Tigray

Debate between Sarah Champion and Paul Blomfield

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the humanitarian situation in Tigray.

As ever, it is a pleasure, Mr Davies, to serve under your chairmanship, and also to see so many Members here, which shows the significance of not just the debate but what is happening in Ethiopia at the moment.

The situation in Tigray is truly horrific. This could be a debate about conflict prevention, regional stability or foreign policy in the horn of Africa, but it is the dreadful humanitarian situation and the terrible conditions the people in Tigray are having to endure that must be our focus today. That dire situation motivated the International Development Committee, which I chair, to produce a short report. I am grateful to the Government for their response to the report, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister shortly.

Let us be clear: it is conflict that has driven a worsening humanitarian situation in Tigray. Against a backdrop of deteriorating political relationships between the regional Government in Tigray and the federal Government in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian national defence force started security operations in Tigray in November 2020. The Tigray regional security forces have fought against it, retaking the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle in June. Local militia and unidentified troops are involved. Eritrean troops are fighting in Tigray and are alleged to have committed human rights violations and abuses.

I do not want to dwell too long on the causes and the nature of the conflict, save to note two things. It is clear that there have been abuses by all parties to the conflict and that all parties are using propaganda and misinformation to advance their cause. All the time, it is the people who suffer—people whose lives were already difficult; people whose livelihoods were under threat from climate change and the worst desert locust infestation for decades; people who were already hosting populations displaced by previous conflicts in the region.

I would like to set out briefly some of the key humanitarian challenges, before going on to talk about some of the grave violations of human rights that have been reported. I want to focus on women and girls because, like in so many other conflicts and crises around the world, women and girls are disproportionately impacted. We must find a way to end the heartbreaking and unimaginable horrors that some women and girls have had to endure and continue to face in the form of gender-based violence and sexual violence.

The first issue that arises in conflict is the risk of injury or death. People fearing for their lives and those of their families flee areas of conflict. An estimated 2.1 million people have been displaced by the conflict. In Tigray, many people have fled rural areas, and thousands of displaced people are being hosted in communities in large urban areas. These communities are themselves already stressed by the effects of conflict, shortages of food and water, and a lack of access to essential services. People are not always safe once they have fled. The unpredictable nature of conflict means that fighting often erupts unexpectedly. People have to flee fighting more than once. The effect on their lives and livelihoods is devastating, sowing the seeds of problems that will endure for years.

Access is another major problem. The conflict has prevented humanitarian agencies from reaching people in need. They have been unable to access areas to deliver vital supplies, while the lack of access has also made it much more difficult to assess need. The latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that no trucks have entered Tigray since 20 August. Since 15 July, only 321 trucks with humanitarian supplies have entered the region, providing only a fraction of the assistance needed by the 5.2 million people in need. The reality is that 100 trucks a day are required to meet the demand.

It is true that there have been some improvements in access, and at the time we were preparing our report it looked like agreements had been secured, but the situation is not yet good enough to meet the needs of the people affected by the fighting. Parts of Tigray remain problematic to this day, with fighting still disrupting access routes and belligerents on all sides failing to recognise permissions granted to humanitarian agencies. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work the humanitarian agencies are doing in the face of terrible difficulties and huge personal risks. Tragically, some humanitarian workers have been killed. Worse, it seems that they have been deliberately murdered.

Thousands of people in Tigray have not had the access they need to food and water. Over 400,000 people are suffering catastrophic levels of hunger and more than 4 million—around 70% of the population—are experiencing high levels of food insecurity. Combatants have blocked food aid from reaching its destination, it has been looted by soldiers and there are reports of food silos being contaminated.

Beyond these immediate life-sustaining needs, the conflict has brought about a collapse of essential services. Communication was cut off in the early part of the conflict, there have been power shortages, markets have closed, the internet is down making bank transfers extremely difficult, banking has been disrupted and essential services have collapsed, but to talk simply of a collapse of essential services would be to hide the shocking and awful truth that schools, hospitals and the means of production have all been deliberately and systematically targeted, vandalised and destroyed. Where schools have not been vandalised, they have been occupied either by the combatants or by displaced people seeking some kind of refuge.

With markets closed and limited access for food deliveries, finding adequate nutrition is a real problem. An estimated 45,000 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while health centres are reportedly running out of stocks. It gets worse because farmers, where their farms and machinery have not been vandalised, are unable to plant crops. Only 25% to 50% of cereal production will be available this year. Soldiers are reported to have beaten people they have seen ploughing fields, and harvests have been destroyed and livestock looted, all in a part of the world that was already severely stressed by changes in climate and the effect of desert locusts. There is a real prospect of famine and the creation of yet another cycle of aid dependency, in a part of the world that has suffered so much in the past and that had hoped to leave this sort of problem behind it.

Then we turn to the atrocities: the mass killings and the chilling sexual violence. We know there have been massacres, including the cliff-top killing of 25 to 35 civilians near Mahbere Dego, the killing of 160 people in Bora village in southern Tigray and the massacre of 100 people in Aksum in November by Eritrean soldiers. We know there have been extra-judicial killings. In March, Médecins sans Frontières staff witnessed young men being pulled off buses and killed.

We know that women and girls have been raped. In February, a young mother was abducted and over 11 days repeatedly raped by 23 soldiers, who at the end of her ordeal forced a rock and nails into her vagina. Twelve women, five of whom were pregnant, were raped in front of family members, including their children. We know that some women have been held captive and repeatedly raped by soldiers and militias.

Mark Lowcock, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, acknowledged this after a Reuters investigation found that women and girls as young as eight were being targeted. It is brutal, dehumanising treatment. That the perpetrators cause these terrible acts to be witnessed by family members suggests they intend the effect to be terrorising, and clearly points towards the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Since February, 1,228 cases of sexual and gender-based violence have been reported, yet we know that for every rape and sexual violence case that is reported, there are many more that are not. The UN Population Fund estimates that there might be 22,500 survivors of sexual violence who will seek clinical care this year. Let me note at this point that the UK Government have slashed funding to UNFPA by an astonishing 85%. I dread to think of the impact this will have on women and girls in humanitarian crises like that in Tigray.

We know a lot about what the survivors of atrocities and sexual violence need to recover. Sadly, we also know that with much of the healthcare system in Tigray in tatters, there is little prospect of the survivors getting the support they need. The stories emerging via these organisations are horrifying. Many of the survivors will go on to suffer long-term debilitating physical and mental trauma. It may well be years before health systems are recovered to the point where women and girls will be able to get the support that they need.

It is important that the world bears witness to what is happening in Tigray, and the international system must do all that it can to bring the perpetrators to justice. I commend the work being done by the UN and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to investigate. I ask the Minister to try to allow access to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. At the moment, it is suffering difficulties trying to get in and carry out its investigation. It is vital that evidence of human rights violations and abuses allegedly committed by all parties in Tigray is secured and investigated properly. It is important for the victims that that happens. It is important as a warning to others.

In the Select Committee’s report, we said that

“the situation in Tigray is an early test of the UK’s commitment to the principles and approach of the UK as a ‘force for good’ as set out in the Government’s Integrated Review.”

It still is. We recognised the Tigray crisis as

“a test of the FCDO’s desire to combine ‘diplomacy and development’ and to establish an integrated approach to conflict and instability. Failing this early test could damage the credibility of the UK’s new strategy.”

My Committee welcomes the Government’s response and their acceptance of the key points that we made about ending conflict and preventing it from spreading, ensuring that humanitarian needs are met, finding a sustainable political solution and supporting a process for reconciliation. I welcome the work of Nick Dyer, the UK special envoy for famine prevention and humanitarian affairs, and the support that the Government have provided to humanitarian agencies working in Tigray, but let us be clear that the biggest challenge in UK development policy is that the cuts to overseas development assistance are likely remain for the remainder of this Parliament and very much longer. The tests that the Government have set for the return to 0.7% are, potentially, impossibly hard to meet.

The Government’s response claims that

“HMG has been at the forefront of the international response throughout the conflict”.

UNOCHA reckons that the current gap in funding for the situation in Tigray is $170 million. There is a very real risk that the Government’s wholly unnecessary cuts to ODA will undermine our response.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for her comprehensive description of both the scale and the brutality of the conflict, but one issue that she has not referred to is the potential use of chemical weapons by the Ethiopian forces, on which I tabled a written question to the Minister in June. I understood from the response that the Government were seeking to verify the truth of those allegations, but is my hon. Friend also concerned about those reports, and does she agree that they should be part of the issues that the Government are seeking to address?

[Sarah Champion]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. The problem that we have is the verification. I saw the pictures of the chemical attack. I have no doubt from seeing those pictures that that is what happened, but unless we are able to get people on the ground to capture that data and are then able to verify it, it is incredibly difficult to encourage the Government and the international community to take a more robust response. That is why it is so important that we, as parliamentarians, keep raising the issue of access to gather data and to get the evidence to hold people to account, and keep it on our Government’s agenda-.

I have several questions that I hope the Minister will be able to address. First, how will the cuts in the UK’s ODA affect Ethiopia and in particular the humanitarian situation in Tigray, and what does being

“at the forefront of the international response”

mean for the UK’s response to the current shortfall in funding? Secondly, what steps will the Government take to put pressure on belligerents to end the fighting, and will the Minister also press the UN to act on the issues of rape and hunger being used as weapons of war? Thirdly, will he update the House on the deployment in Tigray of experts from the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, and what assessment have the Government made of the impact of aid cuts to programmes such as the United Nations Population Fund on supporting survivors of sexual violence in the long term?

Fourthly, what steps has the Minister taken since the Government’s response was issued in July to prioritise Tigray, and what recent discussions has he had with aid agencies, the UN and other actors in the region? Fifthly, has the delivery of aid improved significantly since the Government published their response to our report, and what are the next steps if the delivery of aid is to be further improved? Sixthly, what steps is the Minister taking to put pressure on the Ethiopian Government and regional authorities to improve access and communications? Seventhly, how concerned is he about the safety of humanitarian workers in Tigray, and what can be done to better protect them?

Finally, what is the Minister’s latest assessment of the conflict spreading in Ethiopia, and what impact is the fighting in Amhara, Oromia and other parts of Ethiopia having on the work of the UK Government in Tigray? Will people displaced by those conflicts depend on the same pot of money as the people in Tigray?

The last month has been dramatic and traumatic in equal measure, but with attention focused on Afghanistan it is easy for the crisis in Tigray to slip from our collective consciousness. Even without Afghanistan, Haiti may have pushed Tigray off the news cycle, and we hear precious little day to day about what is happening in Ethiopia. The reports are there if we look for them but, as a real crisis, it does not get the level of attention it should. It is clear that the violence in Ethiopia has spread, and the risks we identified of conflict spreading further are still very real.

In closing, let me just say this: we must not lose sight of the situation in Tigray. The level of human suffering and the risk of conflict spreading demand it.

Immigration Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Sarah Champion and Paul Blomfield

Thursday 5th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

The debate focuses on an important principle, which we need to consider fully. The main drift of the Bill is aimed at illegal migrants, but legal migrants will be the group mainly affected by the removal of appeal rights. We received a lot of evidence on the issue. The Law Society said that it felt that it would be

“an unjustifiable incursion into Article 8 rights.”

Although the Immigration Act 2014 introduced the principle of deport now, appeal later, that was on deportation cases where people had appealed serious crimes. The Court of Appeal has determined that that regime was lawful. There are some caveats in the case of Kiarie, cited by the Solicitor General, including the caveat on the principle of real risk of serious irreversible harm. The Court of Appeal said

“the real risk of serious irreversible harm is not the overarching test”.

Nevertheless, that regime was determined as lawful under the 2014 Act, but this provision extends that regime to all migrants making human rights appeals, regardless of any illegality or criminality and whether it has been established or even suspected. That is a fairly fundamental step for this Parliament to take. The Law Society made the point, very strongly, in its evidence:

“Restrictions on Article 8 rights which may be deemed justifiable in one context (for example, national security) cannot be extended to other contexts without further justification.”

We have not really received that justification. The Government have not made the case for the additional rights.

Using the test of serious irreversible harm or a breach of human rights as the only exception to an out-of-country appeal sets an extraordinarily high bar for vulnerable appellants seeking to contest removal from the UK. I come back to the point about the 42% success rate, which we discussed. We can debate where the responsibility lies. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras made it clear that we are not suggesting that this is all the fault of the Home Office. It may be the result of incomplete documentation or down to lawyers, as the Solicitor General suggested. Nevertheless, a substantial number of people are successful. The effect of this provision is that people who have committed no offence, who would in fact be granted the right to stay in the UK, will be forced to leave for an indeterminate period. In some cases, that would expose them to significant risks and would mean separation from their families. We are not talking about short periods. I represent the multicultural heart of Sheffield, where we have people who owe their origins to 120 countries and speak 160 different languages, so I have a fair amount of casework in this area.

We know that immigration appeals are currently taking about six months; a year or more is not unusual. There is no significant indication that that will improve. With such delays, out-of-country appeals would cause real disruption to family life, with potential longer-term consequences, for people who will, in significant numbers, ultimately be given the right to remain. Apart from anything else, as the Law Society pointed out, if the current appeal success rate is maintained, this could be a very expensive measure for the Government, and the taxpayer, because successful appellants could seek compensation over the enforced separation from their families.

In addition, the provisions could have a perverse impact on UK nationals. The Law Society again pointed out that, ironically, the spouse of a national of an EEA member, except the UK, would retain a full in-country right of appeal, whereas the spouse of a UK national would have to leave the country. The Daily Mail has clearly not picked up on that one. There are some perverse impacts, which I am sure the Solicitor General will want to comment on.

I also want to touch on the specific area of trafficking in relation to labour exploitation, which we debated earlier. We received powerful evidence from the charity, the Anti-trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit. It made the point of how difficult it would be for many of the clients it supports to challenge a negative human rights decision if the client was overseas. It said in written evidence:

“Our client group would be unlikely to have the resources or familiarity with modern technology to allow us to take instructions by skype or keep in regular contact with them. As many clients who fall into exploitation have little or no education they could not be expected to maintain any written communication with us or to draft any documents needed for an appeal themselves. Victims of trafficking are often submissive, frightened of authority figures and find it hard to establish relationships of trust.”

It goes on to say:

“Face to face relationships are essential when working with individuals who have been subject to abuse and exploitation.”

Across the House, Members are concerned about those individuals. That was the background to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 in which Members of the House across party were involved. That is a serious consideration we should take into account.

I draw attention to the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras about the position of children. We again received powerful evidence from the Children’s Society, which made the point that even for those who are able to bring an appeal from abroad, notwithstanding all the difficulties and challenges, children will be subject to damaging and unnecessary disruption in their lives during the process. I am sure the Solicitor General will come back on how this will work in practice.

The Children’s Society expressed real concern that the Government have not protected unaccompanied children in this provision. In relation to unaccompanied children, we talked earlier about the age range. The Children’s Society made the point that

“This provision could see more cases involving unaccompanied children or young people over 18 who claimed asylum alone as children, being certified for an out-of-country appeal.”

Its next point relates to the age twilight zone that the Solicitor General referred to:

“According to Home Office statistics, of the young people who applied for asylum as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and received an initial decision in 2014, 85 young people were refused and their claim was certified. 67 of those were over 18 at the time of the decision while 18 were minors at the time of the decision.”

[Sarah Champion]

We know from the extensive debate about age that we had in the Modern Slavery Bill Committee that some of those young people do not know how old they are, so there are all manner of loopholes that they can fall through.

Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Champion and Paul Blomfield

Thursday 5th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Champion]

I, too, want to speak in support of amendment 222. Throughout the Bill, the Government propose various measures to remove the right to appeal against Home Office decisions. Reading the Bill, one cannot but conclude that the Government are fundamentally opposed to their decisions being challenged in anything approaching an independent manner.

The consequences of the decision to deny support are potentially catastrophic. A migrant who is denied support has no right to work and no right to rent. Their bank account is closed and their assets are frozen. The choices that people in that position face are bleak. The Bill acknowledges the need to support refused migrants who have genuine obstacles to leaving the UK, but it has not been made clear what a genuine obstacle will be, even though my Opposition colleagues have been pushing for clarity. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields has just raised the matter yet again. What is clear, however, is who decides whether the obstacle exists. It is the Home Office, without scrutiny, oversight or effective challenge. That is bad practice in any process, but in the light of the Home Office’s frankly miserable record of making the correct decision the first time, it will be disastrous.

There is currently a right of appeal on decisions made about section 4 support. Statistics from the asylum support tribunal should make for uncomfortable reading for the Government, because 62% of appeals between September 2014 and August 2015 were successful. The claims were allowed, sent back to the Home Office for a fresh decision or withdrawn in acknowledgement of a flawed decision.

The Home Office has a similarly poor record in assessing destitution. In 2014-15, the Asylum Support Appeals Project represented 168 asylum seekers whom the Home Office had denied support on the grounds that it did not believe that they were destitute. Of those decisions, 70% were overturned on appeal. Such figures cannot but lead us to the conclusion that there is a serious problem with Home Office decision making. During the Committee’s evidence sessions, witnesses offered various explanations for those failings, from inadequate training to overly complex immigration regulations, and Ministers have given other examples. Whatever the reasons, however, when nearly two thirds of decisions are being overturned on appeal, something needs to be done to address the problem.

The Government’s solution in the Bill and in previous immigration legislation is indeed novel: simply abolish the right to appeal. That will certainly result in far fewer Home Office decisions being reversed, but it is hardly a solution that will in any way contribute to better decision making. Children and families will be badly affected by the loss of appeal rights. Section 95 support will no longer continue for families with children at the end of the asylum process. That poses a serious risk of leaving children destitute with no judicial oversight, as was clearly detailed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields.

Given the high proportion of Home Office decisions that will be overturned by the tribunal, the lack of appeal rights will inevitably transfer the responsibility for supporting destitute children to local authorities. We have heard from the Minister that the Department is in good consultation with local authorities, which is great, but the reality is that children who should be being supported by the Home Office will instead have to rely on overstretched local authority budgets to meet those most basic needs.

Much has been said of the need to ensure that our immigration system is one in which the public can have confidence. However, the way to achieve that confidence is not to pander to sensationalist headlines, but to ensure that most of the time the Home Office gets it right first time. Abolishing the right to challenge poor decisions and forcing people into the most abject poverty will not in any way contribute to achieving a goal that I am sure we all share.

[Paul Blomfield]

I am pleased to have an opportunity to contribute to this debate. I will not repeat the woeful statistics that others have mentioned in relation to successful appeals, but I think that all those points should draw the Committee’s concern to the appropriate response, which must be about getting the process right, as opposed to abolishing people’s rights, because the net effect of the proposals will be that people who could otherwise win appeals will be left destitute.

The Minister talked at length about the dialogue between the Home Office and local authorities. I would like to share some concerns that local authorities in the region that I represent have expressed. They come together in an organisation called Migration Yorkshire, from across the entire county. They are anticipating that the impact of the provisions will be to leave significant numbers of refused asylum seekers destitute. They make a point, which is worth bearing in mind when the Minister says that measures such as this are about encouraging people to return: they ask, “Return to what?” We are talking about people who, in many cases, come from unstable and dangerous states. In their evidence, they cite Eritrea, Iran and Sudan. The choice of returning, or being destitute in Britain might not be a hard choice to make for many people, actually. Destitution in the UK is probably better than going back to a war zone and being destitute there.

It is clear that, under this policy, more refused asylum seekers will become destitute without the right to appeal. The local authorities’ concern is that the amount will increase in several towns and cities across Yorkshire, with all the related health and cohesion issues that will disproportionately affect some of our bigger cities, where we already face problems with the rise in rough sleeping and wider destitution. They are worried that local agencies will lose contact with refused asylum seekers, who will have very little incentive to stay in touch. They are concerned that unsupported, refused asylum seekers will feel compelled to use illegal forms of accommodation —to be in overcrowded, unhealthy conditions, potentially putting their friends in breach of tenancy agreements—and that they will feel compelled, in conflict with the Government’s policy objectives, to undertake illegal forms of employment to survive, opening themselves up to exploitation and abuse.

In Committee so far I have cited the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary; now I will turn to the thoughts of another member of the Cabinet. The comment is not contemporary, but arose from a 2008 study by the Centre for Social Justice, which, incidentally, stated:

“Making refused asylum seekers homeless and penniless is hugely counterproductive: it makes it much more difficult to work with them to encourage voluntary return or to ensure timely removal, and in driving them underground makes it harder to keep track of them.”

The foreword to the report was provided by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who has provided inspirational guidance to the Government in a number of areas. We should pay serious attention to his words. He said:

“It also appears that a British government is using forced destitution as a means of encouraging people to leave voluntarily. It is a failed policy…still driven by the thesis, clearly falsified, that we can encourage people to leave by being nasty.”

I rest my case.

Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Champion and Paul Blomfield

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. If I may add to what my hon. Friend is saying, Caroline Robinson, the policy director of Focus on Labour Exploitation, said in her witness statement,

“The point about the protective purpose of the director is very important. For us, the core purpose of that role should be the protection of vulnerable workers and the prevention of exploitation.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2015; c. 27, Q54.]

That is what the amendment is trying to get at.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. Throughout our deliberations, we should seek to draw on the evidence that we heard. The evidence cited by her and by my hon. and learned Friend the shadow Minister has powerfully made the case that the confusion of immigration functions and labour market enforcement is damaging and counterproductive to our objectives for the labour market and for immigration. The amendment seeks to provide absolute clarity. I hope that the Government will accept it.

Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Champion and Paul Blomfield

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

I take the Minister’s point, but why give those who exploit yet another card to play? The threat of 12 months’ imprisonment and criminalisation is the card that will be exercised both in relation to those who have no right to be here, or to be working, and in relation to those who do.

[Sarah Champion]

One of our witnesses, Caroline Robinson from Focus on Labour Exploitation, said:

“We know that 78% of those exploited for their labour are, in fact, documented in the UK.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 20 October; c. 28, Q59.]

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the point that I was seeking to make. Even where people have rights to work, the lack of rights awareness and the intimidatory relationship between exploiter and exploited make this another card to play. I see the Minister is still shaking his head. Even if we were to restrict the measure simply to those who did not have the right to work, we are still giving the exploiter another card to intimidate and therefore make it less likely that people would be willing to whistleblow. I am happy for the Minister to intervene on me. Perhaps he could illustrate the evidence that suggests the clause will be of assistance—not the intuition, the belief, the view, but the evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady adds another dimension to my argument that the clause makes those who are already in a precarious situation more vulnerable and open to exploitation. In an earlier intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham mentioned the evidence given by Caroline Robinson from Focus on Labour Exploitation, which works directly with victims of trafficking for labour exploitation and of which I am the trustee along with some Members from other parties.

FLEX has identified three drivers of labour exploitation. The first is the feeling among migrant workers that they deserve less or have fewer rights than UK citizens. The second is a lack of checks on labour standards in the workplace, including everything from health and safety to minimum wage enforcement. The third is a fear of officials, especially of immigration officials. The Bill makes each of those drivers worse, and clause 8 has a particular effect on the first and third factors.

First, on the rights of migrant workers, the clause puts the focus on immigration status as a condition of asserting labour rights. By criminalising the exploited worker, whether they are committing the offence of illegal working or not, they can be treated and threatened by a gangmaster as if they are. On the second driver, we have talked at length about a number of aspects of labour market enforcement. The Bill seems to reflect the Government’s desire to move further towards an intelligence-based approach to enforcement. Essential to that intelligence is whistleblowing. We need to ensure that we do nothing in the Bill to discourage exploited workers from coming forward and thereby give gangmasters another card to play. Sadly, the clause risks doing exactly that.

On the third driver of labour exploitation, the problem that we identified earlier—the overlap between labour market enforcement and immigration enforcement—is at the heart of the Bill. The clause gives undocumented workers another reason to be worried. The consequence is that labour exploitation is not rooted out and continues to be a pull factor for migration, which is against the Government’s policy objectives.

Mr Bone, I will take your advice. I will not ask the Minister to intervene, but I press him to share evidence from anywhere in the world that shows that the approach of criminalising workers, unlike many other aspects of the Bill with which we agree, assists in the policy objective that he outlined and we share.

[Sarah Champion]

Will my hon. Friend comment on something else that Caroline Robinson said, which gets to the nub of his point that clause 8 does not meet the Government’s objective? She said:

“What we think will prevent people from working here undocumented is to reduce the demand for undocumented workers. To do that, we require enforcement of labour standards across the board. To be clear, the demand for undocumented workers is not because employers prefer undocumented over documented workers; it is because they cannot pay documented workers below minimum wage as easily as they can undocumented workers.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2015; c. 28, Q59.]

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I agree. The quotation adds very much to the case that I seek to make; perhaps it makes the point more clearly than I was doing.

I want to move on and talk about international examples. I have challenged the Minister and I am confident that he will come back with examples later. I have challenged him to give comparisons, but let me share one that was shared with me yesterday when I met representatives of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings—GRETA. They shared with me the example of Italy. They had done some work and talked about the amendments made to the Italian Consolidated Immigration Act in 2002, the so-called Bossi Fini law, which was aimed at regulating migrant worker flows by introducing a system of entry quotas, and which was supplemented in 2009 by the criminalisation of irregular entry and stay. Their concern was that the requirements of a formal employment contract in order to obtain a residence permit exposed migrant workers who were already at risk of labour exploitation because of their irregular migration status. They were worried that irregular migrants would be afraid to report cases of exploitation to the authorities because they were concerned about being detained and expelled. The United Nations special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children, reported on the negative consequences of the criminalisation of irregular migration for victims of trafficking.

In response to points made to them by GRETA, the Italian authorities indicated that there were 14 convictions for trafficking in human beings in 2010 and nine in 2011. GRETA was concerned that those conviction rates were very low and urged the Italian authorities to strengthen their efforts to ensure that crimes related to trafficking were proactively investigated and prosecuted promptly and effectively. They asked the Italian authorities to study the implications of their immigration legislation, particularly the offence of illegal entry and stay. As a consequence, in January 2014, the Italian Senate approved Government measures to decriminalise those aspects of illegal immigration. They had recognised that the approach of criminalisation was not only unhelpful and policy-neutral but actively counterproductive.