Child Victims of Human Trafficking (Central Government Responsibility) Bill

Peter Bone Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

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

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has piloted through such a successful Bill. I would like to pick up, in general terms, on what the Minister for Life Sciences said at the end of the previous debate, which is that it proves what Back-Bench MPs can do when they work together to achieve something. I want to talk about that a little more in relation to human trafficking and my Bill. It is only three clauses long, but it goes to the heart of the problem we have with human trafficking and modern-day slavery. However, I need to set it in the wider context of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

Way back when I was first elected as a new Member of Parliament in 2005, the Labour party was in government, and at one of my constituency surgeries on a Friday I got a note through the door. It was anonymous, but the person who wrote it was a prostitute from Northampton who was very concerned at what was happening to young women who were being brought into this country—we now call it trafficking, but at that time people did not talk about it. I thus became aware of this issue and I then met someone called Anthony Steen, who at the time was Member of Parliament for Totnes—a most extraordinary person. He has changed the view of trafficking and modern-day slavery not only in this country, but across the whole of Europe. He formed the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery, and I was one of its officers.

At that time, the Home Office under the Labour Government did not really recognise that trafficking existed.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Bone]

I am going back many years. [Interruption.] I am going to develop that point. I am not blaming anyone in particular other than the Home Office—of course, everyone will agree with that—and I am not really blaming the Home Office. It was just that people did not understand the issue. Indeed, if we went back to the days of what people might think of as traditional slavery, I am sure people would have denied it existed. It was only because of what William Wilberforce and others did that people got to know more and more about it. Indeed, I quite confess that when I came to Parliament, I had no idea about human trafficking or modern-day slavery, and I certainly did not think I was going to get wrapped up in trying to solve the problem.

Anthony Steen and a small number of us travelled all over Europe, to places such as Moldova—to places that, to be honest, I had not even heard of—and found out about this terrible, terrible crime being committed of people being trafficked across borders. In those days it was mainly for purposes of sexual exploitation, although it has now turned into labour exploitation.

The traditional way for these women—we call them women, but in many cases they were actually young girls, way under the age of 18—in very poor countries such as Moldova to be trafficked would be for somebody of their own age, quite often a female, to befriend them. They would then tell them there was a job in Belfast, say, in a restaurant—this is from a true case, from one of the dependencies of the old USSR. These women would come over expecting to work in a restaurant—and there was, indeed, a genuine restaurant. Because of the free movement rules in the European Union and Schengen, they would not be checked, but could come straight across Europe and into this country, and although I really do not want to make a European Union point, I will. Years and years ago, a long time before all this stuff appeared in the press, we warned that while free movement might have many advantages, it was certainly of great advantage to the traffickers, because there was very little chance of their being caught.

This is what would happen. The girls would arrive, all happy, looking forward to—in this case—a job in a restaurant in Belfast, and looking forward to a better life, more money, and excitement. Those girls never actually made it to the restaurant. They were locked up in a terraced house in Belfast. I say “locked up”. One would expect the lock on a bedroom door to be on the inside, but in houses such as that one they were on the outside, so that the young women could be locked in.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I know that my hon. Friend could not resist making the Europe point. Will he explain something to me? I entirely understand his point about Schengen, but how did the girl manage to travel from the Schengen area to the United Kingdom without being stopped at the border?

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. Years ago, before I came to this place, I ran a travel business which had an operation in Florida, and I would quite often fly over there with new members of staff who were young girls. So there was a middle-aged man taking two or three young women across to America. Every time we arrived, we were stopped at immigration, and the women were taken away and interviewed to establish whether this was a genuine operation and I was not actually trafficking people. We used to get parents to write letters, and so on. But those immigration authorities did a proper, thorough job.

As for our borders, citizens of the European Union have a right to come here. It was not as though those girls were breaking any immigration rules. This is not about immigration at all. They had an absolute right to come into this country, because they were EU citizens. I have always argued that, in obvious cases like that, we should be much more willing to take people to one side and find out whether the operation is genuine or not. The trouble with this operation, however, was that it looked as though it was genuine because the girls were going to a Belfast restaurant to work.

I think that about 70 young women went through that process, and were locked into the terrace house. I do not want to use the word “rape” lightly but they were, in effect, being raped repeatedly. They were not in a position to escape, they were not giving permission, and there was no question of their earning any money. Eventually, those young women were rescued. In that instance we did something really well, but I am afraid that we are still doing something rather poorly.

When I was a member of Anthony Steen’s group, I discovered that there was a Government-funded centre in London—it was, in fact, funded by the Ministry of Justice—which was run by a left-wing organisation. All the trafficked victims were supposed to be accommodated in 24 beds, which is laughable, because there were so many more victims than 24. There was quite a big row about it at the time, and it is to the Government’s credit that they changed the policy. They took the money away from that organisation and gave it to the Salvation Army. They said, “Work with all sorts of different agencies around the country, religious and non-religious, and they will give you added value. If Newcastle, for instance, already has a hostel that is able to look after trafficked victims, why not give it some money, and then you will have that added value.”

The system worked terrifically well. The money started with £1 million, and despite the huge economic downturn that we have experienced, that amount has increased to, I believe, about £3 million. Adult victims of human trafficking are really well looked after. We must remember that an 18-year-old girl who has gone through this trauma cannot be just put in a house; they have to be looked after. The trauma is enormous and they must overcome that. We do that really well, and the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, should take great credit for it. The Prime Minister has shown great courage on the human trafficking issue, but the problem comes with how children are looked after; they do not go into that system, and that is what I am trying to solve with this Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees (Richard Harrington)]

I feel I should say at this stage that Anthony Steen’s operation is based in Watford in my constituency, and I am very familiar with it. I was going to say this as part of my concluding remarks but, time being as it is, I felt I should say now that not just he but all the different umbrella groups in the anti-trafficking field are housed in the building above Watford Junction station, so I see him quite a lot. I know my hon. Friend is part of that, and Sir John Randall introduced me to him in the first place, and I think it is a wonderful organisation.

[Mr Bone]

I am very grateful for the Minister’s intervention, and I am very glad that we have this particular Minister at the Dispatch Box, because I know he has worked with Anthony Steen and John Randall on this issue, and I greatly appreciate that.

The Government have done exceptionally well. John Randall is, of course, one of our ex-colleagues in this House. I remember that in the Corridor upstairs we had what we called an exhibition, but it was a role play about human trafficking and his son played a trafficker—very convincingly, as well—and that brought home to Members just how under the radar this situation is.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

When the POPPY project, which I believe was the organisation the hon. Gentleman was talking about, lost its funding, some of the successor organisations were criticised for putting rescued women in mixed-sex hostels, which was deeply inappropriate.

[Mr Bone]

There was a big row about the POPPY project and I am broad-brush about this: I think the Salvation Army operation has been a huge success, and I am absolutely convinced that no other country in Europe looks after rescued adult victims of human trafficking better than ours, and we can be very proud of that.

Let me rewind a bit to when I was traipsing around Europe with Anthony Steen. He is a man it is impossible to say no to; I have seen him blag his way into all sorts of establishments that we had no right to be in, and he did so fearlessly. In some places he talked to traffickers and took great personal risks. His influence is what drives me to continue this fight on this particular issue.

At that time, back in 2005, there was a Council of Europe convention on human trafficking. The COE is a very good body. It brings together 47 countries in Europe. The idea is that if we can get something through the COE that everyone agrees with, it is a really good standard. What happened to this convention happened when a Labour Government were in power, but I am absolutely not blaming the Labour Government because it equally would have happened if a Conservative Government had been in power at that time because of the way people looked upon human trafficking: we could not even get the convention signed. Then, after lots of pressure, the convention was signed, and then that turned out to be no use because until it is ratified, it does not come into force, so then we had a fight on that and it was eventually ratified.

Many of the things that were then discussed became part of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, such as tougher penalties for traffickers, quite rightly. There was originally a problem with the hurdle that had to be mounted to prosecute traffickers. The Crown Prosecution Service had decided that in order to get successful prosecutions, it would have to go for lesser charges. That was sorted out; traffickers can be jailed now for 14 years. Tougher border controls are hugely important, too, because I do not want to be punishing traffickers and rescuing victims, as I do not want them to be victims in the first place. There is a lot to do in Europe on that, but obviously, our border control is important. In a wonderful example of co-operation, the Metropolitan police and the Romanian police worked together and broke up a notorious gang and saved many people from being trafficked. Police operations all come down to intelligence and working together across Europe.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is not just an issue with border controls, but a lot of concern about forged documents and passports? There is a report in today’s press that the United States is thinking of withdrawing its visa waiver scheme for some European countries—for example, for Belgium—because there are up to a million forged EU passports in circulation.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is quite right that this is not, as I have portrayed it, just a European Union issue. I wanted to use that example because I did not want to get into the arguments about immigration and migration control. People from the EU have the right to be here and can be trafficked, but of course human traffickers operate across the world. Traffickers bring people in from Nigeria, and use all sorts of terrible things to keep them in prostitution. If someone were in a town and forced into prostitution, one would think that there would be ways for them to escape, and there probably are, but they are under acute mental pressure. They may be told that their parents will be killed or that their children will be harmed. If they come from Nigeria—this may seem strange to us—voodoo spells may be used. All those things have to be dealt with, and we are beginning to deal with them. The problem of forged passports is important.

I do not accept what the Home Office used to say, which is that if we create a safe environment for people who have been trafficked, it will be a pull factor. That is complete and utter rubbish. People can come in and claim asylum anyway. They do not need to pretend to be trafficked; there is no advantage to that at all, and I really reject the idea. There are more slaves today across the world than there were in Wilberforce’s time; it is just that we do not see them on the docks. Great credit should go to the Government for what they have done in this regard.

Going back to the Council of Europe situation, a good convention was eventually signed and ratified. One thing we wanted for the protection of people who have been trafficked was the appointment of a rapporteur —I would say a commissioner because the word rapporteur sounds far too “European Union” for my liking. We had a long battle on that with the Government. By this time, we were in the coalition Government. A cross-ministerial group was appointed, which was complete rubbish. We knew that by how many times the Ministers bothered to turn up. It was a complete farce. We had a battle on that. MPs from both sides of the House and from all parties—the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) was a great support—called Westminster Hall debates to put pressure on Ministers and to ask lots of questions. That all followed on from what Anthony Steen did.

When I first came to the House, Anthony Steen was the only person doing anything, and then everybody started to realise that there was a problem. People may think that the Government make all their decisions in Downing Street and that we are just here to tick the boxes, but it was not like that, and we proved that with the previous Bill. On human trafficking, it was absolutely not like that. Private meetings went on, and so on. We finished up with a Modern Slavery Act 2015, which increased the penalties for trafficking, toughened border control and improved the rights of victims to prove that they were victims, which is a complicated thing, but we did not deal with the situation of child victims. We dealt with victims, but forgot that there was a huge loophole.

Members will recognise that probably every week in their constituency advice surgeries, they have someone in front of them who is clearly in need of help and social care. The problem is that the health service says the person needs social care and the local council says the person needs social care, but they blame each other for not funding it. I will develop the argument a little later.

Adult victims of human trafficking are a central Government responsibility, that of the Ministry of Justice. Unbelievably, children who are victims of human trafficking finish up in local authority homes and, bizarrely, are indirectly the responsibility of the Department for Education. How that works I have no idea. In fact, it does not work.

I do not know of any legislation in which we deliberately set out to treat adults better than children. I return to my example of the 18-year-old who was tricked into coming to Belfast and started off in the restaurant but finished up in a terraced house. It must be an horrendous experience to be repeatedly raped, and many of those people come from countries in central Europe that are deeply religious.

[Mr Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case against what is going on, but is he aware that, according to the police, the most common route by which men who want to abuse women find them is through classified ads—small ads—in local newspapers? Does he agree that Government organisations and publicly funded bodies should seek to exert pressure on those newspapers to abandon carrying such adverts by withdrawing state funding if they refuse to do so?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point. It is interesting that the front of the paper will damn human trafficking, and the back of the paper will advertise it. That used to be true, but now advertising tends to be on the internet.

There has always been an argument—I take no view on this—that if prostitution is banned, as has happened in Sweden, human trafficking will stop, and if prostitution is legalised, if I may use that term, as in Holland, there will be human trafficking galore. The truth is, as the record shows, that it does not matter—there is human trafficking in Sweden and there is human trafficking in the Netherlands. People feel very strongly about the issue of prostitution, which is quite right, but to say that if it is banned it will stop human trafficking does not meet the facts. We have to accept that whatever happens we will have to deal with human trafficking.

The slight worry about the Swedish model is that because it happens underground, there is even less likelihood of prostitution being detected and the girls may be subject to even worse treatment than where prostitution is open. I have no view on that, other than to say that the evidence is clear that trafficking carries on in both countries.

Returning to the Belfast situation, human trafficking is usually discovered by members of the public. Neighbours who live in the street suddenly realise that there are a lot of men going into the building at all hours and they never see the people who live there. So they report it to the police and the police raid the property and rescue the girls, at which point the support kicks in, which is what my Bill deals with. The problem is that although those girls might be rescued, the 70 who went before have been moved on.

The frustrating thing about this is that the gangs that do the human trafficking are the same people who do drugs and guns. They know that human trafficking is a better deal because once drugs have been used, they are used up, but a girl can be sold on, time and again. I will tell the House about something that used to happen at Gatwick airport. A girl would come through border control and be met by someone. They would sit in a coffee shop and other men would bid to buy her. That was happening a few years ago.

What frustrates me—I have had this argument with the Government—is that we put a huge amount of resources into fighting drugs and guns but only a tiny amount into fighting human trafficking. That needs to be addressed. We need to put more money into police intelligence operations, because that is how they discover where the gangs are. When we break these gangs up, we are breaking up the drug and gun gangs at the same time. These are not nice people. They are extremely evil. Also, there are often family organisations involved.

Let us say that some girls come over from Hungary. They come across Europe without any border checks and into this country without any border checks. They arrive in Belfast and work in a restaurant for perhaps two days before being put into prostitution. The argument the traffickers use is to tell the girls that they have to do this to pay back the debt—a made-up amount—that they have incurred in being brought over to this country. This is patently evil.

It is difficult for me to imagine the trauma that these young women go through, but it is absolutely awful. Many of them have never had sex before. There is a case on record of young girls being brought together in a house by a Russian gang for the purpose of human trafficking and one of them refusing to do as she was told. You know what? They executed that person in front of the rest of the girls. Should we not be putting more money into dealing with these people? I think we should.

Let me talk about the problem as I see it. I really want to praise Members on both sides of the House, and particularly the Prime Minister, for what we have already done on human trafficking and modern slavery. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 would not have become an Act if the Prime Minister had not made it a priority. We did so much, but we missed this one thing and, my goodness, it is the old problem of central Government, local authorities and empires.

Let us take as an example a 19-year-old girl who, having been rescued, is looked after by the Salvation Army. In due course, she will become a responsible citizen of this country. But what happens to a 15-year-old child who has never had sex with anyone before but is now being repeatedly raped? What trauma is she going through? Thankfully, the police rescue her, but what is their duty at that point? They have to hand her over to the local authority. There is no requirement for the local authority to recognise her as having been trafficked. It just treats her like a missing or homeless child. There is no special care for her, and that is wrong. These children have been traumatised. They have not simply run away from home because they have had an argument; they have been through the most brutal experience and they need specialised care.

A few years ago I submitted a freedom of information request to all councils to see what they could tell me about children who have been trafficked. Most of them could tell me nothing, because they did not bother to record them, but some did make an effort and were much better. The frightening thing was that the majority of those children had been re-trafficked within about a week, probably to the same evil gang. What happened to those children when they were back in the hands of those horrible people? I presume that they were beaten up and tortured before being put back into that lifestyle and then sold on to somewhere else in the country.

The first problem is that we do not know what happens to those children. That should be the responsibility of Government, and certainly of local government, as I have argued. I just do not accept that children who have had such a terrible time can be put into local government control. Even the best foster carers, unless they know about human trafficking, cannot possibly deal with them.

I rarely leave this place, because I think that MPs should be here when Parliament is sitting, but I did go to the Philippines with Anthony Steen. The Philippines has a great problem with trafficking, but it deals with child victims so much better than we do. They are put in a safe home, where they could never be discovered, and they are looked after by female staff and they go to school. I had the privilege of meeting a young women—she was then 21—at her wedding. When she was younger she had been trafficked and repeatedly raped, so she had come through on the other side. I also met someone who had just gone into the system. The poor girl was blind and had had the most horrible existence. The great advantage of that system was that those girls would never be re-trafficked.

We can learn from that example. To the Government’s credit, Barnardo’s has run a similar pilot scheme, which I think has been a huge success. However, that is where we come up against a problem. Central Government do not want to take on another responsibility and extra cost —that is the attitude we come up against—and local government does not want to lose part of its empire. Come on, Government; that is patently absurd. There is no extra cost, because someone is supposed to be looking after those children. Why not make it the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice? We should treat those children the same way we treat adults by having safe homes for them around the country. There is a huge problem with inter-department squabbling and budgeting, but I argue that we must put all that to one side and do for those children what we do for adults. How can it be Government policy that child victims of human trafficking are treated worse than adult victims?

The Bill will probably not make progress today, but I hope that the principle behind it will be considered seriously. Before concluding my remarks, I will go through the Bill so that hon. Members understand it. It contains only three clauses. Clause 1 amends section 17 of the Children Act 1989 so that children who have been trafficked are no longer the responsibility of the local authority. Clause 2 sets out a duty to provide for child victims of human trafficking—it basically states that we should treat them the same way as we treat adults. Clause 3 deals with the formalities.

While I would like this Bill to move into Committee and to the Lords and become an Act of Parliament, I know that in reality it will not, but I hope that by airing the issue I have moved things forward. Given that we have a Minister who is known for his caring and compassionate attitude, a Government who really have done things about human trafficking, and an Opposition who wholeheartedly support improving things for victims of human trafficking, surely we could all work together. This has been a cross-party movement; the APPG was of course cross-party. It would be a crowning moment, and a recognition of what Anthony Steen did, if in due course the principle of child victims of human trafficking being a responsibility of central Government became a reality.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees (Richard Harrington)]

I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) not just for putting forward and speaking for the Bill, but for all the work he has done. As I said when he kindly took an intervention from me, the work that Anthony Steen has done and is still doing is particularly pertinent for me, since it is impossible for anyone to end up at Watford Junction station without seeing his operation there.

I am very short of time, so I will get straight to the point. My hon. Friend’s proposal is that the Government should take over dealing with the trafficking of children by placing it under national control in a national organisation, rather than the current situation of dealing with it locally through local authorities. Our contention is that that is not the best way to deal with it. I am afraid I cannot accept his assertion that children are, to use his expression, treated worse than adults.

We have set a clear expectation on local government in caring for children who are trafficked or unaccompanied by making important revisions to the statutory guidance for local authorities. The guidance is clear that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and child victims of human trafficking are some of the most vulnerable children in the country and that placement decisions

“should take particular account of protecting the child from any continued risk from traffickers, and from a heightened risk of going missing.”

We have also published strengthened statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care. The guidance clearly sets out the steps that local authorities and their partners should take to prevent children from going missing and to protect them when they do.

The Government have strengthened multi-agency arrangements for co-ordinating and sharing intelligence in relation to vulnerable victims. Such multi-agency safeguarding hubs—or MASHs, as they are called—are being set up across the country and are helping to share information about and to co-ordinate more effectively in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults from harm.

[Mr Bone]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Harrington]

I will give way, but I have very little time.

[Mr Bone]

I am sorry that the Minister does not have more time. What he says is really good news, but as the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, 60% of such children are re-trafficked. Despite what the Government are doing, local government is therefore failing.

[Richard Harrington]

I am afraid I do not accept what my hon. Friend says about children who go missing. I am happy to discuss that with him separately. [Interruption.] We do not know.

I briefly want to mention one point made by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) in her very thoughtful speech. I agree with her about bringing in officials to be advocates for such children, but the Home Office is being very careful. It has very recently been decided that further trials are needed. That is not the result of prevarication, as though the Government do not want to act, but because of a fear of not getting it right. We have a one-off chance to do this. The Minister for Children and Families, who is very interested in this subject, is in the Chamber, for which I thank him.

A lot of work is under way. It is not as though the Government are oblivious to the issue. It is most important that children at risk of trafficking and those who have been trafficked do not fall outwith the system or are treated separately from adults. We must continue to deliver at this pace, because the Government will not tolerate the exploitation of any child, whether they are from the UK or foreign-born.

The question my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough has asked us is whether we can achieve that aim by transferring responsibility for victims of child trafficking from local to central Government. We believe that that is not the answer, because the work in progress to care for such victims better meets the standards required for vulnerable individuals. We are giving it a lot of resource and doing the work to beef it up—for example, our help for unaccompanied children in Kent—which demonstrates the Government’s commitment. There is a ministerial implementation taskforce to consider child protection, so we are not oblivious to the issue.

I have made a careful note of the very good points made by my hon. Friend, but I am afraid that the Government cannot agree to his Bill becoming law for the reasons I have explained. That does not mean that this debate is a spurious use of time, or that he has not made very interesting and relevant points. I hope he does not find it disrespectful that I have to say, reluctantly, that the Government cannot accept his core proposal. He has been in this House for a long time and will understand that it is not possible for us to do so, but he was right to use this opportunity to air the issue. I am sure that some of the points that he raised will be discussed again in the House and be taken into consideration. For that reason—