Controlling Migration

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have to say that several of the groups that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned came here as refugees, and we are not talking about the asylum system today. We do need to examine the operation of our asylum system to ensure that it operates swiftly in the interests not only of the UK, but of those who are seeking asylum. However, that is not what we are debating today.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Hon. Members will be delighted that the Home Secretary has announced this policy to the House first, and that the BBC was so wonderfully misinformed this morning. In Wellingborough, immigration is the No. 1 issue, but my constituents are more concerned about people coming from the European Union. I wonder how that question is going to be addressed.

[Mrs May]

Unlike the last Labour Government, we have been absolutely clear that, for any new member states entering the European Union, we would apply transitional controls.

Socio-economic Equality Duty

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

As I am sure the hon. Lady knows, the Treasury did an envelope impact assessment on the comprehensive spending review, and each Department will undertake an extensive impact assessment as the spending review plays out. The Government are absolutely committed to equality and fairness—not just saying that we are doing it, but actually doing it.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I do not know what a socio-economic equality duty is, and nor do the people of Wellingborough. May I suggest that it is left-wing tosh and should be scrapped?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s direct approach. I probably would not put it in quite such pejorative terms. If the Government are interested in delivering fairness and equality, that has to be done through measures that actually deliver them, rather than just talking about them.

Anti-Slavery Day

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of Anti-Slavery Day.

It is probably close to 200 years since this House has debated slavery. As the chairman of the all-party human trafficking group, it is my great pleasure to open this debate, but it should not have been me opening it; it should have been the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I congratulate her on her pitch to the Backbench Business Committee and her success in securing this debate. However, once she had done so, she was immediately put into the shadow Government. She has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and is now sitting by the Dispatch Box to answer for the Opposition. I congratulate her not only on securing this debate, but on her promotion.

William Wilberforce is a name that is synonymous with anti-slavery. In 1807, led by Wilberforce, an Act for the abolition of the slave trade was passed by Parliament. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. Why, therefore, are we here debating slavery, more than 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade? Perhaps we are celebrating the success of William Wilberforce; or are we here to congratulate ourselves that no slavery remains within the United Kingdom? We cannot do that. Slavery and trafficking are still far too common an occurrence. A frightening statistic is that there are estimated to be more than 27 million slaves in the world today. One in eight of them are in Europe, and at least 10,000 of them are here in the United Kingdom. How can that be true? When I walk around London or my constituency, I do not see slaves sweeping the streets or working in the fields. The fact that the problem is not as visible as it was in the time of William Wilberforce does not mean that it is not as important or as serious.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly paid tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), but will he join me in paying tribute to the work of Anthony Steen, his predecessor as Chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking, for all his excellent work on bringing to the House’s attention the slavery that is human trafficking? I am sure that he was about to mention him in his speech.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—I shall call him my right hon. Friend today—for that intervention, but he will have to wait just a little longer before I mention the former Member for Totnes.

The three most lucrative criminal activities in the world are those associated with narcotics and with firearms, and the trafficking of humans. The first two criminal activities are well documented and vast sums of money are rightly invested in catching the criminals involved. Why then is the trafficking of humans—modern-day slavery—so badly documented, and why is so little invested in the fight against it? It takes place on the same scale as narcotics and firearms offences, and that gap needs to be addressed.

So where are all those slaves, and whom does this affect? In the United Kingdom, the main victims are women and children. They are often tricked into coming to this country, usually with a promise of some sort of job. When they arrive here, they are often locked up and forced to have sex with up to 30 men a day. I shall give the House an example. I met a 14-year-old Kenyan girl who had been trafficked into this country by a middle-aged white man on a passport that did not bear her name and did not have her picture on it. She was taken to Liverpool, locked in a house and forced to have sex with numerous men. Luckily, she escaped after a few days and was helped by a national charity. She was one of the lucky ones, if you can call it lucky to endure what she had had to. She managed to escape, but how many girls do not manage to do so? How many girls are locked in houses such as those while we are debating this issue today? Even if there were just one, that would be one too many, but there is not just one; there are thousands.

We have some fantastic non-governmental organisations working with trafficked victims, including ECPAT UK, the POPPY project, the Human Trafficking Foundation, the Bromley Trust, the Tudor Trust, and Kalayaan, to name but a few. Their work must not stop. I have one single goal, however: I want all those NGOs and charities to become redundant, because they are no longer needed. That is my aim. As I mentioned, they do fantastic work with trafficked victims, but I believe that prevention is the key.

How do we prevent human trafficking? That is a very difficult question to answer. I believe that making the public more aware of the issue is a good first step. On 18 October, the UK will celebrate anti-slavery day for the first time. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my former colleague, Anthony Steen, for working tirelessly to make the Anti-slavery Day Act 2010 his lasting legacy to the House. He pioneered an approach to human trafficking that I am very happy to follow. Quite simply, he put modern-day slavery on the parliamentary map. Anti-slavery day will mark out what we all hope will be the beginning of the end of slavery in the United Kingdom and make the public aware of the gravity of the problem.

What can be done? First, we need to identify victims better. Very few ever approach local authorities to complain, and even if they do, those authorities might not realise that the problem has resulted from trafficking and modern-day slavery. The police are on the front line of trafficking. The individual police officer on the beat is the best and probably the first person to meet a trafficked victim, but does every police officer know what to do, how to help and to whom they should send the victim? We need to help the police and make them more aware of trafficked women. There needs to be a national protocol to help victims.

We also need to enhance the border control system and stop the traffickers from bringing in the victims in the first place. That is the very best way to end trafficking. The UK must be a country that it is just not worth the traffickers using.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to some of the excellent work done by the Metropolitan police in combating the evil of human trafficking in London? I echo the point I believe he is making well—I seek to reinforce it—about the lack of awareness and training in other police forces across the country. They will often come to dealing with a problem such as prostitution without having the wherewithal to understand, albeit with the best will in the world, that it is linked to the evil of slavery and human trafficking.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend puts the case perfectly and I entirely agree with him.

Returning to the point about making this country one into which traffickers do not want to come, traffickers are interested only in the money. We need to make it so difficult for them that they do not want to try to operate here. That is why the coalition Government’s new proposal for a border police provides an opportunity to put trafficking right at the heart of this new initiative. Trafficking must stop, but it will stop only with the help of everyone—here and across the nation. William Wilberforce did not pass the legislation to abolish the slave trade and to abolish slavery for political gain or to achieve votes; he realised there was a fundamental problem that needed to be addressed.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. One difficulty dealing with trafficked women is that they often believe that they are here illegally. They do not go to the police because they are terrified that, if they do, terrible things will happen and the police will prosecute them. What does my hon. Friend think should be the immigration or legal status of people who find themselves trafficked here? Clearly, they are not asylum seekers in the accepted meaning of the term, so how do they fit into the immigration system?

[Mr Bone]

I am conscious of time and of the fact that many other Members want to contribute to the debate. I shall wind up shortly, but to answer my hon. Friend’s point, these people are victims and they should be looked after; there are organisations such as the POPPY project that do look after them. We have a strange system at the moment whereby an adult victim of human trafficking gets better treatment than a child. Unfortunately, I do not have time to go into this further, as I note that so many Members want to speak in the debate.

Finally, I am ashamed to stand here as a citizen of this great nation and admit that we have failed William Wilberforce. After 200 years, the slave trade is still very much alive. In 200 years’ time, I do not want another Member of this House to stand where I am today and admit that he is ashamed that they have failed in what we are trying to achieve today. The first anti-slavery day must mark the start of the decline of modern-day slavery in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on leading this debate. Unfortunately she has almost had her hands tied; she was allowed to speak for only a short time because she has just been appointed to the shadow Cabinet. I congratulate her on that. It will be a loss to the Back Benches, but may I say in all honesty that I wish her very very many years—and I mean very very many—in the shadow Cabinet? I would also like to welcome the Minister for Immigration, because in him we have a Member of Parliament renowned for his care and humanity, and his understanding of the issue. I say that not only because it is true, but because I want him to do things. I notice that in the Chamber today Members from all parties are present, which is a sign that this is a cross-party concern.

At the outset I want to pay tribute to my predecessor, Anthony Steen, formerly MP for Totnes. As the first chairman of the all-party group against trafficking of women and children, he pioneered an approach to human trafficking, which I, as the new chairman, am happy to follow. Quite simply, he put human trafficking or modern day slavery on the parliamentary map. I pay tribute to him and to his current work to establish the human trafficking foundation, together with Clare Short and my co-chairman of the all-party group, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.

At the end of their 13-year term, the previous Administration could be given only a B for their work on human trafficking. The acid test has to be, were there more apprehensions of traffickers year-by-year? The answer is no. Were the police filing more charges and did more convictions take place? The answer, sadly, is no. Instead, the number of victims rose and rose. However, the previous Government did take two major initiatives, which were welcome. The two operations to deal with trafficking were Pentameter 1 and 2, and they involved every police force in the land. They did not just raid brothels, massage parlours and saunas, but went into private homes—wherever they thought there were traffickers. New initiatives such as those are urgently needed, and the House would like to know what plans the Government have. The Minister may not be able to say too much about that today and may be holding back for anti- slavery day next Monday, but we would like to know if new announcements and initiatives are on the way.

New initiatives are needed because a number of operations are being disbanded, such as the UK Human Trafficking Centre, a £2 million initiative in Sheffield that was absorbed by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. In itself, that might not have been a problem but now SOCA is also being wound down. We need a Pentameter 3, so that traffickers realise that we are on their case and that this Government will be tougher than the previous one. Is that planned?

We all know that it takes several years for new projects to be effective. What will happen to human trafficking during the apparent lull in the prosecution and harassment of traffickers? It took the previous Administration two years to implement the Council of Europe convention on action against human trafficking after they signed it, and it has never been fully implemented. Operation Golf at the Met has been a remarkable and successful operation. Superintendent Bernie Gravett and Chief Inspector Colin Carswell deserve the gratitude of the whole House for their single-mindedness in tackling child trafficking.

The traffickers will be breathing a sigh of relief that the superintendent’s team will be disbanded shortly, just as the human trafficking unit in the Met was disbanded nine months ago. Therefore, although the previous Administration pressed the right buttons, the reality is now coming home to roost: by the beginning of next year there will be precious few specific operational units in the UK specifically tackling human trafficking. Here is a great opportunity for the coalition Government to make some real changes and improvements to tackle this appalling crime, which should have disappeared when slavery was abolished 200 years ago, but is flourishing worldwide.

What is needed is a more robust Crown Prosecution Service that does not make deals with defence counsels on behalf of traffickers. We secure too few convictions, and those that we do secure are the result of plea bargaining, resulting in a lesser crime being admitted and a lesser sentence being given by Crown court judges, many of whom need better training about the nature and extent of human trafficking.

Our track record on dealing with foreign children, particularly from the far east, is lamentable. We need to ensure that the hundreds of children who are discovered here each year, and who are acknowledged as trafficked by the national referral mechanism, are treated more compassionately. Such children should have a guardian, and I am told by a legal friend that we need a guardian ad litem, which, as I understand it, means someone who will act as their parent and look after them, particularly in the court situation. These children are both victims and witnesses, and it is wrong to expect them to go through the system without help when we would not necessarily expect an adult to do so. The European convention on action against trafficking in human beings proposes such a guardian and so, too, does the new European directive.

Let me briefly say something about the directive. At the last Prime Minister’s questions, there was a lot of argument between the Prime Minister and the now deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), over whether we should opt into the European directive. As someone with some reservations about the European Union, I do not really think that it is necessary to opt in, but we do need to do everything—and more—to help children, and the Prime Minister is more than open to suggestions that will help us to achieve that.

Sadly, domestic slavery exists in Britain and is another concern. Some foreign embassies and their officials, who have diplomatic immunity, are, sadly, the worst abusers, and that should worry us all. Currently, the visa for someone who comes here to work for a diplomat is very restrictive, and they can work only for the embassy. They really should come in on a normal domestic visa, which would allow them to go somewhere else if they were being abused.

The issue was well illustrated in the exhibition that the now Prime Minister visited in the Committee corridor last March. The event was sponsored by the all-party group, in conjunction with the Bromley Trust and the Tudor Trust. I pay special tribute to the work of Kalayaan in Notting Hill Gate, which supports victims and campaigns for the merger of diplomatic and ordinary domestic visas, 16,000 of which are issued each year. Such a step would allow diplomatic workers the same freedom as domestic workers with annual domestic visas.

Let me say a word about sex trafficking. We are fortunate in London to have the POPPY project, which, linked with Eaves housing, offers more than 50 units of accommodation to trafficked women. However, POPPY offers more than just accommodation; it offers social, psychological and medical support. Many girls have been viciously treated for many years and need not just a bed, but friends they can trust. That is what POPPY offers, and it does a professional, top-class job.

Although POPPY is technically allowed to accommodate women only for a 42-day period of reflection while they contemplate their future and whether they can assist the authorities, many women need a much longer period of sanctuary. In that respect, the current situation is absurd, although I do not have time to go into it today. Adults who are trafficked into this country are looked after better than children, because while adults will go into something such as the POPPY project, children will be lost in the local authority system—many of them will disappear and be re-trafficked.

POPPY not only provides a lifeline for 42 days, but forms many women’s futures, and it has developed its experience and knowledge over the past decade. There is no one quite in POPPY’s league. Other shelter projects around the country—in Bristol, Sheffield and Dover—do valuable work, but they are small, have few facilities and, sadly, no Government funding. Trafficking covers the country—not just the south-east and the cities. Caring for victims initially is important, but what happens to them afterwards? Who helps them? Who integrates them back into society? How many return to their home country and at what risk to them and their families? What is the number of deportations?

Human trafficking is the fastest growing business in the world. With increasing demand, the speed of growth is terrifying. Today, 27 million people worldwide are in slavery, with 300,000 in Haiti alone. Trafficking is the fastest growing illegal industry and, according to the United Nations, nets more than $32 billion a year—that would almost help us to overcome our deficit. Hon. Members should just think about that: criminal gangs make $32 billion out of trafficking. The punchline is that the growth of human trafficking is fuelled by the ease of access, anonymity and secrecy provided by the internet, and that is why we do not see trafficking in our daily lives. That is the difference between slavery in Wilberforce’s time, which was highly visible, and modern slavery, which is underground and hidden..

My request is that our Government should take the lead and, while establishing a national border police force, which is a welcome move, do something specific to help victims of trafficking. There should be more compassion for victims who arrive from all over the world, and that could involve a range of different means. I doubt whether things will change overnight, but I hope that compassion will increase. There are also the victims from EU countries who travel here on legal passports. How, I wonder, will the border police stop those people being trafficked?

For all those reasons, anti-slavery day is very important. On the whole, people are just not aware of modern slavery; they do not realise that it exists around the comer from where they live. They cannot see it, so they do not believe that it exists. What we do know is that the numbers overall are increasing. Sadly, people are recyclable. Unlike arms or drugs, which the criminal gang can trade only once, human beings can be recycled and sold again.

As I said, there is interest across the House in the idea that Britain should lead the way and be known throughout the world for its effective and compassionate approach. In that respect, I am glad to see three Members from Northern Ireland, who represent the political divide there. We must congratulate the Assembly on passing a resolution last week making Northern Ireland

“a hostile place for human traffickers”.

That is what we need to do in the rest of the country. If we make the United Kingdom a place traffickers do not want to come to and where they do not believe that they can make money, we will stop trafficking. Congratulations to Northern Ireland on leading the way.

We are tolerating the closure of some of the most innovative initiatives, and I wonder how that squares with the Home Secretary’s statement in the House on 22 July, when she said:

“Tackling human trafficking is a coalition priority, and the Government are currently considering how to improve our response to this terrible crime, including through the creation of a border police force.”—[Official Report, 22 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 552-53.]

Perhaps, on anti-slavery day, and in the spirit of the big society, we could involve and support non-governmental organisations such as ECPAT—End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children—POPPY, Kalayaan and the Helen Bamber Foundation, which have an enviable record, but which receive little or no Government funding. Those are exactly the organisations that the Prime Minister has in mind when he talks about the big society. The Minister may delight us all on anti-slavery day by announcing some real progress on beginning to tackle the problem of human trafficking with a vengeance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Streeter, to see you in the Chair this morning. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on securing this important debate.

I echo what the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said about the excellent work done on human trafficking by the now retired Member for Totnes, Sir Anthony Steen. He was, it will be agreed, a colourful figure—he was often frank and occasionally unguarded in his comments—but he deserves to be remembered for his excellent work on raising the profile of the matter and for establishing the Human Trafficking Foundation. I also support what the hon. Gentleman said about the need for better training for officers and others engaged in dealing with the problem, and the need for guardians to support children through the unpleasant and doubtless un-nerving process of going through the courts.

We know that human trafficking is a big problem, but it is fair to say that the scale of it is a little hard to determine. The United Nations estimates that 70,000 new victims arrive in Europe each year and stay a couple of years; that compares with a total population working in the sex industry of something in the order of 140,000. The market as a whole is said to be worth €2.4 billion a year. A substantial amount of money is being spent on this horrific trade—or service, if I can put it that way. The Association of Chief Police Officers estimates that an estimated 30,000 sex workers in the UK have been trafficked into the country, coming principally from China, Thailand and other parts of south-east Asia, and from eastern Europe.

That report was fairly controversial in that it extrapolated from interviews with women who were working in brothels in London a national figure of 2,600 victims of sex trafficking. All one can know for certain is that those women would have been under huge pressure not to confirm the way in which they had arrived in the UK, which makes it difficult to establish how many victims there are other than it is a very large number. What is certain, however, is the number of convictions. Since the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force in January 2004, 46 men and women have been convicted and jailed for transporting willing sex workers—I am sure that we could argue about what constitutes a willing sex worker and discuss the economic pressure that they may have been under to come willingly to the UK for such a purpose—and 59 people have been convicted of transporting women who were forced to work in the sex industry. What is also clear is the excellent work that the POPPY project is doing and the number of women that it has been able to help. In the past six and a half years, it has helped and supported around 500 women.

Hon. Members who have local newspapers—as Members of Parliament, we all follow our local newspapers carefully—will be aware that the newspaper group, Newsquest, has been actively trying to ensure that no local papers carry ads publicising such services, and I commend such work.

What makes this issue even harder to resolve is the conflict that exists between trying to establish whether someone has been trafficked here or whether they have come here of their own volition. Hon. Members will be familiar with the research that was published by Dr. Nick Mai of London Metropolitan university—again, we have to read between the lines of the responses that were given—in which he conducted detailed interviews with 100 migrant sex workers in the UK. He astonishingly states that for the majority of people, working in the industry was a way to avoid the exploitative working conditions that they had experienced in their previous non-sexual jobs. I take that with a pinch of salt because such people are working in an industry that is illegal and on the margins, and their status in the country is uncertain. The suggestion that they come here to work in such an industry because it provides better working conditions than the ones that they might have experienced before requires some scrutiny, but that is what his research apparently found. That makes it harder for authorities such as the UK Border Agency to err on the side of thinking that people have made a conscious choice to come to the UK for this purpose rather than erring on the side of assuming that people have been trafficked, which is what we want. Such an attitude is also adopted in relation to children who are, all too often, treated as criminals rather than people who have fallen foul of trafficking.

Members will be familiar with the concerns expressed by the anti-trafficking monitoring group about trafficked children who have gone into care and subsequently gone missing. The review into 390 cases of suspected trafficked victims handled by the UK authorities gave some quite alarming statistics about how many of those victims subsequently disappeared.

In theory, the national referral mechanism, to which other hon. Members have referred, allows the police and social workers to refer suspected cases to the appropriate authorities, but again there is legitimate concern that the people who are being referred are being treated as part of an immigration issue rather than as a crime issue, or as victims of trafficking who require support. If the police are succeeding in identifying people who are responsible for human trafficking, it is not being followed through in terms of the number of convictions. For example, only five people were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the first six months of this year compared with a figure in the low 30s in previous years. Therefore, we are not seeing many successful prosecutions.

Will the Minister give us an update—I know that this is not his brief—on what the Crown Prosecution Service is doing to improve its prosecution policy in relation to these cases, and does he believe that it will be successful?

In conclusion, I will refer to the UK opt out of the EU directive, which was clearly a controversial decision by the coalition. The coalition has been criticised by many campaigning groups for not signing up to the directive, and I must say that I have some sympathy with the concerns that have been expressed. I know that the Government will consider the impact of the directive, and I strongly hope that if they decide that the directive will help to address the issue of human trafficking, they will not be put off adopting it simply because it is prefixed with the word “EU”. If the directive is effective at tackling the issue, it is incumbent on us as a Government to support it.

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[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 ---

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Streeter, for calling me. I offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), both on securing this debate and on her promotion to the Front Bench.

I do not disagree with much of what has been said. I am here simply to assert that we can do something. Wilberforce should be living at this hour. We have slavery, but it is not known. Slavery in the late 18th century was not much known about; it was incorporated into people’s conservative traditional thinking. It has required strong individuals such as Sir Anthony Steen, who is no longer with us in this House, and other colleagues to take up the campaign against it.

I must place on record my immense disappointment that one specific measure that was put to the new Government shortly after the coalition was formed—namely, a very sensible and practical EU directive—has been spurned. As we honour William Wilberforce, I cannot honour his biographer, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. He made a most eloquent speech at the Upper Waiting Hall exhibition that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) mentioned, yet as the steward of our European policy he is not prepared to put his ministerial tick where his mouth was just a few months ago.

[Mrs Anne Main in the Chair]

I want to make one small point. The Government and some hon. Members have referred to a report published in August by the Association of Chief Police Officers that talked about 2,600 prostituted sex slaves. I dislike the term “sex worker”—it has an ideological loading. The vast majority of women and girls involved this area are there because of debt or drugs; they are under the coerced control of their pimps. The image of the “happy hooker” sex worker—the “Belle de Jour” sex worker—might apply to a tiny, tiny minority, but this is one of the most disgusting forms of exploitation in our society, whereby a young girl or woman is obliged to take 10 or 12 penises into her orifices each day in order to make money for her pimps and traffickers. So we should have no more nonsense about “sex workers”—these are prostituted women who are suffering horribly.

However, regarding that figure of 2,600 prostituted sex slaves that is quoted in the ACPO report, that report was shredded almost before it was published by the Eaves organisation and other investigators, who noted that it was based on police officers in full uniform going into massage parlours and other brothels and, within sight of the pimps and other controllers of these women and girls, saying, “Excuse me, love, are you trafficked?” and then coming up with that figure of 2,600. It is nonsense, given the world statistics about the level of sex slave trafficking, which are quite reliable. Even if Britain has a smaller share of that trade than other countries, we are still certainly talking about a five-figure number of prostituted sex slaves, at the very least.

There is an important mechanism to deal with this problem of sex slavery, which is tackling the demand side. I will not enter into that debate today; there is some division across the House about it. Nevertheless, until we put the responsibility on the men who pay for sex with coerced and trafficked women, I am afraid that the hope that we will find every pimp and put him behind bars is not a very realistic one.

I pray in aid the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who wrote a marvellous article in the Yorkshire Post about a month ago saying:

“Sex trafficking is nothing more than modern-day slavery. This is women being exploited, degraded and subjected to horrific risks solely for the gratification and economic greed of others. I am therefore stunned to learn that the Government are ‘opting out’ of an EU directive designed to tackle sex trafficking. Generally, I am no great supporter of European directives”

—that might incorporate the views of the hon. Members for the hon. Member for Wellingborough and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce)—

“but this seems to be a common-sense directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves.”

The Archbishop of York is right, and I deeply regret the fact that the Liberal Democrat spokesman in this debate has not been able to back him fully and wholeheartedly. On the whole, those who lie down with Eurosceptic Tories get up with opt-outs.

We will keep pressing the Government on the issue. It is simply not good enough to say, as the Prime Minister said to the then Leader of the Opposition on 15 September, that the directive

“does not go any further than the law that we have already passed. We have put everything that is in the directive in place.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 873.]

I am happy to say that the Prime Minister misled the House inadvertently, but he did mislead the House, and that cannot stand. It is clear to anyone who has read the directive, as I have, that the UK is not in compliance. Article 2 deals with offences concerning trafficking in human beings. According to CARE, a Christian organisation working on the issue, the UK Government are only semi-compliant. Article 7 deals with the non-prosecution or non-application of penalties to the victim, a point made strongly by other hon. Members. Again, the UK is only semi-compliant. There is no requirement in UK law not to prosecute victims, even though the Council of Europe convention explicitly states that there should be.

As a delegate to the Council of Europe, I was part of a campaign to get the UK first to sign and then to ratify the convention. The Home Office was utterly resistant, as it is today, to the EU directive. It required the Prime Minister’s personal intervention to get the convention signed and ratified, but we are not yet applying its articles fully. We are certainly not applying the proposed articles of the EU directive.

Article 8 of the EU directive deals with investigation and prosecution. We are not compliant. No specific legislation addresses any of the requirements. The Crown Prosecution Service is currently consulting on its policy on prosecuting cases of human trafficking. Frankly, if the CPS had been around at the beginning of the 19th century, it would have taken until the 20th century to finish its consultation. Parliament itself must get to grips with the issue.

The UK is only semi-compliant with the directive’s article on assistance and support for victims of trafficking in human beings. On the general provision of support for child victims, one of the worst aspects of sex slave trafficking, the UK is, again, only semi-compliant.

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacShane]

I really do not have time. Forgive me; this is a short debate.

On one important measure in the directive—that there should be national rapporteurs on the issue—the UK is wholly non-compliant. The Prime Minister misled the House on 15 September. I hope that the Minister is willing to accept that and move forward.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre is being abolished. There will be no Operation Pentameter 3, which the hon. Member for Wellingborough rightly demanded. We are shutting down the initial steps taken by the last Government, who were working against “Whitehall knows best” syndrome and much of the mass media. Papers such as The Guardian and shows such as “Newsnight” have constantly downplayed the number of sex slaves and trafficked and prostituted women in our country. It is up to this House alone to persuade the Government.

I make no protest against the Minister who is replying to this debate—he is a sincere and serious Minister on this subject—but he has got it wrong. It is not just about UK law versus Brussels—the Foreign Secretary, in his speech to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, was pandering to the latent Euroscepticism of his Back Benchers—but about sending a signal to every other EU member state that Britain is part of the joint European campaign. It is also about sending a signal elsewhere in the world that we are prepared to change our law to conform fully to the EU directives, as have all the other EU member states that have signed up, and take the campaign forward internationally.

I know that the Minister will have to read out his brief today, but I say to him that the campaign will go on until we are prepared to support the victims of sex slave trafficking instead of saying, by opting out of the EU directive, that the pimps and traffickers have one or two people on their side in Whitehall.

European Investigation Order

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Now I am really worried!

Detection of various crimes, and the tracking down of the perpetrators, relies on cross-border co-operation. The point of the EIO is that it will assist such co-operation and, crucially, it will enable evidence to be gathered in a timely fashion. We already have examples— not in the sort of cases to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but in drug trafficking—in which the evidence has arrived only after the end of the trial.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement to the House—it is much appreciated. Does she share the concerns of some Back Benchers that during proceedings on the Lisbon treaty—when we were in opposition—loss of sovereignty was often described as just a “practical measure”? That phrase crept into her statement, too, and I would be grateful for reassurance that that is not the case.

[Mrs May]

I am trying not to make too much of a habit of making statements in the House—although there have been a few Home Office statements recently. I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern about the use of that terminology. I have looked into this issue and it is indeed a very practical measure. It will simplify, codify and put some time limits on processes that already exist. The MLA agreements are already in existence and are followed up by police forces here requesting evidence from overseas and by police forces overseas requesting evidence from the UK. These proposals will make it much easier to undertake that process in a timely fashion so that the evidence is available for both prosecutors and defendants in their trials.

Policing in the 21st Century

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

No, I do not agree that that is the implication of what we are doing. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman speaks to the shadow Home Secretary, who, when challenged during the general election campaign to guarantee that there would be no cuts to the number of police officers under a Labour Government, simply said that he could not make such a guarantee.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for making the statement now, because in past years such announcements were made during the recess when the House could not question a Minister. The UK Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield is closed and has been incorporated into SOCA, which is now being closed and will become the NCA. Are the Government still committed to combating human trafficking?

[Mrs May]

Yes, we are indeed still committed to combating human trafficking. Setting up the national crime agency, with not only the serious organised crime command but the border police force and increasing broader protection, will, I believe, enable our fight against trafficking to be even stronger.

Counter-terrorism and Security Powers

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support for the review, but I am afraid that I am going to give her the same answer as I gave to two of my Liberal Democrat hon. Friends—that I do not want to pre-empt the result of the review. We will have our debate tomorrow, and then, when the review reports, we will be able to look at its proposals.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary on making her statement—and on allowing us to hear it in the House first, rather than in the media. Can she tell the House why intercept evidence is not being considered in the review, but is being considered separately?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to do so. The previous Government set up a process to consider intercept evidence, and a Privy Council group is in existence to do that. In fact, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) is a member of that group. I want to talk to it about how we can take that issue forward in the best and most appropriate way, and I think it is better to do that over time rather than shoehorn it into this review.

Limits on Non-EU Economic Migration

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that that is the whole point of a consultation exercise.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The Home Secretary spoke powerfully about human trafficking and how the coalition Government were going to deal with the problem. Is she happy that the Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield has closed and is now part of the overall police effort, with the £1.8 million budget seeming to have disappeared?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue and congratulate him on, I believe, having taken over the chairmanship of the all-party group.

[Mr Bone]

Tomorrow maybe.

[Mrs May]

I am so sorry; I am a little in advance of myself. If that does happen tomorrow, I congratulate my hon. Friend. Our honourable friend the former Member for Totnes had an excellent record during his time in this place on dealing with the issue and ensuring that it was discussed on the Floor of the House. Regardless of the result tomorrow, I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to do that, as he has in the past. Looking at how we deal with human trafficking is an important issue, and the response of the police is an issue that I am interested in looking at both as Home Secretary and, with my other hat on, as the Minister for Women and Equalities.