around and steal all the charity bags that had been put out for charitable organisations, but they were driven out and it was taken over by a mysterious organisation. We reported it to the police, but they did not act quickly enough and in the middle of the night a large lorry turned up, took all the lamps and all the cannabis and unfortunately the woman—I could not quite get her age—who was trapped in the house and brought food by a gentleman every couple of nights.
That was a trafficked person who was taken on and will no doubt be trafficked somewhere else, but what if she had been caught? In the Scottish young offenders institution in my constituency, Polmont, one can sadly find four Vietnamese young men who are there because they were found guilty of the crime of cannabis farming. They were all trafficked and they were all victims, but the standard procedure is to treat them as criminals. I have no doubt that when they come out they will be sent back to Vietnam.
One of the television channels I was watching—CBS, I think—is running a campaign against human trafficking, focusing on Cambodia, next to Vietnam. That channel is talking about making programmes—I think one will be on next week—about the trafficking in Cambodia. I think that trafficking from Cambodia to Thailand was what was being talked about, but Cambodia is just like Vietnam. It is an open-access country where young people who want to get out of their country might pay a lot of money to be trafficked before ending up in criminality or some form of exploitation.
As we go around the EU, we try to get the best practice. I do not know how it is going, but I hope that the Human Trafficking Foundation will be successful in winning further support from the EU to take on the next stage of the process by getting every country that has theoretically signed up to the directive on human trafficking to implement it properly. In a lot of countries, it has not even been implemented as well as it is here, and I have some criticisms of how we have carried out the duties of implementing it in this country. I hope that that situation will be improved by the Bill.
We have heard about trafficking into the UK, trafficking across the UK and trafficking out of the UK. The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) talked about the problem in his constituency of men being trafficked to Sweden out of the UK to be used as unpaid slaves in the construction industry in that country.
We have also heard about domestic slavery, and I join those who have criticised the Government. I do not see that as party political, but as speaking against a silly thing that was done—that is, the abolition of the one thing that gave domestic servants, or slaves, even if they were brought in as a family as they sometimes are, the chance to have a domestic servants visa. That meant that they could leave a bad family and, usually through Kalayaan and the police, find another employer as long as their visa allowed them to stay.
I understand that the Government said that every year maybe 40 or 50 people out of the thousands involved used that concession to stay behind and disappear, but it protected those young women—it is mainly young women—from being beaten, treated “worse than the dogs”, fed the scraps off the table of the families they lived with, and sleeping in cupboards. They could leave that behind and find a better employer while they had a domestic servant visa. That does not exist any more—it is now a six-month visa. But most people do not come in with visas; they come in as members of families. They are then kept with the family and treated in the most appalling way, so I hope that the Government will find a way of reinstating the protection of domestic workers in the UK.
It is quite clear that sexual exploitation is still a target for traffickers. That is true of young women and young men. Across Europe, we find young men in particular countries being trafficked in for sexual exploitation—rent boys, I think they call them in London. But they are even younger than that; they are children, because some men particularly like young boys. They are exploited in many ways. They are exploited for begging. They are exploited by fake families for benefit fraud; quite a lot of that goes on. They are trafficked also for thieving—they are trained to pickpocket in the cities of the UK and in Europe.
We have to look at how we can keep the criminalisation of the victim away from the care of the victim. It is unfortunate that it became mixed up in the debate about immigration. We have to look at immigration. We heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) say that there is nobody in the House as tough as he is when it comes to the idea of restricting immigration. He is part of the balanced immigration group in Parliament, along with senior Conservative Members, but he does not want to see this mixed up with the immigration problem; it is a different matter. These people are brought in, maybe with promises, with delusions that they would be coming to a better life, and then abused. We should tackle that. We found when we talked to NGOs that the excessive focus on immigration substantially impacts on the confidence of victims in speaking to the UK Border Agency, and in speaking to the police authorities who, if the Bill is correct, will be their best saviour rather than their biggest threat.
I want to say a word or two about the Scottish situation, because I am the only Scottish Member speaking in the debate. There is a parallel debate going on in Scotland. We had a strange comment by the Justice Minister after the launch of the inquiry into human trafficking in Scotland, which I went to. It was chaired by Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws. When I said to him that many things in the inquiry could be taken forward into a Bill, the Justice Minister, who is known for being a bit sharp, and whom I have known for a long time, said, “The trouble with us is the UK Border Agency, Michael. If we could do something about them, we could do something about human trafficking.” He felt very strongly indeed that because it was a UK matter, it was the UK Border Agency that distorted Scottish Ministers’ wish to do something about it.
I want to mention three elements very quickly. First, in 2011 a document called “Scotland: A safe place for child traffickers?” by Tam Baillie, the children’s commissioner, shocked Scotland. It was not, “Scotland: A safe place for trafficked children?” but “Scotland: A safe place for child traffickers?” He could identify 200 children trafficked into Scotland over a period of 18 months.
There was then an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into human trafficking. Its report came out in October 2011. It was very far-reaching—I think much more visionary than anything we had had in responding at a UK level to the human trafficking directive. It talked about some elements which I shall mention in a minute.
Finally, there is now a draft Bill on human trafficking and modern-day slavery headed up by Jenny Marra, MSP for Dundee. The Scottish Parliament is considering the matter with a Bill before them that they can look at—a fully laid out Bill, rather than what we have at the moment, which is some rumours and some whispers and some wishes about what our Bill will contain. The process that we follow may produce a much more comprehensive Bill, but I was very impressed with the Bill proposed by Jenny Marra for Scotland.
Sir John Randall
Interestingly, Jenny Marra gave evidence before our panel, so we have seen and read the draft Bill.
Michael Connarty
That is excellent, because I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough that it would be a good idea to have Jenny Marra down to the all-party group to discuss with her the thinking behind her Bill. I spoke at a conference with her in Glasgow about the fact that if the Bill became law, it would need to contain a framework to deal with events such as the Olympics, or the Commonwealth games in Glasgow, which represent a truly attractive opportunity for human traffickers to profit and prosper.
I understand that there is a proposal—the Minister may correct me—that the UK anti-slavery Bill will contain a better definition of the crime. We currently use anti-sex trade Acts that are years, if not decades, out of date. It would be good to know what the crime is and for it to be defined as widely as possible. There should be a clear prosecution policy and a sentencing policy that makes it clear to people that if they are caught, it will result not in a small fine or a few years in jail, but in a long period in jail—up to life imprisonment, I hope, for anyone caught running a major criminal operation in human trafficking and slavery.
During the inquiry in Scotland, we heard the idea that other crimes could be made more severe by being defined as aggravated by human trafficking. At present, many traffickers go to prison for other small crimes, not for the crime of human trafficking. I understand from the Serious Organised Crime Agency that that change would make the tariff high enough to provide access to the criminals’ money. As SOCA said, to follow the crime, follow the money. That is important. At the launch of the Scottish inquiry, the Advocate-General spoke in favour of such a change.
There should be a commissioner-ombudsman, independent and well resourced, and a clear focus on asset reclamation. Since the activity is aimed at making money from the exploitation of humans, selling them cheaply or abusing their rights, if the authorities can get their hands on the money or the assets, that will hurt. It has been proposed that any money recovered should be used for anti-slavery purposes, rather than taken back into the Treasury like fines for speeding and so on. I suggest that we consider giving some of assets recovered to the Human Trafficking Foundation to make that a well-resourced organisation that does not just rely on charity, but is funded by the effectiveness of the campaign that it generates.
I am told that efforts will be made to cover the question of extra-territoriality, as has been done, for example, in the case of sex tourism, whereby people caught in another country are deemed guilty in this country, as we saw in a recent case involving a pop star.
We must respond to the reality of labour exploitation in UK supply chains. This is a plea, a hope and a wish. The Minister may make me happy or unhappy when he speaks. There are many organisations such as Walk Free set up by the owner of Fortescue from Australia, who now has 5 million people signed up as members. Walk Free, exposes human trafficking and exploitation for sex and for cheap labour across the world. Every day members of the Walk Free network get e-mails asking them to send petitions and write to companies to try to stop that behaviour. There is also the organisation set up by the then world president of Manpower, which has tackled human trafficking through all its networks. The 2.5 million companies that Manpower deals with all have training and training manuals on how to look for human trafficking and how to get rid of it.
I spoke to various organisations while preparing my Bill. The case that was exposed which everyone heard about in this country involved eggs and chickens for the Olympics. A special programme was carried out by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which it would not normally do. The authority focused specifically on supplies to that event. It found that the chickens had been rounded up by Lithuanian men—40 of them kept in a big house and hounded from place to place by rottweilers. They were driven round the country, working 17 hours a day. By the time they had paid their so-called fare to get there and their digs money—their rent—they ended up with very little at all, and they were badly fed. The gangmaster was taken to court.
The supply chain showed that those who delivered the eggs and the chickens to McDonald’s and to Sainsbury’s did not know that the people hired as gangmasters, who were licensed gangmasters, then hired Lithuanians, who were not gangmasters, to run the show for them. We have to think seriously about that. When I spoke to representatives of McDonald’s, they brought me a wonderful brochure about all the standards that those who sign up to supply the company should observe. It stated that workers should not be locked in or guarded, and that they should not be indebted to a recruitment agency. It is fabulous, but the company did not realise that it meant nothing. People signed bits of paper and put them in the bin or in a file.
Between 12,000 and 18,000 companies in Britain have signed up to that ethical trading initiative, but none of them actually looks after the auditing or reporting to see whether it happens. I received a letter from the chief executive of Sainsbury’s telling me that he thought we should fight for more resources for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which he told me was being downgraded. It had been “downgraded” by being taken into the Serious Organised Crime Agency to focus on serious crime, not the day-to-day abuses, as he would describe them. He thought that it was its job to audit his supply chain.
We must have something in the Bill that tells companies, “We expect you to audit your supply chain and report to your shareholders, in writing and at your annual general meeting, on what you find. If you find something, eradicate it.” If we do not have that, we will continue to see cases such as the collapsed building in Dhaka, or women being burnt to death in garment factories because they had been locked in, or even chained in, and could not get out.
It is no good saying, “Let the customer drive this.” When I talk with ordinary people—with Asda Mumdex, for example—they say, “Look, when we buy our kids clothes for the summer holiday, we go to the cheapest place”, because they cannot afford to shop somewhere that is ethically wonderful. I think that it is important that we drive the companies to improve their supply chains.
Young people came to me when I was preparing my private Member’s Bill and suggested that we use stickers like the ones we used to have against apartheid, with a skull and crossbones, saying, “Contaminated by human trafficking.” They said that they would go around sticking them on clothes from Gap or Next, one of the companies that was found guilty, to let people know that they had been contaminated by human trafficking. But that is not the generality of it. People will either buy fashion garments because they are in vogue, or they will buy other garments from cheaper places because that is what they can afford. It is up to us, as a Parliament, to carry on this fight to the point where we make all those organisations responsible. By all pitching in, we will create a better world.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Maria Miller
I am not doing what the hon. Gentleman is doing in supporting a council such as Newcastle, which wanted to cut its arts budget by 100%. I hope, given his question, that he now realises that that was a big mistake. I am glad that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) intervened and overruled the decision that he had made. I could give him many examples of the work that we are doing to support the regions in this way, and I draw his attention in particular to our comments yesterday on the Arts Council, which is investing £174.5 million this year in national portfolio organisations outside London. It is of course the Arts Council that has the role of supporting regional culture and arts, and I think it is doing a good job.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
9. What recent discussions she has had with her counterpart in the Scottish Government on the development of swimming in the UK.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
I meet Scottish Ministers regularly to discuss a range of sports policy issues. Chief among those are the Glasgow Commonwealth games in 2014 and the Youth Olympic games bid for 2018, both of which include swimming competitions.
Michael Connarty
I commend the Government in England for making it compulsory at key stages 1 and 2 to teach children to swim. However, that entitlement does not exist in Scotland. There has been a call from the Amateur Swimming Association not only to train swimmers for the Commonwealth and Olympic games but for better swimming safety. It wants a national entitlement to swimming teaching. In 2011, six children died by accidental drowning in Scotland and 47 in the UK; the figure for adults in the UK in that year was 407. Surely it is a human right for people to learn to swim so that they do not drown if they fall into the water.
Hugh Robertson
I do not know about a basic human right; it is a matter of common sense and safety. There is no doubt that there is a straightforward correlation between young people learning to swim and curbing deaths by drowning. I would encourage anybody to ensure that every single one of our young children is able to swim.
EU Police, Justice and Home Affairs
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from ‘House’ to end and add
‘believes that the decision on exercising the UK’s opt out from EU former third pillar measures should be taken in the national interest, with consideration given to how a measure contributes to public safety and security, whether practical co-operation is underpinned by the measure, and whether there would be a detrimental impact on such co-operation if pursued by other mechanisms; and welcomes the commitment made by the Minister for Europe on 20 January 2011 to a vote in both Houses of Parliament before the Government makes a formal decision on whether it wishes to opt out.’.
Let me first set out some of the background to this important issue, because judging from the speech that we have just heard, there seems to be some confusion among Opposition Members. Under the terms of the Lisbon treaty, which the Opposition signed up to, the United Kingdom must decide by the end of May 2014 whether we opt out of, or remain bound by, roughly 130 EU police and criminal justice measures that were adopted before the Lisbon treaty came into force. I provided a full list of those measures to the House on 21 May. The Government are required, under the treaty, to reach a final decision by 31 May 2014, with that decision taking effect on 1 December 2014.
Let me also set out the commitment that this Government have made on this matter. On 20 January 2011 my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe set out in a written ministerial statement that a vote would be held in both Houses of Parliament before the Government make a formal decision on whether they wish to opt out. That remains the Government position and I am happy today to reiterate our commitment to hold a vote on this matter. That is why I urge the House to reject the Opposition motion as premature, and support the Government’s amendment.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The Home Secretary knows that there has been considerable correspondence from the European Scrutiny Committee to the Government at all levels asking them to list those measures that they intend to opt into. We have the practical problem of how that will be done. Will we be able to vote to opt in or opt out knowing exactly and in detail what the Government will then opt back into before the vote is taken?
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend is right. In looking at these decisions, we have to bear in mind the fact of ECJ jurisdiction, which will now be applicable to these measures but was not when they were originally established. I have to say that one of the more interesting exchanges I have seen this afternoon raised the idea of the shadow Home Secretary being tempted by my right hon. Friend. [Interruption.] I think that I had better move swiftly on.
We are now in complete confusion as to whether the Opposition want to exercise the opt-out and whether they want to change anything about our justice and home affairs arrangements. If they do not want to change anything, why does their motion refer to reforming the European arrest warrant? In their motion they list seven measures that they think we should be opting back into, but the right hon. Lady raised other measures that she implied we should opt back into. She talked about party politics. I am afraid that the only party politics lie in calling this debate, and it is the Opposition who want to put narrow politics before the national interest.
The shadow Home Secretary suggests that our approach, which her own Government set in train, will play into the hands of criminals. That is an outrageous accusation. As Home Secretary, I am absolutely clear in my duty to protect the United Kingdom against crime and terrorism and to keep our borders secure. She said that crime does not stop at the borders, and she is absolutely right. That is exactly why this Government are creating the National Crime Agency, which will be a powerful crime-fighting body that deals with crime across borders, particularly serious organised and complex crime. The UK is a sovereign nation, and we must not carelessly hand over more and more powers to the European Commission or the European Court of Justice.
It is clearly important that law enforcers have the tools they need to work with our European neighbours and protect the British public. That is why we have been listening to the views of law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies on this matter. The Justice Secretary and I have met representatives from the Association of Chief Police Offices, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the National Crime Agency, the security services, and the Serious Fraud Office, as well as the Director of Public Prosecutions. We are listening to, and taking seriously, what those on the front line have to say. As I said, we have also had discussions with the devolved Administrations. But this is a decision for the Government to take, and we will not absolve ourselves of that responsibility by delegating the decision to others as the Opposition apparently wish us to.
As I have said to this House previously, under the terms of the treaty signed by Labour, the UK, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) said, cannot pick and choose the measures from which we wish to opt out. The shadow Home Secretary may well prefer that we could, but thanks to her party’s negotiation we can only opt out en masse and then seek to rejoin individual measures. Operational experience shows that some of the pre-Lisbon measures are useful, while some are less so and some are now entirely defunct. For example, one measure establishes a directory on organised crime competences that was closed by Europol in February 2012. Although the directory is closed, it remains a measure subject to the 2014 decision under which, arguably, member states are still obliged to update their contributions to it. We do not see any reason to subject this measure to formal enforcement powers. Some other measures have not been implemented and doing so would require considerable time and money. Not being ready by 1 December 2014 would immediately open the UK up to substantial risk of infraction and the very real risk of being fined millions of pounds.
Michael Connarty
The Home Secretary is well aware of the position. In fact, her own Government are making quite a hue and cry about the fact that the European Commission can strike out any of these things as redundant and has been doing so for the past three or four years. Regarding this nonsense about being trapped in some directory that does not exist any more, it is very simple: the European Commission can simply strike it out, as it has on many occasions. She might like to consult the Europe Minister, who could inform her of the facts.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this welcome debate. We all know that the ability to invoke the block opt-out was negotiated as part of the Lisbon treaty—on which we did not have a vote—by the previous Labour Government. According to the refreshed Government list deposited in Parliament last month, 127 EU laws currently fall under the block opt-out. They are gradually being eaten away, so we will have fewer to debate by next May. They include the European arrest warrant, which has been mentioned and to which I will come in a moment, and legislation defining various criminal offences and rules for associated penalties. There are many measures—with 127 laws, that is to be expected—which is why it is important to have this sort of debate on the Floor of the House to enable the House to inform the Home Secretary and others on the Front Bench of its thinking. I therefore welcome the Opposition’s giving us the time to talk about this issue today.
Under the arrangements introduced by the Lisbon treaty, the UK has to opt out of all these EU laws en masse—it cannot opt out selectively. If the UK wants to opt out, it must notify the EU of its wish to do so by 31 May 2014 at the very latest, so we have plenty of time for this debate. If the UK does not opt out, under the EU treaties it will become bound by these laws indefinitely—there is no subsequent opportunity to opt out. Furthermore, from December 2014, the European Court of Justice will for the first time gain full jurisdiction over these laws under a change introduced by the Lisbon treaty, meaning that the European Commission could take the UK to the Court for what it believed to be a breach of one of these laws. Consequent rulings from the Court would be binding. In addition, the Court could rule on questions about the interpretation of these laws referred to it by UK courts—rulings that would then be applied by British judges.
Why is that an issue? It was raised by the House of Lords European Union Committee, and one particular case illustrates the great concern about the Court’s judicial activism: the Metock case in 2008. Four nationals of a non-EU state applied for asylum in Ireland, but their applications were rejected. In the meantime, however, the men had married women from other EU states, exercising free movement rights in Ireland, and they reapplied. The Irish Government refused each application, their regulations stating that the rights under the free movement directive did not apply to family members, unless they were already a lawful resident in another member state and seeking to enter Ireland with an EU national or to join an EU citizen in Ireland. The Grand Chamber of the European Court ruled that national legislation could not require the third country national spouse of an EEC citizen to have been a permanently lawful resident in another member state and therefore that they could benefit from the free movement directive. In other words, this highly controversial ruling rewrote EU law and Irish immigration law, so there is a reason to be concerned about the possibility of the Court’s being involved in such decisions.
If the UK invokes the opt-out, the European treaties allow our country to apply to opt back into particular EU laws covered by it. For most of these laws, a UK application to rejoin would be first considered by the European Commission, but if the Commission did not approve UK readmission, the Council of Ministers could decide, by qualified majority voting among member states bound by the relevant law, to admit the UK. For the remaining laws, which are considered part of the Schengen body of law, a UK application to rejoin is decided by unanimity in the Council, without formal Commission involvement. Opting back in is irreversible. If the UK is readmitted by the EU institutions, it could not opt out of the relevant laws again and the Court would have full jurisdiction over the laws concerned. That is why we have to tackle this sensibly and probably deal with each of the 127 measures in turn.
Michael Connarty
The hon. Gentleman and I are both members of the European Scrutiny Committee, but he has the advantage on me, in that he was a Member of the European Parliament, and he has obviously looked closely at what happens. It is always a deal, and the question of opting out of something permanently would be balanced by the fact that other countries might wish us to be in it for their advantage—even if we might think it to our disadvantage. In those situations, is it not likely that we would have to do deals and opt into things, such as what he has just illustrated, to get what we want on other things? Is it not time to talk about that sensibly in the European Scrutiny Committee and in the Lords Committee, instead of this smoke and mirrors? We do not have long between now and then to have those kinds of debate and to advise the Government about whether it would be advantageous to do the sorts of deals they might be faced with in the future.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. He will know that a Home Office Minister gave evidence to our Committee when we talked about that. We were doing our job on that Committee and trying to prise out of the Government, quite legitimately, what the position would be. That is why I have no issue with this debate.
The Government have said that some of the EU laws subject to the block opt-out are obsolete, and I thought I would list some of them for the benefit of Opposition Members, because there are more than three of them. First, there is the joint action 96/747/JHA on the creation of the directory that the Home Secretary mentioned. There are various laws under the block opt-out that have little or nothing to do with cross-border co-operation. They include framework decision 2000/383/JHA, which defines the criminal offence of currency counterfeiting and sets rules and attendant penalties, and framework decision 2003/568/JHA on corruption in the private sector, which requires member states to criminalise intentionally
“requesting or receiving an undue advantage of any kind,”
and so on. These are not great big European deals or blockbusters; they are things that we can take or leave. Indeed, it is questionable whether they needed to be decided at the European level in the first place.
Numerous EU laws requiring member states to criminalise particular actions oblige them to punish such offences with
“effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties”—
an ambiguous phrase that is massively open to interpretation and causes some concern. If the UK deems it necessary to change its criminal law to facilitate cross-border co-operation, we are perfectly able to do so through our own democratic processes. We do not have to sign up to EU control to do so.
Other EU laws under the block opt-out purport to establish cross-border co-operation. In some cases, laws that sound as though they would be useful do not seem to be so in practice. For example, the Government have said that the UK has not sent any requests to other member states to freeze suspected criminal assets or evidence under framework decision 2003/577/JHA since it was adopted more than a decade ago. There are several laws under the block opt-out that the UK has so far declined to implement fully, sometimes on grounds of cost. They include Prüm decisions, as we heard earlier, which involve the police sharing information such as fingerprints and DNA—perhaps the precursor to a European Prism programme or something like that. In other cases, such as the European arrest warrant, the laws on cross-border co-operation do not have sufficient safeguards for the rights of British citizens. In too many cases, British people have been arrested in the UK under the European arrest warrant and extradited to other EU countries, where they have ended up suffering serious injustices owing to foreseeable problems with the domestic criminal justice systems in those countries.
There are a number of problems with the European arrest warrant, which have been highlighted by many other countries. The stats are quite simple. Nearly 1,000 requests for a European arrest warrant are issued each month. In 2009, the Serious Organised Crime Agency here in the UK received 4,004 requests for a European arrest warrant to be issued. To put that in context, between 2003 and 2009, the UK extradited 63 people to the United States, whereas in 2009-10, the UK extradited 699 individuals to the EU. Perhaps there is a problem with what the warrants are being issued for, which causes a great deal of concern out there in civil society. The fundamental problem for people such as me is the extension of powers to the European Court of Justice. Given our experience of this matter nationally and internationally, we should be wary about that extension.
Let me try to bust some of the myths about this issue. There is a myth that if we do not opt in, we will lose all co-operation with EU partners on crime and policing. By opting out en bloc, we avoid sacrificing UK democratic control over 127 crime and policing measures to the European Commission and European Court of Justice. We can opt back into those measures that serve the UK national interest. This is an opportunity to re-cast our relationship, so that it is based on practical law enforcement co-operation but is not part of the EU Commission’s drive towards a single EU criminal code, enforced by a European public prosecutor and the European Court of Justice. I can remember debates in the European Parliament nearly a decade ago in which a single European criminal code and a European public prosecutor were talked about very seriously.
Another myth is that the UK needs to give the European Commission and European Court of Justice the last word on UK crime and policing policy to strengthen public safety. One of the UK’s closest security relationship is with the United States, yet we do not give the FBI or the US Supreme Court supranational control over our policy making, so why should do the same we in this case? Another myth is that we could lose vital areas of co-operation such as data sharing on criminal records. That is rubbish. We have always co-operated on those matters.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I had the privilege of serving in Her Majesty’s Government for three years as a Minister in the Home Office, negotiating justice and home affairs issues to ensure that our country was a safer place. I had the great privilege of working with the Home Secretary’s two immediate predecessors, both of whom were excellent Home Secretaries who had the interests of the public very much at heart. I therefore have enormous respect for the position of Home Secretary, and I extend that respect to any incumbent in the role because I know the challenges they face. I believed this Home Secretary when, on taking on the job, she said that she took her role of protecting the public very seriously. I therefore have to ask why she is playing such games with the safety of the British public in her approach to the opt-out on justice and home affairs issues. Is this an example of dog-whistle politics as she burnishes her credentials in preparation for taking over from the Prime Minister in due course? If so, she is not doing very well today, given that not many of her Eurosceptic friends have even bothered to attend the debate or listen to her speech.
We need to look closely at the proposals. The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) talked about the rights of British citizens in relation to these EU measures. I want to talk about the rights of British victims, which should be at the heart of what any Home Secretary does. If we were to opt out of all the justice and home affairs measures, we could in theory opt back into certain mechanisms. However, it is important to make it clear that that is not an automatic right. Because so many EU member states rightly support the European arrest warrant, there is a strong likelihood that they would agree to a UK opt-in on that particular issue.
Let us be clear about what the Government are saying to us. They are not clear on a lot of points, but on one thing they are quite clear. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and many other Conservatives on both the Back and the Front Benches are telling us that they will negotiate, or renegotiate, an entry into the European arrest warrant on more favourable terms, or stay out of it. At least, that is what the hints we have heard suggest—nothing very concrete, but that is what has come through in numerous debates in this House.
The reality, however, is that the treaty does not allow for automatically amending the European arrest warrant. We know that it is popular among other EU member states and it has been hard fought for and hard negotiated. As the hon. Member for Daventry highlighted and as others have said, there is a mood for change here and there in how the arrest warrant works, but that is much better done by all 27 nations working together in justice and home affairs Councils and negotiating together to make any amendments. That is better than the UK going it alone, but the UK going it alone is the sort of dog whistle approach that this Government adopt, ensuring that they talk in any language that will appeal to the Eurosceptic Back Benchers of the Conservative party rather than talk about the safety of the British public.
Michael Connarty
I want to confirm that my hon. Friend’s analysis is accurate. Along with other members of the European Scrutiny Committee, I have just returned from Lithuania where the Lithuanians were being harangued by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) about how everyone in Europe was turning against the EU, how we are all going to withdraw and he gave the example of the opt outs. They could not believe that any UK parliamentarian could talk about withdrawing from what, as my hon. Friend says, was a hard-negotiated agreement.
Meg Hillier
Absolutely. In my three years of negotiations, I was certainly struck by how positive other EU member states were in comparison with our Eurosceptic parliamentarians about the benefits of being members of Europe. We need to be really clear that there is no guarantee that we will be able to amend and then opt back in later. Even if that were to happen, there is no timetable for it, and we could be left uncovered for a period of time. We would have to negotiate 26 separate treaties with our EU colleagues. I cannot see them being very positive about that. Even when we were in government, I was told many times by my European colleagues that the UK was trying to have its cake and eat it. Through detailed and hard-working negotiation across government, however, we made sure that we got the best deal we could for the British public. My personal view is that we need to opt in; we need to amend, if necessary, on a cross-EU 27-member-state basis.
I am still puzzled about why the Home Secretary is lending her name to this risky game and why we are seeing such strong anti-European rhetoric from the Prime Minister. Perhaps it is all about Conservative Back Benchers and the threat to this Government of the UK Independence party. This Home Secretary and this Prime Minister are gambling with the security of the British public and the rights of victims—and we need to make that crystal clear.
That brings me to the other part of this coalition Government. The Liberal Democrats are now a party of government. That sometimes seems difficult to believe, but it is the case. We hear very little from Lib Dem Members, so I was heartened to hear from the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that he is pro the European arrest warrant. That is not the impression I gained about Liberal Democrats in my full eight years in Parliament, so it is great to hear that and I look forward to his speech. He has talked about making some technical amendments, so the question for the hon. Gentleman when he stands up to speak on behalf of his party tonight is, “will they or won’t they?” Will the Lib Dems support the rights of British victims by voting with us, or will they sit on the fence as they often do and hedge their bets?
The UK’s reputation in Europe is also put very much at risk by this approach. Over the years, we have built up a strong reputation as good negotiators, using our influence in a positive way—for the UK in Europe, but also for Europe more widely. The Home Secretary has not really answered the questions about the support and role of the devolved Administrations. When I was negotiating for the Government, I would be accompanied by members of those devolved Administrations who would be at our side as we discussed and negotiated. What sort of discussions has the Home Secretary had?
I do not have time to go into all the measures today, but it is important that Prüm was mentioned. There were arguments about how it was handled and how the technical and IT administration was carried out, but it will nevertheless introduce important protections. At present, those in this country who, in a global world, employ people from abroad do not know much about where those people have come from, and do not know whether they have criminal records. Proper data exchange can make our country a safer place.
It would be good to know when the House of Commons will vote on the opt-out. As many Members have pointed out, we are within a year of making a final decision, and we shall need to discuss the issue at length. There are barely six weeks before the summer recess, and we shall want to look at the details of the Government’s proposals. I should have thought that, in three years, the Government would have got further than they have. We need to see full details of the opt-in measures; when will we see those? How will the Liberal Democrats vote? That is another important question, which I hope will be answered by the hon. Member for Cambridge. Finally, what is the Home Secretary doing to protect victims?
We are not a teenage debating society. We are talking about real, serious measures that would protect or threaten the British public and other citizens in Europe. We need to ensure that the debate continues beyond today, and that we winkle out of the Government much more detail than they have been prepared to offer on this occasion.