Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Field]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr Field]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in London alone.

It went on:

“All the data was analysed to remove duplicates”,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr Bone]

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

[Michael Connarty]

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

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

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

The review discusses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Gavin Shuker]

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

[Michael Connarty]

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

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

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

[Michael Connarty]

I am happy to do so, Mr Havard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[Kate Green]

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

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

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

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

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

[Michael Connarty]

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

[Kate Green]

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

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

[Michael Connarty]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

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

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I have said elsewhere, of course I am disappointed about the turnout. I believe that the turnout at the next elections will be higher because people will have seen police and crime commissioners in their role and the commissioners will have a record to defend, as the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has just said, but it was up to politicians across the board and others to go out and campaign, and the Government did run an awareness campaign. I return to the point I made at the beginning of Question Time: police and crime commissioners replace police authorities, which were invisible, unaccountable and unelected. Police and crime commissioners are elected, visible, accessible and, crucially, accountable to the people.

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

14. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the effectiveness of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in tackling trafficked labour.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

The Gangmasters Licensing Authority plays a key role in protecting workers who may be exploited in the agriculture, shellfish, and food processing and packaging industries. A recent Government review streamlined its remit to focus on suspected serious and organised crime, working more closely with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and other specialist law enforcement agencies.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for that endorsement of the work of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, particularly given the recent evidence of the Noble/Freedom Food eggs scandal, which was described as the worst case of human trafficking the Gangmasters Licensing Authority had ever seen. However, would it not be better if the Government took on the principles contained in my Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill so that companies ordering those goods have a responsibility to trace right back to the source what is happening in the supply chain and we stop that kind of abuse of workers who come here to pick and work in our farms?

[James Brokenshire]

I certainly recognise the serious nature of the crimes the hon. Gentleman highlights and am sure that he will welcome a number of the joint operations with the Serious Organised Crime Agency—in a recent case, 30 Lithuanians were freed as a consequence. I hope that he will also welcome the work of colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills who have recently put out for public consultation legislation on the human rights reporting requirements of quoted companies, which we believe will go a long way towards addressing the concerns highlighted in his Bill.

Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Friday 19th October 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

First, let me put on record my tribute to Malcolm Wicks, the celebration of whose life was held today. He was a man of great principle and a good personal friend who will be sadly missed. I can say honestly that he was not just respected but deeply and fondly respected by Members on both sides of the House.

I welcome the new Minister for Immigration to his place, although I must say that this is not an immigration or migration Bill. It is interesting that until a week ago we were corresponding with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I have in my hand a letter from the then Under-Secretary, which states that

“BIS recently consulted on proposals to improve corporate narrative reporting. As part of that we sought views on making it explicit that quoted companies should consider human rights issues in reporting. We are working up final proposals on reporting and hope to announce them later this year.”

I do not know why the Bill has been transferred to the Minister for Immigration, but that is not to say that it is devoid of immigration issues—the berries we get in our supermarkets and the production of the “Big Mac” chickens that were proudly boasted of as being “all British” at the Olympics but turned out to be run by gangmasters who hired a gang of subcontractors that treated people like animals and stole from them and who are now being taken to court by Her Majesty’s tax officers for taking tax off people and not paying it. I have talked to people who tell that me the conditions for people who harvest the asparagus from Peru that can be bought in our supermarkets are beyond what one would expect in any country. So, there are immigration issues for the UK.

Professor Gary Craig of the Wilberforce institute in Hull is at this moment preparing a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The subjects studied include forced labour among Chinese migrants to this country, forced labour in Northern Ireland, the regulatory and legal frameworks surrounding forced labour and a report entitled “The experience of forced labour in the food industry” that was launched in the House of Commons in mid-May and took a field-to-fork approach. They raise questions about migration in the UK, but the Bill is not about migration and the UK.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman. The Home Office and I have the lead in Government on combating human trafficking, on which I work closely with colleagues across Government. Indeed, only yesterday we published our interdepartmental report on combating human trafficking. Perhaps that is why it was felt to be appropriate for me to lead on the Government’s response to his Bill.

[Michael Connarty]

That explains why the Government need a pair of specs to look at what the Bill is about. It is not about human trafficking. There may be elements of human trafficking within it, but it is about the exploitation of humanity. It is about modern-day slavery; that does not require people to be trafficked across the world, but may include trafficking across the world.

Professor Craig goes on in his report to talk about major supermarkets, and asks how they can

“sell flowers or vegetables sourced from thousands of miles away (e.g. Asparagus from Peru) at prices which cannot possibly reflect appropriate labour costs”.

He says:

“These major retailers generally claim that their own practices are ethical and that they try ‘as far as possible’ to ensure that the practices of those who supply them…are also ethical”,

but how much do they try?”

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Connarty]

No. I do not take many interventions. I do not have much time, because people treated the previous Bill as though they were in Committee and spoke at great length and in detail, when they should have done so in Committee. Not a lot of time is left for me to speak, or for others who wish to speak on the Bill.

The question is how ethical suppliers are. Professor Craig said:

“Despite a number of campaigns, there is little doubt that the products of slave labour abroad end up on the High Street of all our communities”.

The purpose of the Bill is to deal with that.

I bow to the Foreign Secretary’s knowledge of the thoughts of William Wilberforce, on which he expounded in his excellent book. He wrote time and again that Wilberforce said that he would not be turned aside from his campaign on slavery 200 years ago. The Bill aims at addressing the modern-day version of the slavery that Wilberforce thought he had eradicated 200 years ago.

Last night in the House of Commons, on anti-slavery day, we had a meeting of people who support the Bill, including its Conservative sponsor, the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). It is no coincidence that a large number of faith-based organisations joined the civil organisations supporting the Bill. Clearly, they all know that I am a humanist and do not have a religion, but the Right Rev. Albert Bogle, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, came down specifically to speak in support of the Bill. The Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility, representing 19 ethical investment companies, came to speak. Fair Pensions and the Fairshare Educational Foundation, the Ethical Investment Association, and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales were represented at last night’s meeting in support of the Bill.

Unseen UK was there; it has launched the “Walk Free” petition, which is gathering signatures at a rate of 10,000 a day. A young organisation with which I was very impressed, the Global Poverty Project, is negotiating contacts with the fashion industry to challenge it on how it brings to the high street goods that may have been sewn together by people who are getting a pittance wage and living in terrible conditions. Not many people would buy those goods if, when they walked into these fancy stores, the label stated, “This garment is made by slave labour.” I wish that organisation well.

The Institute for Human Rights and Business was also represented at the meeting, because the business community is interested in this. There were about 20 other civic society organisations there, too, and I thank them all. We pledged last night that this campaign would go on. If the Bill is talked out today, it is coming back. This issue is not going away. The campaign will go on, as Wilberforce did in his struggles, until he changed the attitude of his country, and then the world, to the abuse of people moved, as slaves, from Africa to other parts of the world.

Anthony Steen was also there. I pay great tribute to him. He is the founder and director of the Human Trafficking Foundation. If ever there was a cause for a knighthood, it is what Anthony Steen has done in this field alone. I also commend the all-party group on human trafficking, and Parliamentarians against Human Trafficking, a group with members from all parts of Europe, and wider Europe, who met in this House on Tuesday and Thursday to talk about human trafficking. The Bill does not contradict what the Human Trafficking Foundation is about, but it is not only about that; it is complementary to it.

In attempting to get the Bill through, we are standing on the shoulders of giants, because people have done so much, from Wilberforce right through to the modern day. I say “giants”; for some people, the EU is one of those giants. I notice the presence of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who may intervene; he may see the EU as a large body, rather than a giant. It is interesting that, in December 2012, the European Commission will launch its draft guidance to employment and recruitment agencies operating worldwide. It is talking about how best to implement the United Nations’ guiding principles on business and human rights. It is important that those who support the recruitment and employment industry, and who also want to see better standards to ensure that bottom feeders do not exploit workers, engage in this process. I commend the company, Manpower, which has spent five years auditing its supply chain right down to the lowest level. Its managing director speaks out strongly on the subject. He spoke on behalf of those who put through the Bill similar to this one in the California legislature, where such auditing is now law.

Talking about giants, it is interesting that President Obama last week called modern-day slavery

“a debasement of our common humanity.”

He spoke about

“the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name—modern slavery.”

There are giants in the field and I am happy to step up on their shoulders.

When we are talking about a Bill to do with trade and business, not just to do with migration, it is interesting that when the FairPensions campaign for responsible investment and the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility wrote a letter, they wrote to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. At my suggestion they copied it to the new Minister for Immigration, but only because we had found out that the Minister for Immigration, rather than the Business Secretary, would reply to the Bill.

What is the purpose of the Bill? It is to create a framework that large companies can use to review the contract arrangements that they have entered into for the supply of their goods and services, and by including services we extend beyond the California Act. It is interesting that in the discussions last night, many of the organisation said, yes, that includes public procurement —the £9 billion of public procurement contracts that this Government give out. They must audit, right down to the roots.

It has been embarrassing when organisations have been found to have people working in their buildings who do not have the right to be in the UK and who come in with gangs of workers. I work very late at night in this building. I go home at 1 am or 2 am because I like working in the evening. I have often tried to speak to the people who work here in the lifts. Many of them cannot speak English. That does not mean that they are not legal immigrants, but when Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London he reckoned that 500,000 people live in London illegally. The Government give no subsidy to London for their education or other services. Those people are exploited because they have no right to be here, so they can be paid poor wages or kept in terrible conditions.

The growth of TB in London is attributed to the fact that people are living in such terrible conditions, and to the fact that they are afraid to get treatment because they would then be sent back home. That is a problem common to large conurbations in this country and others.

The Bill represents a challenge, but not a threat. It is not a big stick to beat companies. It aims to encourage companies to seek transparency from their suppliers and from those who supply their suppliers, right back to the first transaction moved by their finances and their sale of products and services. It is an invitation also to raise the ethical standards of their trade. That is what Wilberforce was about. It was not necessary to have enslavement in order to have trade. The Bill aims to lead the fight to eradicate the incentives to enslave men, women and children, just to shave a small percentage off the price of goods and services in the UK.

We hope that that invitation will be taken up because it is an opportunity to win the right to display a sort of kite mark. That is what is happening in California, where companies are saying, “We have audited, we are ethical, we are proud of being ethical. Buy our goods and services because they are worth something extra.” That is what I want to see companies looking for—pride and marketing value, such as the Body Shop brand, which was clearly not tested on animals and became an example of ethical production. That changed the view of the purchaser and of other companies in the high street so that they could match the achievement and win in that market also.

How can the Bill do this? We are following the California Act, which was mentioned by President Obama. Clause 1 says who should do it and for what purpose. Companies with annual receipts of more than £100 million worldwide should disclose what they have found. The phrasing of subsection (2) is clumsy. It refers to

“the worst forms of child labour”.

We have had to stick to that wording, which is defined in article 3 of the International Labour Organisation’s convention No. 182. That refers to

“work which exposes children to physical, psychological or sexual abuse…work underground, under water, at dangerous heights or in confined spaces…work with dangerous machinery, equipment and tools, or which involves the manual handling or transport of heavy loads…work in an unhealthy environment which may, for example, expose children to hazardous substances, agents or processes, or to temperatures, noise level and vibrations damaging to their health…work under particularly difficult conditions such as work for long hours or during the night or work where the child is unreasonably confined in the premises of the employer.”

Is there any hon. Member here, or any member of the Government, who does not want to oppose those worst forms of child labour? I do not think so. Do people want to buy products that they know have been made in that way? Remember the scandal when during the Beijing Olympics children were shown sewing leather footballs that were sold in Europe for a vast profit. There have been exposures again and again of women locked up in factories in Malaysia, not paid, not fed and not allowed to go home, making garments that end up on our high streets. Those are the things that the Bill asks companies to seek out and do something about.

Clause 2 is about disclosure. Companies must disclose on their website and in their annual report what they find. If they do not have a website, they must produce a report within 30 days on what they have found in their supply chain. Is that so much to ask? I do not think so. That is asking companies to look closely at what is happening in their name, with their money, on behalf of their customers. There is a movement out there that wants to see us trading ethically. Fair Trade is the beginning, but ethical trade is the end, and that is what is coming to us. If we go to meet it, we will be applauded; if we do not, we will be abused and put down as being people who do not really care because we still think that it does not matter as long as UK plc makes a buck. That is no longer what the public want.

Clause 2(3) is about what will be disclosed and how—the methodology. It is the same methodology as set out in the California Act, which has now been embraced by many companies. Interestingly, 40 multinationals from the UK trade in California and will have to go through this process if they wish to do business there. Many of the companies will, I hope, then be able to lead the way in the UK. I have had letters of support from BP and from the people who bought the 26 sites in olefins and derivatives from BP, INEOS. We have companies saying that they want to see the Bill through because they are willing to do this. So we have the audit of suppliers and direct suppliers and setting up internal accountability standards, providing companies’ employees and management with direct responsibility for the supply chain, with the accountability to reply and report on the supply chain right down to the bottom. That is all very sensible.

Clause 3 states that when the company finds people who are being abused in these ways, it must then seek out ways to assist them. It states that it

“shall take action necessary and appropriate to assist people who have been victims and shall report on that action in their annual reports”

That is a very sensible requirement. Companies do say, “Yes, we have done it. We are ethical. We do not have any problems.” But if someone finds that they are not ethical, they are found to be denying very publicly the audit that should have taken place. I remember going round companies—some Government Members may not like this—with a lot of stickers always in my pocket showing a skull and crossbones and saying “Contaminated by apartheid”. It may be that eventually, when companies are denying what they are doing in the supply chain, people will be putting stickers on their goods saying, “Contaminated by child slavery”, or “Contaminated by slavery”. Then they may have to look again at what they are doing when they say that they are doing everything correctly.

The Bill might be talked out today, but it is coming back. It will not go away. If the Government had the courage to give the lead to UK businesses, those businesses can still win the markets, but they can also win the next stage of Wilberforce’s campaign as set out 200 years ago and challenge and help to eradicate modern day slavery.

Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

Thank you, Mr Weir. Do not encourage me.

The UKHTC costs £1.6 million a year and employs 30 people. Support for victim care, which the Government have increased, costs nearly £2 million a year and services nearly 1,500 people. There seems to be a little discrepancy there. We could take a fraction of that £1.6 million— perhaps, at most, £250,000—and establish a national rapporteur. It would do all the things we want at the fraction of the cost. The Minister could then go back to the Chancellor and say, “By the way, Chancellor, here is £500,000 back that I have found.” I know his career prospects are good, but that would be an added incentive for the Prime Minister.

Three components are required for a national rapporteur to make an effective contribution to combating human trafficking, as opposed to simply writing reports that gather dust: independence from Government; unlimited and direct access to all relevant information, not just Government information; and annual reports that should be made public, with their recommendations debated in Parliament. It is important to keep in mind that, while a report by the national rapporteur on the status of human trafficking is designed to cover the scope of the problem and the changing trends as well as the appropriate responses, it should not lose sight of the ultimate goal: to end this vicious modern-day slavery.

The UK Government’s human trafficking strategy clearly states its main four objectives and how to achieve them. If established in the UK, a national rapporteur could gather and synchronise the information to assess the Government’s progress on its timely and efficient implementation, make recommendations on where more attention and action were needed, and ensure the adequacy and appropriateness of services provided to victims of trafficking.

Another point that was brought to my attention is that the Dutch Government discovered that having a national rapporteur actually helped them. When outside bodies said that the Dutch Government were not doing enough, they could point to the rapporteur’s report and say, “Yes, we are doing the job.”

In conclusion, not only am I being a good European today, and not only am I making the Minister’s life easier—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says that there is a first time for everything. Not only am I saving the taxpayer money, but I am arguing for a big step towards ending the evil of human trafficking.

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

rose—

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

I cannot call the hon. Gentleman unless he has the permission of the initiator of the debate and the Minister. Does he have the permission of both?

[Michael Connarty]

A minute of their time.

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

But has that been granted?

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

I am sorry; I cannot call the hon. Gentleman.

[Michael Connarty]

As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking, I find that quite appalling.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

I am happy to assure the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) that I will be generous in allowing interventions, even though I am restricted by time, because I appreciate his contribution and his long-standing interest in this subject.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on making a uniquely Europhile speech, on securing this debate and on his work for the all-party group. I am grateful for his kind remarks, although I am deeply worried when he says that lobbying me is like pushing at an open door. I make it clear to all non-governmental organisations that that should not be taken as precedent.

There is, rightly, a lot of interest in this issue. Everything that my hon. Friend said about its seriousness and the importance of having an effective anti-trafficking strategy is, of course, true. The one point where I would slightly disagree with him, apart from on the central argument—I will come on to why I disagree with him about that—is on the lack of public awareness. It has struck me, over the past few years, not least through the actions of the all-party group, NGOs and successive Ministers in both Governments, that there is consciousness throughout the country of the evil of trafficking and the fact that it is present not just in our inner cities and the sex industry, but in many small communities, including rural communities, and all parts of the United Kingdom, as we have heard. Indeed, it is everywhere. That consciousness has grown in recent years, which is good, because we will be much more effective in fighting trafficking if, out there, the general public knows about it.

In that context, it is fair for me to outline some progress that we have made since we published the human trafficking strategy in July last year, which focuses, as my hon. Friend said, on four key themes: improving victim identification and care; enhancing our ability to act early; smarter action at the border; and more co-ordination of our law enforcement efforts in the UK.

Officials have been working across the Government to build a more collective and collaborative response to fighting human trafficking, bringing in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development, the Department for Education and the Department of Health. Equally importantly—I take the point that there must be collaboration between the Government and extra-governmental bodies—this response is specifically supported by stakeholder groups on specific themes, attended by a range of NGOs. The current groups are focusing on five key areas within the strategy: raising public awareness; working with the private sector; working with child victims; tackling demand; and international engagement. Those groups have already instigated action to support the aims of the strategy. For example, they are considering how we can expand the awareness-raising initiative with airlines—something that I helped to launch with Virgin Airlines as part of the activities on the most recent national anti-slavery day.

We have already provided additional information to posts in other countries to raise awareness of trafficking and to support collaborative working with NGOs in those countries. Part of that work includes gathering information from posts, so that we have a better understanding of their challenges and issues to help inform how we might best support anti-trafficking efforts around the world. We recently agreed an awareness-raising campaign with a major supermarket in Lincolnshire to provide information to potential vulnerable workers in the agricultural sector.

Officials continue to review and refine the national referral mechanism to ensure that victims can be identified appropriately and to ensure that the picture on the extent of human trafficking within this country is clearer.

My hon. Friend was disapprobatory about the UK Human Trafficking Centre. Clearly, it can get better and is doing so, but improvements can always be made. That is what we are trying to do in respect of its intelligence function and organised crime group mapping, which will help inform the Government’s view of the priority areas to combat human trafficking.

[Michael Connarty]

I am reminded of the adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. On 18 January, the Minister said in his response to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s special representative and co-ordinator for combating traffic in human beings:

“Progress is monitored by a strategic board of cross-Departmental officials which meets on a six-weekly basis. This board reports to the biannual Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group…on human trafficking.”

That seems to be a larger number of people than is required to do a job, which, as the chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), said, is done by a co-ordinator—a proper rapporteur with a single purpose, independent of the Government.

[Damian Green]

Let me move directly on to the central point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough about whether we need a rapporteur added to our armoury. Obviously, this matter arises from the directive that we have now opted into. I am grateful to him for his support, not just for our opting in, but for the way that we did it—at the end of the process when had we ensured that it was appropriate and helpful to this country to do so.

We have given much thought to how we implement the directive. We are about to make changes to primary legislation, with amendments to the Protection of Freedoms Bill, to ensure that we are compliant with those parts of the directive to which our laws are not compliant at the moment, and we are making an initial assessment of where we may need to introduce secondary legislation. We are determined to ensure that everything is in place by April 2013, which is when we need to be completely compliant.

Article 19 allows the setting up of a national rapporteur or equivalent mechanism. I am unpersuaded by my hon. Friend’s example. He was mildly humorous about the inter-departmental ministerial group. I think that I am entitled, in return, to note that of the 27 nations in which he could have found examples of people being inspired to greater efforts on anti-trafficking by having a rapporteur, he adduced precisely one. I am disappointed on behalf of Finland, which is the only other country in the European Union that has a national rapporteur. I note that my hon. Friend did not come up with any great advantages from the Finnish system.

Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Westminster Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Michael Connarty]

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

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

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

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

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

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

[Michael Connarty]

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

[Damian Green]

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

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

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

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

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

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

[Michael Connarty]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

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

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

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

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

Trafficking in Human Beings

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to be here this evening to welcome the Government’s proposals. I know that we are going through the European scrutiny process and that we have a right to our debate, but there might be a small tinge or last flourish of Euroscepticism in the forcing of a debate after the date on which the Government had hoped to sign up to the directive. I have seen the letter to the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, so I know that the Government have respected the scrutiny process and the Committee’s wish to have a debate on these issues. That is to be commended for scrutiny purposes and I do not think it will take anything from the eventual signing up to the directive.

I once asked the Prime Minister about his moral compass in relation to this issue, and it seems that our collective moral compass has come through the magnetic storm of Euroscepticism and out the other side pointing in the right direction. I welcome that greatly. I do not think that the probing questions asked by those who perhaps did not want us to do things on the basis of an EU directive, but wanted us to set up 27 arrangements with other countries, were unhelpful because they made the Government think hard about what was in the directive. Some of the issues that I pressed hard on, such as extraterritorial jurisdiction, are very important and I hope that the Government might join the European Parliament in getting the same clause on extraterritorial jurisdiction into the directive on sexual exploitation and the abuse of children, as that is currently being resisted.

We have done this just in time. The ECPAT and Body Shop petition has been running for some months and when I looked after it had been closed on 5 May it had 887,575 signatures calling for guardianships to be set up as part of our response to the trafficking of children. I believe that the petition will be presented on Thursday at No. 10 Downing street on behalf of those organisations. ECPAT has also been supported by the Body Shop financially in its work.

A month ago, the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland reported on his research into the trafficking of children. From the evidence he had collected, he said there were at least 80 cases he could verify and possibly 200 of which he had had notice. For a small country such as Scotland, that is a lot. If the figure were extrapolated for the UK, the number would be massive—much higher than the figure of 1,000 mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), and that is just for children. It worries me that there is a massive amount of trafficking going on—perhaps for the purposes mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who talked about what he had seen in Romania. Clearly, there is a lot of trafficking going on that we have yet to find out about—much more than some estimates. Some of it might be just to reunite families; some of it might be for benefit fraud; some of it might be for exploitation through cheap labour or begging, as I have seen in other European countries; and some of it might be for other, more nasty, reasons, including sexual exploitation and abuse.

We have a long way to go. According to the reports I have seen, there were only eight successful prosecutions for people trafficking in England last year. What seems to happen, according to the data that I have, is that the accused plead guilty to a lesser charge. There is not supposed to be plea bargaining in this country, but we know that it happens. The number of proper cases and final prosecutions is very low. There was one well publicised case of a woman police officer who pressed for research into human trafficking, because she had seen it going on, and was told by her senior officer, “We’re not interested in human trafficking. In this force we’re interested in burglaries.” In a case reported today by Barnardo’s, a judge commented to a 14-year-old who had been trafficked and used in a sex ring that it was just a lifestyle choice that she had made. That is frightening in this day and age.

We have much to do about the scale of the problem. I sent the Minister a number of parliamentary questions. I was told that the trafficking toolkit from 2003 was available to all law enforcement agencies. That was the answer to my question about how many people had been trained by the police forces in this country to handle human trafficking. It was confirmed today by the people from Barnardo’s that only a quarter of police forces have proper child protection units running, so we have a long, long way to go.

I have received information from contacts throughout the EU. The Human Trafficking Foundation run by Anthony Steen is keen that we should reach out and form organisations such as the one run by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) in all the countries of Europe. For example, when I went to Hungary, I met representatives of three organisations who could give me lists of 400 women trafficked and re-trafficked—turned over, new women brought into Switzerland by one organisation, and children trafficked from Kosovo to Albania and elsewhere in that part of the world for begging, theft and possibly sexual abuse. It is important that we get round Europe, make contacts, recognise the scale of the problem and see it as a European problem and one that is much wider than the EU.

We need a new approach to victims, as was said from the Front Bench and supported by the hon. Member for Wellingborough. We should realise that, if we can separate the victims from the traffickers, we can deal with the traffickers better, but when they are mixed up and it is suggested that those involved in prostitution rings are somehow accepting of it, we blur the images and people start to think that those in the brothels are the trouble and the problem. It is a massive money-making operation exploiting women as they have been exploited for generations, but now that is transnational and we must do something about it.

We should take a new approach to the many active organisations. I do not know how the Salvation Army bid will work and who it will work with, but following the debates that we have had here on slavery and trafficking, I have been contacted by organisations that work with Moldova, for example, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) mentioned. One organisation in London works with an organisation in Moldova trying to stop the young girls coming out of care homes being picked up immediately and offered work which ends up as prostitution in other European countries. We must break the cycle in the country of origin, as was said from the Government Back Benches. There are many organisations actively working in this field that we must pull together and see as a great force.

Barnardo’s commented that sometimes the authorities think that people who act as guardians—that was not the term used, but the role is similar—looking after the women and children coming out of those rings are treated as though they are amateurs, because they are not professionally paid and they are not formal social workers. In fact, they are more highly skilled and have done more sensitivity training and skill training than many receive in their wide curriculum as social workers. We must start treating such volunteers as part of the force that we can turn to the advantage of those children.

I will finish by making one further point, as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) is present. We have had a debate on the EU directive on combating the sexual abuse of children. I hope that our Government, who do not have a statute of limitations on sexual abuse crimes, will persuade the EU that in its directive there should be no statute of limitations on those crimes. The current bid from the European Parliament is for a 15-year statute of limitations, which would expand provision in many countries. We need that to be taken out, so that when we catch a person involved in such crimes, at any time, they will be prosecuted and jailed.

I have been made a UK representative of the Council of Europe’s ONE in FIVE campaign, which is intended to promote the Council of Europe convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which the UK has signed up to but not yet ratified. I think that we should ratify that convention. I hope that Members who are listening to the debate do not see this problem just as something that happens on their streets and that they have to worry about only in the context of their constituencies. Every time Anthony Steen went abroad with the European Scrutiny Committee, he took the chance to reach out by making contacts, talking about the issue and convincing people that they should join in and act as the all-party group does here, and I will do the same every time I go abroad. When Members who are listening to the debate are in contact with parliamentarians in other parts of Europe and beyond, they should talk not just about the positive things, but about the need to come together to shut down that network and protect the people who are exploited from country to country, for whatever reason. That will defend the people on our streets and in our communities much more than thinking that we can do it alone.

Anti-Slavery Day

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

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

We should be focusing not so much on what is happening in the UK as the fact that there are still 27 million people in some form of slavery throughout the world. We should look seriously at the heritage left behind by Anthony Steen. He was not talking about the UK; he never talked about the UK. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, he travelled around Europe urging other Parliaments to set up similar organisations and to get their Governments focused on the problem, whether they were in the transit countries, the departure countries or the countries where the criminal gangs organised.

It is interesting to look back in history. Oddly enough, the story of Oliver Twist is based on factual historical records of the trafficking of Italian children who were scooped up in the villages and promised jobs, and then brought to the UK to be thieves and robbers in the Paddington area of London. There was never a Jewish Fagin organising that—there was an Italian gangmaster and an Italian gang.

This is not just something that happens locally, but, as we have heard, it is happening locally in people’s constituencies, and in mine—two brothels were broken up, and trafficked women were found in both. Positive Action in Housing, based in Glasgow, does wonderful work in Scotland. Many Members have spoken about their own local organisations that are helping people who are then released from such bondage—not just sexual bondage, but low pay or poverty pay. A Chinese gentleman came to see me after I spoke at the annual general meeting of Positive Action in Housing. He had been moved from one Chinese restaurant to another, throughout the whole of the UK, for nine and a half years, and told that if he ever went to see anyone he would be sent back to China. It is going on all the time. Sixteen children were recently rescued in London. In Scotland, in the three months up until August, the newspapers reported that 18 children were found in some sort of exploitation.

I urge us, as a Parliament, to look wider than we are at the moment. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is not completely carrying on the heritage of Anthony Steen if he does not focus on broadening the outlook. We should stop trying to throw a ring around the UK, and we should expand our movement outside.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, of course—the ring needs to be around everywhere. I will let him into a secret. Anthony Steen and his Human Trafficking Foundation are working with the all-party group on human trafficking every week, and we intend to set up all-party groups across the whole of Europe, as Anthony wants.

[Michael Connarty]

Sign me up to that.

I wish to ask the Minister—I have never yet heard a decent reply to this question, including when I wrote to the Prime Minister in September—why the Government are not clear that we need to sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said that we need a Europe-wide organisation, and that is on offer in the directive. It is not a protocol, and it would be binding on all countries. We have sections 57 to 59 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, but they are not capable of dealing with cross-border trafficking in the EU.

The EU directive would give us extra powers. It would give us not just the power but the duty to pursue any UK citizen, or anyone habitually resident in the UK, who was involved in trafficking anywhere in the world, with the support of the EU. It would be our jurisdiction, so we could do our duty by people who were trafficked and enslaved. It would also give us the option—it would be a power, not a compulsion—to decide to pursue anyone habitually resident in the UK who was involved in organising people trafficking, which can lead to slavery, outside the UK.

I give the following example quite seriously, not to diminish the terrible thing that happened to the McCann family. If Madeleine McCann were an adult young woman who had been trafficked out of Portugal by a gang of people who were not in the UK, we would not have had the power to take jurisdiction. It is true that we can go to Interpol. I went to Portugal during that terrible time, as the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, and we met the policeman sent from Lisbon to try to pick up the pieces of the local police’s terrible approach immediately after the loss of Madeleine McCann. We realised the police’s inadequacy, but although we had liaison officers we did not have the ability to send in the Met to do the job properly. We could have that power for an adult if we signed up to the EU directive. That is its greatest attraction to me—we would have a duty and responsibility to people in this country who may end up being trafficked.

At the moment, young women and men affected travel around and live in other parts of Europe. They do not necessarily always live in the UK. If they are trafficked out of other countries by someone who is not a UK resident, at the moment we have no jurisdiction. That is a very strong argument for the directive.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) came nearest to expressing the aspiration that existed when the decision to mark anti-slavery day was voted through in the House. It is a worldwide business that we must fight against. We must recognise the clear link with organised criminal gangs in the advanced economies of the world, particularly in the EU states and those around them. We must do everything we can to be vigilant locally. All the organisations that have been mentioned deserve support, and we must try to build an anti-slavery, anti-trafficking alliance at Government and non-governmental organisation level. I hope that the Minister, and eventually the Prime Minister, will recognise that one major step will be taken if we sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking and join that battle properly.

Human Trafficking

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on securing this very important debate. There is no doubt that a modern day slavery exists in many forms. I liked most of the speech of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) but I was rather disappointed by his limited UK-centric views and ambitions. He seems to feel that we can stop human trafficking by throwing up gates around the UK. However, it is not a UK phenomenon, but a worldwide one. There is no doubt that trafficking can be for sexual exploitation. In many cases, it exists down our street. In the Falkirk and West Lothian areas of my constituency, brothels have been broken up and trafficked women have been found. At Prime Minister’s questions in September, the deputy leader of the Labour party raised a scandalous case in London in which some of the organisers were Iranian who lived in London. They were not necessarily UK citizens, but people who were habitually in the UK. If they had not been captured in the UK, we would not have been able to pursue them outside the country. Under the present law, if they had gone to any other EU country, we would not have had the right to pursue them.

[Mr Bone]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Connarty]

I will continue for a while, but the hon. Gentleman can intervene later. That is the problem that we need to address. Many people are trafficked not just for sexual exploitation, but for domestic exploitation. They think that they are coming here for good, well-paid jobs, and they end up being handed over as domestic servants. They are paid a low wage, trapped in the house, have their passport taken off them, and told that if they go out they will be reported and sent back to wherever they have come from. There are thousands of people in this city who are living like that. We had the scandalous case of the Saudi Arabian prince who murdered a domestic slave in his household in London, and that happens in large homes in this city. It is a scandal and something that we should be worried about.

Many other people are in poverty-wage jobs. For example, someone came to see me recently who, over nine and a half years, had basically been moved from Chinese restaurant to Chinese restaurant around the UK. They were told that if they ever went to see anyone, they would be exposed and sent back home to China where, for various reasons, they do not want to return. They came to see me because I had spoken at the annual general meeting of an organisation that deals with such people in Glasgow, which of course is the only city in Scotland that takes people who are asylum seekers who have been dispersed from London. So human trafficking is a very big trade that, in fact, has sexual exploitation at one end, but, as has already been said, that sexual exploitation is not necessarily the biggest part of the trade.

Many people are trafficked with the promise of a good job or a better life. When I spoke at the AGM that I just referred to, a young man also spoke who had been here in the UK for 10 years. He was the last remaining member of his family, having escaped from a violent situation in Africa. He was told that he was going to a better life and was dumped in Glasgow. Quite frankly, being dumped in Glasgow would be a frightening experience for some English people, on the basis that they cannot always understand the language. [Laughter.] That young man was dumped in Glasgow and was totally impoverished. Thank goodness that there was an organisation in Glasgow, called Positive Action in Housing, which deals with such people. It has now been going for 15 years and I pay tribute to Robina Qureshi, its director and the person who set it up. It rescues people from exactly that kind of domestic slavery and exploitation, whereby people pay to be trafficked. Indeed, sometimes their families gather large amounts of money to pay for them to be sent through human trafficking routes run by gangs in Europe and elsewhere in order to get a better life, only for them to end up being dumped on the streets of the UK or other EU countries. So it is a much bigger issue that we are talking about. There are two parts to the issue—one is about people trafficking and the other is about enforced prostitution—and we must focus on both parts.

The reference to Anthony Steen was very timeous. He was the former MP for Totnes and a member of the European Scrutiny Committee. He did an excellent job in setting up and becoming the chairman of the all-party group on human trafficking and then in setting up and chairing the Human Trafficking Foundation.

I think that the way that Anthony Steen worked was a key to how we should go on as a Government, regardless of which party is in power. He used his travels as part of the European Scrutiny Committee to go round Europe trying to convince every Parliament in Europe to have an all-party group against human trafficking. I am sorry, but we cannot set up a ring around Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or the UK as a whole—it cannot be done. We have to work with everyone across all the countries involved.

No doubt Anthony Steen aspires to do things beyond the EU, but when I talked to him he said that basically it was the countries that were used as transit countries, or the countries of departure, that had to be focused on. It was the countries where the criminal organisations exist; those organisations do not necessarily exist in the countries that were targeted for trafficking people into. It was not just the reception countries, such as the UK, that should be focused on. Therefore, it was important to Anthony Steen that the UK Government should sign up to and opt into the EU directive on human trafficking because that directive is necessary, so that we can have bigger and more useful powers than we have at the moment.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech. Regarding the opt-in to the EU directive, I just wanted to say that what concerns me as chairman of the all-party group is that, if we opt in, we are saying, “That’s it”. I do not think that the EU directive goes far enough and I do not want signing up to it to be an excuse for not doing more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty]

That is a wonderful ambition and if that is the case then I will now give the hon. Gentleman some reasons why we should do what is necessary now and take the first step by signing up to that directive.

During Prime Minister’s questions on 15 September, when the issue of human trafficking was raised, the Prime Minister invited me to write to him and I wrote to him, to explain why the powers that we have at the moment are not good enough. What powers do we have? We have the Sexual Offences Act 2003; that is the power that we have to deal with these matters. We have heard from the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), a Liberal Member, that there have been 46 convictions under the 2003 Act of people who were willingly trafficked, which is not a great record.

Under section 57 of the 2003 Act, basically we can take action against anyone who is outside the UK and trafficking people into the UK, if they are UK citizens. Under sections 58 and 59 of the Act, anyone who is in the UK and planning to traffic people out of the UK can also be taken to court. The other actions that can be taken, regarding brothels and all the rest of it, are contained within that same Act. But those three sections—57, 58 and 59—are the sections that cover what I believe is identified as being the “outside” problem of what is happening outside the UK.

What does the EU directive bring, in terms of the powers that we require? It actually requires member states to assert jurisdiction on their own nationals. In other words, under the directive the UK could and should prosecute any UK national involved in human trafficking anywhere in the EU. It also gives the power, but not necessarily the obligation, for member states to take jurisdiction—that is, the power of prosecution—of a habitual resident in the UK who commits these crimes anywhere in the world. So, if they go anywhere in the UK, we can pursue them.

The EU directive also gives a power regarding a victim who was a UK national or a habitual resident in the UK who was trafficked anywhere in the EU. In fact, that gives the UK the power to protect a young woman who is working around the EU. There are now many young women who work around the EU, who do not necessarily live in the UK any longer, but who end up getting trafficked by, for example, a Bulgarian gang. Do we really think that the Bulgarian legal system will protect that young woman? However, the British jurisdiction given under the EU directive would give us the power to pursue that gang.

I want to end by saying that I want to hear why the Government are not signing up to the EU directive. Let me be quite frank. If Madeleine McCann had been an adult—a young woman—and had been trafficked out of Portugal to somewhere else by someone who was not a UK citizen, we would have no jurisdiction. Under the directive, we would have that jurisdiction, so why are the Government not signing up to it?

Speaker’s Statement

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I take all matters seriously, but I genuinely do not think that this is a point of order for the Chair. I have the very highest respect for the hon. Gentleman, who has long service in the House, but it is difficult for me to see how he can have a point of order further to a point of order that I have just ruled is not a point of order. However, he has raised his point, even if it is not a point of order, and he has registered his views firmly upon the record.

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have often said that you are here to protect the House and to allow it to do its business in holding the Government to account. Will you take up with the Government the fact that although we have had a European summit and a number of European Council meetings, and although five stalwart Labour Members have already volunteered for the European Scrutiny Committee, we have no such Committee to scrutinise the Government’s behaviour in Europe? This is the latest that that Committee has ever been set up.

[Mr Speaker]

I am afraid that that is not a task for the Chair—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman will not be too disappointed if he waits. He was looking uncertain, but I am trying to allay his uncertainty. He should be grateful to me.

[Michael Connarty]

I did not say anything.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not want sedentary gestures from the hon. Gentleman. I am trying to help him. The matter is not one for the Chair. The information is now firmly in the public domain. Of course we are all in favour of the speedy composition of Committees with important scrutiny work to do, and the Committee to which he refers, which he has himself chaired with distinction, is an important case in point.