Terrorist Attacks (Paris)

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I have indicated, I have had a number of meetings and the police have been meeting Jewish communities, representative groups and the CST, in view of the role it plays in providing protective security for synagogues, Jewish schools and so on. We have also looked at a number of other aspects. I had a meeting recently, involving the Director of Public Prosecutions and the chief executive of the College of Policing, to look at the advice and guidance available to ensure that the police and the prosecution service respond properly when anti-Semitic attacks are undertaken and that, where prosecution is possible, it is taken forward.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The Government’s taskforce on tackling radicalism and extremism, chaired by the Prime Minister, recommended in 2013 a new banning order for groups that fall short of being legally termed “terrorist” but which undermine democracy, and a new civil power to target those who radicalise others. Will the Home Secretary confirm whether those measures are excluded from the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill and whether that is because they have been blocked by the Liberal Democrats? If so, given the comments of the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), and in the light of recent events in Paris, is there scope to revisit the recommendations made by the Prime Minister’s taskforce, as that would be most welcome?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises these issues. I have been very clear that it has not been possible to take those particular proposals forward on a Government basis, but I was also very clear—indeed, I said it in the speech I gave at our party conference last year—that it is the Conservative party’s intention to take them forward.

Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

We welcome many of the measures in the Bill and we will support it tonight, but as a policy to tackle serious crime in Britain, it is still too weak. Rightly, it has been improved in the other place as a result of strong campaigning for amendments to be added, but more still needs to be done. As a final Bill for this Parliament, it is not ambitious enough to deal with the serious crime challenges that face Britain today.

Crime is changing and the criminal justice system is still not keeping up. The challenge from serious crime is increasing, not falling, and more needs to be done. Violent crime is increasing, yet fewer violent crimes are being prosecuted or convicted. More sexual offences are being reported, but fewer are reaching conviction. Reported rapes and domestic violence are increasing, yet fewer are reaching conviction. Far fewer drugs are being seized on their way into this country, and online crime is escalating exponentially and the police are not equipped to keep up. The problem is getting worse, not better, and the criminal justice system under the Home Secretary is not keeping up.

The measures are welcome, but they do not address the scale of the problem that we face. Let me deal with the measures in turn and highlight the areas in which the Government need to go further. The Government must stop the clock turning backwards. We have supported from the start the extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction for the two offences under the Terrorism Act 2006, preparation of terrorist acts and training for terrorism. We argued from the start, however, that the Home Secretary would need to go further, restore the relocation powers that she abolished in terrorism prevention and investigation measures, and strengthen Prevent. We will discuss those further measures later this week in the context of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, in which she has had to do exactly that.

We support the measures on accessing child pornography but believe that much more needs to be done to tackle this growing crime. I will come on to that in a moment. We support the measures to tighten the law on hacking and to address the international challenge that online crime poses. We welcome in particular more action to stop criminals benefiting from the proceeds of their crimes—something for which we have been calling for some time. Members in all parts of the House will agree, I think, that we should recover the proceeds of crime. Ill-gotten gains should not furnish the lifestyle of a criminal, in some cases long after their sentence has concluded. Wherever possible, there should be recompense to victims of crime, who have often lost so much.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady clarify whether the Opposition would support in Committee or on Report measures relating to the disclosure of beneficial ownership of UK property owned by offshore companies, which is one of the ways that assets are held, and unexplained wealth orders, along the lines of those used in Guernsey, to allow law enforcement officers more time than they currently have? Those two measures are excluded from the Bill.

[Yvette Cooper]

We support a series of measures where we think the Government should go further. We will table amendments in Committees and we will probe the detail of the Government’s legislation. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the details of those issues, as they are immensely important.

There are areas where we should do more to take back from criminals the assets that they have stolen from victims of crime right across the country. The aspects that we highlighted in the past related to preventing criminals from switching their assets to family and friends and getting away with it, and toughening sentences to deal with the problem of people serving only short sentences, even though they were continuing to squirrel away huge illegal gains. We support the measures to give more powers to the courts to tackle so-called designer divorces and third parties keeping hold of assets, and we support plans to require offenders to pay swiftly. The Government accept that more can still be done and we will probe this further in Committee.

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[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I am delighted to contribute to the discussion of this multifaceted Bill. I am probably not regarded as one of the normal Home Office specialists, but this multifaceted Bill covers several areas that extend beyond the usual Home Office remit, and I particularly want to speak about the world of economics and our international relations.

The serious and organised crime strategy rightly sets out how we should respond to an ever-present, ever-evolving and ever-developing threat, particularly in the area of cybercrime. The importance of the Bill is that it recognises the strategy and gives legislative effect to such points. In my short speech, I want to look at some of the economic and international concerns that arise from cybercrime and how the Bill will help. Others more expert than I am will talk about the recovery of the proceeds of crime, the abuse of chemical substances—that very important matter was not mentioned by either Front-Bench speaker—and obviously, domestic cruelty to children, FGM and the possession of weapons in prison.

Part 2 goes to the heart of what we should be looking at because it covers the area of crime that is expanding exponentially, as the shadow Home Secretary rightly said. The national security strategy has identified that hostile attacks on UK cyberspace by other states and those involved in organised crime now represent a tier 1 threat to national security. As has been recognised, it is of paramount concern that cybercrime is a threat to national security, and it is obviously welcome that the Government are putting £860 million into the national cyber-security programme. Given the expansion of cybercrime, there will of course be real concerns about ensuring that those resources go into assessing how such a crime is evolving and how we should tackle it.

[Stephen Barclay]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the fact that resource allocation is very opaque? The Treasury produced a report for the Cabinet Secretary in the last quarter of last year suggesting that 90% of spending on extremism happens domestically and only 10% internationally. On the very important threat that he is articulating, does he think that Parliament has sufficient transparency at the moment in relation to where the money is going, and to what extent is it being spent on adapting to new threats as opposed to dealing with traditional ones?

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We should recognise that the Government are spending that money and are committed to looking at the specific law enforcement challenges of cybercrime, but we must also consider the economic consequences of that crime.

Particularly through organised crime, but also by foreign state activity, there can be a breakdown of networks, such as those for electricity, telecoms, power, banking, and food and fuel distribution. Everything relies on those logistical systems. Only today, companies have announced that their online retailing is now stronger than their direct retailing, and only today, there have been comments about the amount of money lost in banking fraud. Online retail and on-time logistics are clearly areas of potential attack, and the paralysis of such networks as a result of cyber-attacks is not just a security risk, but probably the most significant and serious threat to our economy except for world economic factors.

If those networks come under criminal control, even for a relatively short period, there would be not only grand-scale theft, fraud and illegal drug dealing, but a cost that would dwarf the figure of £24 billion, which the Home Secretary rightly remarked last year was the cost of organised crime to this country. I say “dwarf”, because daily banking transactions in the UK alone probably total five or perhaps 10 times that amount.

The potential for crime is huge, so it is absolutely right for the national cyber-security programme to break down cybercrime into its two parts: cyber-dependent crimes, which can be committed only by using computers and computer networks; and the even more significant cyber-enabled crimes, which can be committed offline and online.

Tackling Corruption

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Tonight’s debate on the Government’s approach to tackling corruption is timely for a number of reasons. It builds on the progress and leadership given by the Prime Minister at the G8 and G20. It comes as we anticipate the long-awaited Government report into corruption, which has been delayed for a year but is due out, we understand, later this month. It comes as London is hosting a conference of 14 overseas territories discussing their approach to corruption, and it comes just a day after changes applying to extraction companies on disclosing payments came into legal force.

The debate is not just timely; it is relevant to London specifically. London is home to more than 250 foreign banks, the most of any financial centre. It is the largest currency trading centre in the world, processing 18% of cross-border transactions. In 2013, the then regulator, the Financial Services Authority, estimated that the level of money being laundered through London and the UK was between £23 billion and £57 billion. Indeed, the Home Secretary used the £23 billion figure when she gave a speech to the Royal United Services Institute, which suggests that the Government accept the scale of the challenge. To put those figures into global context, the African Union estimates the cost of corruption in Africa to be $148 billion and the World Bank estimates that up to $1 trillion is paid in bribes. We know this is a serious issue, and that is why it is timely that Parliament should address it.

I want to highlight three broad themes. The first is resourcing: how to get investigating corruption right and how we give life to the Government’s plan and address some of the challenges they face on the transfer of key personnel to the National Crime Agency. Secondly, how do we improve the policy in terms of industry, so that we move from a quantity approach, particularly on suspicious activity reports, to one based more on quality and targeted at the more serious multi-million pound cases rather than low-value transactions? Thirdly, I want to highlight a number of loopholes in the legislative framework, given that there will be the Second Reading of the Serious Crime Bill in the next week or two.

On resourcing, will the Minister clarify whether colleagues in the Department for International Development have asked for reassurance on key financial investigators moving to the NCA, particularly from the proceeds of crime unit and the City of London anti-corruption units? Is it the case that, to date, only two of the 35 key investigators have agreed to move across? Such expertise takes time to grow. If we are to have a new plan, there is clearly a risk if the experts are not there to implement it. I understand that, in a letter to the Home Secretary on 20 November, the Bond group of non-governmental organisations also highlighted this issue. Given that police officers do not TUPE across and terms and conditions are less favourable, is the Minister confident that the staff will move across? I understand that in the two years that the NCA has had the intelligence unit, not been a single investigation has resulted from that intelligence. We need to tackle the concerns about resourcing.

Will the Minister update the House on the challenges of buying in resource, if that is seen as a short-term fix? The case of Malawi and “cashgate” is a good example. DFID paid for a British firm, Baker Tilly, to provide expert consultancy advice. The scandal is known as “cashgate”, but we have not recovered any cash. Has there been any enforcement? We gave £106 million—a significant amount—in aid to Malawi last year. How much has been spent on the investigation? Is it true that these consultants had no powers to require banks to disclose financial transactions or request intelligence from foreign Governments? If so, what are the constraints on using external consultants in respect of such investigations in the future?

For policy reasons, the Government have decided not to pay for law enforcement out of money recovered from corruption investigations, but given that we have fewer than 100 investigators—in the Serious Fraud Office, the proceeds of crime unit and the City of London unit—would that not make sense? It would allow us to conduct more investigations, which would be in the interests of the countries being defrauded.

Will the Serious Crime Bill deal with the evidential test? It appears to be set too high and so acts as a cost disincentive to the bringing of cases, which is compounded by the time scales. Where there is a financial institution with a complex, multi-jurisdictional case, perhaps spanning many years, law enforcement agencies have just 38 days to build a case to the satisfaction of the courts to block a payment. That is clearly insufficient. We could learn lessons from Guernsey and its approach in the Indonesian logging case. We need a mechanism of unexplained wealth orders to allow law enforcement agencies to stop the clock and allow time to investigate. Does the Minister accept that 38 days is wholly inadequate when it comes to building a complex legal case on payments?

On the relationship with industry, the suspicious activity report procedure is based on regulatory compliance, rather than investigation. The industry pays out millions of pounds for document checks on one’s granny in respect of low-value transactions, while serious cases receive little scrutiny. Of the 316,527 serious activity reports filed by banks last year, just 110 were looked at by the proceeds of crime unit. The banks do not want to exit profitable clients and see them go to other firms, so we have this defensive filing of suspicious activity reports, 95% of which are not acted on by law enforcement agencies—they just sit on file for intelligence. It is not cost-effective.

Last Thursday, on the BBC’s “Question Time”, the Chief Whip—the Whip might want to sharpen her pencil—said that Facebook had been aware of intelligence relating to a terrorist attack but had not passed it on. Do the Government know whether the 300,000 or so suspicious activity reports filed by banks include any transfers of funds to people complicit in those attacks? We do not have the mechanism for filtering them effectively. Is that an issue of concern to the Government, particularly in the light of the discussion about Facebook?

We need to shift away from this catch-all defensive policy to one based on targeting high-value corruption cases, and we need to work more in partnership with financial institutions, and combine that with a greater fear factor in respect of money laundering. Does the Minister share my concern that the current consultation relating to the Financial Conduct Authority seems to be repeating past errors? We had a Financial Services Authority report in 2011 that showed problems relating to the money laundering of banks, and two weeks ago we had an FCA report showing again that small banks were failing on money laundering. If we go back to the 1990s, 23 banks were complicit in money laundering, yet no action was taken.

It might surprise the House to know that over the last decade, only two fines appear to have been imposed against individuals for money laundering, the highest of which was for £17,500. How confident is the FCA that, particularly given the number of foreign banks in the UK, we have the right approach to money laundering even today?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I appreciate the opportunity to intervene. The hon. Gentleman refers to money laundering. In Northern Ireland, over some 30 years of a terrorist campaign, it was clear that paramilitaries were involved in it. A wealth of experience was built up by police officers both from the Royal Ulster Constabulary and from the present Police Service of Northern Ireland. If the hon. Gentleman wants to enable more prosecutions for money laundering, does he think it might be a good idea for the Government and the Department to take on some of those officers who have now retired and take advantage of their expertise to bring more prosecutions for money laundering?

[Stephen Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about how we learn from other jurisdictions in other territories. Italy is another example, with its experience of dealing with the mafia. The hon. Gentleman speaks from experience of the challenges within Northern Ireland where there is a great deal of expertise, from which we can learn.

On the fear factor for individuals, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards put forward very good proposals, allowing a reversal of the burden of proof, but it is still the case that money laundering reporting officers are often not seen enough within the organisation and, not being at executive level, they often do not control the budget. That risks repeating past mistakes. Let us look at HSBC and the problems it got into in Mexico. To what extent does the Minister believe that the current regime would ensure that at a group level executives would be liable individually for fines if similar mistakes were made today?

The High Court recently heard the Nigerian OPL 245 case, which was dealt with by Lady Justice Gloster. It reveals a current impediment that applies to the judiciary, which I would like to draw to the Minister’s attention. In her ruling, Lady Justice Gloster said:

“I find as a fact that, from its incorporation and at all material times, Chief Etete had a sufficient beneficial interest in Malabu”.

She refers to the well-known case of Malabu, a $1 billion oil fraud. One can only look at that judgment, which says that if Etete had the beneficial ownership, he must have had it from the point of origin when he was the oil Minister of Nigeria. That is where the companies in beneficial ownership sat, having been set up in six days by a lawyer convicted in the French courts of money laundering. Yet Lady Justice Gloster could essentially adjudicate only over the spoils of that corruption. She had no power to do otherwise, because neither of the parties to the case claimed that the funds were corrupt. To what extent would the new plan put forward by the Government allow the judiciary greater powers where, in its judgment, a case that is being disputed is corrupt? That applies particularly in the arbitration courts, given the lack of transparency often seen in those proceedings.

Of course, non-governmental organisations could act as a friend of the courts in theory, but cost pressures invariably make that very difficult, while the likes of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 cannot be used to intervene unless there is a victim. If in this case the Nigerian Government are not of the view that they have been defrauded, very little can be done. We need to look at the way our courts operate in that regard.

Property is another area. It has been suggested that 45% of London properties valued at over £2 million are currently owned by offshore companies. The Prime Minister has taken some positive measures relating to the register of beneficial ownership, but the Minister must realise that that is null and void when it comes to those properties owned by offshore companies.

It is a well-known fact that beneficial ownership is very opaque, especially in the case of shell companies. Estate agents currently have no duties in relation to buyers, and even their duties in relation to the sellers who are their clients usually extend only to the offshore companies with which they are acting, or their lawyers. Would the Minister consider a requirement for beneficial ownership of property worth over £2 million to be disclosed to the Land Registry? She might even want to consider the imposition of a fine on offshore property-owning companies that did not wish to comply with the disclosure requirement—along the lines of those that were introduced as a result of recent banking regulatory changes—with the proceeds going to good causes. That simple measure could be applied over the next 12 months, and could bring a huge amount of transparency to the top end of the property market, where we know that money is being laundered.

Let me now ask some questions about legislation. First, will the Minister update the House on the position of the British overseas territories and Crown dependencies, given the lack of transparency surrounding their plans? Consultations in the British Virgin Islands closed 300 days ago but nothing has been reported, and the same applies to the Cayman Islands. Secondly, it is feared that industry guidance might fetter the effectiveness of new United Kingdom law relating to the transparency of payments to Governments for the extraction industry. A QC’s opinion recently raised concern in that regard. Will the Home Office be making any representations to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on the subject?

Thirdly, will the Government make it a condition that the countries to which we give aid comply with the United Nations convention against corruption? In particular, will they provide global leadership in requiring the publication of asset declarations on politically exposed persons? The UN has pressed for that, and I do not understand why we are giving aid to countries without expecting them to comply with the convention. Fourthly, will the United Kingdom introduce administrative orders, such as those introduced by Switzerland and Canada, so that we can rapidly freeze assets in post-revolutionary circumstances?

Let me end by referring to the troubling case of Sergei Magnitsky, about which concern has been raised with the Government by Members in all parts of the House, and on which there appears to have been a woeful lack of progress so far. The Minister will be well aware that the 25-year-old Russian lawyer was tortured to death in a Russian jail. I know that detailed forensic information has been given to the UK Government about British nationals who were complicit in the money laundering linked to his death, and that information has been provided by Hermitage Capital Management, but the UK authorities appear to have taken no action, despite a Back-Bench debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), and supported by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and many others.

Other Governments have given leadership, notably the United States Congress, but there has been a serious lack of action from the UK Government in relation to the proceeds of the tax fraud that was linked to Magnitsky’s torture and death. What reassurance can the Minister give that there will be a change of gear, and that amendments will be tabled to the Serious Crime Bill to give effect to it?

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[Stephen Barclay]

The measures that the Government have taken on beneficial ownership are hugely positive, but does the Minister accept that if almost half of all property in London worth more than £2 million is owned offshore, the measures will not provide transparency on beneficial ownership? Does she agree that property is a particular opportunity for the Government to extend their reach?

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend has highlighted a powerful fact, which brings home the challenge that we face. I would appreciate it if we could cover that point when we meet outside this place.

The Government have taken steps to strengthen the law enforcement response to corruption. Last year, as I have said, we established the National Crime Agency to manage the overall law enforcement response to serious and organised crime, including bribery, corruption and associated offences such as money laundering. We have introduced measures to create a new offence of police corruption, and the Home Secretary has asked Major General Chip Chapman to chair a review of the police disciplinary system.

The Government have also provided dedicated funding for UK law enforcement units to investigate illicit financial flows to the UK, which are linked to corrupt foreign officials from developing countries. My hon. Friend talked about funding from the Department for International Development for the various units, and he is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that we have a dedicated force working in that area that does not duplicate effort. In such a way, we can ensure that we get the most effective response from law enforcement specialists, who really know what they are doing and are first-class professionals in their field. That approach is recognised internationally as highly successful and innovative. To date, those units have restrained or confiscated more than £120 million of stolen funds, and further investigations and confiscations are under way. Our enforcement response must be the best that it can be, so we are reviewing the overall co-ordination and effectiveness of the UK’s enforcement response to cases of bribery and corruption. That work is ongoing, and Ministers will consider the findings in due course.

My hon. Friend raised points regarding Malawi, and I would appreciate it if we could discuss that point further. If he can provide detailed information about individuals who might be involved, or any other information, it would really assist us in our work. [Interruption.] He is making comments from a sedentary position, but I am sure that if we discussed the matter, it would assist us all.

I am conscious of the time, so I will quickly cover the suspicious activity reporting regime, which is a significant part of our work. Suspicious activity reports are a crucial source of information for law enforcement agencies, and they provide a mechanism for financial institutions and others in the regulated sector to obtain a statutory defence from a money laundering prosecution when they report their suspicions and are granted consent to proceed with a transaction by the NCA. As someone who has worked in risk management at one of the major accounting firms, I remember the joys of having to deal with such things, so I understand the criticism that my hon. Friend has highlighted. The economic crime command in the National Crime Agency is working with banks. The Home Secretary and I attended a business breakfast hosted at the Bank of England to kick off the work that we are doing with the financial institutions to find appropriate and acceptable ways to help them to deal with the bureaucracy of SARs. My hon. Friend made an important point about the profile of the issue, and all financial institutions need to raise the profile of the issue internally and see it as a key part of their own mechanisms for dealing with corruption and bribery.

My hon. Friend mentioned the proceeds of corruption, and there is much that I could say on the matter. Given the time, I will simply say that he made an important point about dealing with pre-regime changes and changes in regimes in other countries. When I attended, on behalf of the Government, the AFAR III—Arab Forum on Financial Recovery—conference about Arab countries in transition, it brought home to me the importance of making sure that we have the information that we need to enable us not only to restrain those assets but to seize them, and to return them to the countries that need the money.

I hope that my hon. Friend will acknowledge the work that the Government have done to tackle this important issue, and the improvements that we have recently initiated. I note the issues that he has raised, and I hope that our forthcoming measures will go some way towards addressing them. I look forward to debating the matter further with him.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The Government firmly underline their commitment to promoting the role of women within government, business and the whole country, and they condemn any action that might stand against that. The hon. Lady has alluded to a case highlighted in the press. I cannot comment on the specifics of that particular case, but I can assure her about the steps this Government are taking, and about the record of this Home Secretary in excluding more people on grounds of unacceptable behaviour than any of her predecessors.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

6. How many vehicle scanning machines to identify stowaways at UK ports of entry the Government plan to buy in the next 12 months.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Border Force operates an array of search techniques as part of its multi-layered search regime, including detection dogs, carbon dioxide monitors, heartbeat detectors and scanners. In the past 12 months nearly £10 million has been invested to support and increase those methods of detection and bolster port security in the UK and at juxtaposed controls. The Government have also committed to invest £12 million at the port of Calais further to enhance security.

[Stephen Barclay]

May I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that written parliamentary question 213850 on the number of lorries screened by body scanning machines and sniffer dogs when they enter the UK has not been answered? The Government have confirmed that currently just five vehicle scanning machines cover all our ports, including 51 points of entry. Will the Minister clarify why five is an adequate number?

[James Brokenshire]

Border Force uses an array of different techniques to secure our border which, as I have highlighted, include body detection dogs, carbon dioxide detectors, heartbeat monitors and scanners, as well as physical searches. I will look into the outstanding parliamentary question highlighted by my hon. Friend. Last year 18,000 people were detected at our juxtaposed controls—a 60% increase. That underlines the focus of our Border Force officers on preventing people who should not be here from coming to this country.

Modern Slavery Bill

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I take my right hon. Friend’s comments and will ensure that they are considered in the process. He is right that one of the difficulties and one of the reasons that we have considered the matter carefully is that many businesses are trying hard to comply, but we need to help them and support them to do so. That is why it was vital that we spent time consulting businesses to make sure that we came up with an effective approach that would make a difference.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The Minister has not spelled out any dates. The matter has gone through the Joint Committee, it has been debated and there have been various hearings. New clause 11 says that the Secretary of State “may issue guidance”. What we are not getting is any sense of the operational requirements on a company such as Tesco, which was benefiting from slave labour in the fishing industry in Thailand. What would companies be required to do operationally under this guidance?

[Karen Bradley]

I will come, as I said, to how we envisage the measure working. My hon. Friend reflects exactly the balance that we are trying to achieve between getting on as quickly as possible and letting Parliament have its say to make sure that we reflect what Parliament wishes in this respect.

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We support the Government’s new clause 11, but the details of the three points I have just set out are to be left to secondary legislation.

[Stephen Barclay]

The hon. Lady is making powerful points about what teeth the guidance will have. Does she think that there are lessons to be drawn from when this House debated the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, when it was believed that the behaviour of the banks would be influenced by reputational damage, a belief that was found to be false in the light of their future conduct? There seems to be a reliance on the idea that guidance in itself will have a deterrent effect on major corporations, but that has to be backed up with some teeth.

[Diana Johnson]

I could not agree more. That is why it was important that I set out why new clause 5 deals in detail with the kind of issues that need to be clearly addressed in secondary legislation. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

Just to recap: we support the Government’s new clause 11. Obviously, we want to wait and see what happens with the secondary legislation as it is introduced. It is surprising that the Government have gone against the Joint Committee’s recommendation and the evidence presented by several large companies arguing against stand-alone regulation, although the Government have now seen fit to pursue that. That poses particular problems for enforcement. I am sure the Minister has seen the briefing from the coalition of groups campaigning for change, which states:

“Monitoring of compliance with the provision needs to be taken seriously as this will be central to its success in driving change. We are concerned that the provision is currently weak on how monitoring and enforcement will be undertaken. The Government’s approach relies on a civil enforcement procedure by the Secretary of State, which means that in reality the measure would be unlikely to deter any businesses other than those who would in any case seek to comply on a voluntary basis.”

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Points were made about tougher enforcement. We do not expect companies to ignore the new disclosure duty, but rightly the injunction procedure is there so that if a company does fail to disclose as required, the courts can force it to do so.

[Stephen Barclay]

I am sure the Minister is aware that one of the common tactics used by banks when subject to regulatory action is to get rid of middle management, settle with the regulator at the earliest opportunity and profit from the 30% discount as a way of mitigating the fact that they have been caught out by enforcement breaches without actually changing their culture. Is there not a risk of the same thing happening with these injunctions?

[Karen Bradley]

I hope that businesses will act in a way that deals with this problem. That is what businesses told us they want to do. They want to ensure there is no slavery in their supply chains, and consumers and others want to see that too. I hope that will be the case.

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[Diana Johnson]

New clause 3 and new clause 4 seek to introduce specific offences for child and adult exploitation, and I would like to test the opinion of the House at the appropriate time.

The Bill fails to cover cases of severe labour exploitation, and many recent high profile cases show we need specific laws to tackle it. New clause 3 would also help to stop workers being exploited and paid below the minimum wage, which is often a driving force behind local businesses being undercut by unscrupulous employers. The new clause would be a historic measure that would, for the first time, make the exploitation of workers, adults and children an offence. Importantly, it also addresses what has been described as “a lacuna” in the Bill, which fails to recognise the specific nature of exploitation of children in the UK and fails to address the issues that have led to so few successful prosecutions for child trafficking and slavery. This grouping incorporates a series of amendments from all parties with a common aim—to enable more prosecutions for trafficking, slavery or exploitation. This is exactly in line with what the Minister said repeatedly in Committee about getting more prosecutions.

At this stage, the Opposition are focusing specifically on the offences of exploitation, even though in Committee we tabled or supported many of the other amendments that have been tabled today. We support their aims and hope to return to them in the other place.

The Government claim that the Bill will enable more prosecutions. To do so, it transposes existing offences from three pieces of legislation into a single Bill. The Bill maintains the current offence of holding someone in slavery and merges two existing offences of human trafficking into a single offence of human trafficking. To secure a prosecution for human trafficking, it is necessary to show that X was trafficked and that this trafficking was done for the purposes of exploitation. It is important to stress that, because nothing in the Bill deals with the structures of these offences or the very high threshold needed to get convictions. In short, I do not think there is anything here that will enable more prosecutions.

[Stephen Barclay]

Is the hon. Lady as surprised as I am that, as far as I am aware, only one person has ever gone to jail for breach of a Gangmasters Licensing Authority offence? Does that speak to the high hurdles to which she alludes?

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. We shall discuss the GLA later, but the hon. Gentleman’s point shows why we need to think again about the offences in the Bill and how we can make them stronger to ensure that we get more prosecutions.

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[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I will indeed bear that in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, and will speak briefly, although I think that the issues that I wish to raise are fairly substantial. While I agree with all who have congratulated the Members on both sides of the House who have brought us to this point, I think that there is still a lack of action on key issues, and that the Bill, as it stands, falls a long way short of providing justice for victims of slavery.

There are three core gaps in the Bill. First, we need to get the definitions right, which is the aim of my new clause 24. If we do not do that, we shall risk leaving open legal loopholes that will allow traffickers to thrive. Secondly, the Bill must deliver for victims, which is the aim of new clause 21. Thirdly, there are issues in relation to prevention, which I hope to address later in the debate around new clause 1.

The definition of human trafficking was established in an internationally binding treaty and was integrated into the national laws of some 134 countries. That definition brings with it significant victim protection and a comprehensive framework for addressing trafficking, which is why I propose that we return to that in new clause 24. Unlike the international definition of trafficking, the trafficking provision in this Bill does not criminalise the “harbouring” or the “reception” or the

“exchange or transfer of control”

of victims or even the “recruitment” of victims where those acts do not involve the arrangement or facilitation of travel. We should recognise that there is a real problem in cases involving large criminal networks where different people take different roles in the trafficking process. There is also a problem where victims arrange their own travel into and around the UK and to the site of exploitation, as often occurs when individuals are deceived about work conditions or conditions deteriorate over time. The Bill’s definition, which is narrowly focused on the movement of victims, adds nothing but confusion and will let traffickers off the hook for the crimes they commit, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) pointed out.

Let me turn briefly to the purpose of new clause 21. In its current form, it is hard to see what this Bill would provide for the 40 Hungarian men found last year living in squalid conditions and forced to work for less than £2 a day in a mattress factory in Dewsbury, west Yorkshire. The men were barely surviving on limited food. They were crammed into a two-bedroom flat and threatened with violence if they resisted. They were exploited by gangmasters who supplied their forced labour to a factory run by the bed manufacturer KozeeSleep, which provides its products to some of our major national retailers.

Those victims of human trafficking have a right to compensation for the appalling wrongs that have been inflicted upon them. Clauses 8 and 9 include provisions for reparation orders to be made in cases where the perpetrator is convicted and a confiscation order is made, but from 2011 to 2013 only 252 trafficking and forced labour cases were prosecuted, and just 78 of them—less than a third—resulted in convictions. Not only are conviction rates low, but compensation orders are rare. The Government do not keep statistics on this, but we know from victim support providers that they are few and far between. I have tabled new clause 21 to allow victims themselves to bring civil claims in the county court, to seek compensation directly from the trafficker—not from the public purse—in the many cases where a criminal prosecution has not been possible. A similar provision is currently in use in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act 2003, and is frequently used successfully to secure compensation for trafficking victims.

These steps are essential to get a Bill that makes a difference to the lives of victims. We must get the very foundations of this Bill right by aligning our definitions with international law and, where people are exploited, making absolutely sure that they are compensated for the abuse suffered. I recognise that we may not get that through agreement on these amendments today, but I hope that these issues will be addressed when the Bill is debated in another place. These measures, together with real action on prevention, can make the difference between a Bill that will deliver headlines and a Bill that will deliver justice.

[Stephen Barclay]

The official figures for this year showed that more people were trafficked for labour exploitation than for sexual exploitation. The crux of that is money, and new clause 20, which is supported by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), seeks to identify how we can make it easier to recover money from criminals and strike at the heart of what is driving this trafficking trade.

There are two reasons why at present we recover so little from this organised crime. According to the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, we currently recover just 23p in every £100 that is identified as criminal assets. That has two results. First, increased pressure is placed on law enforcement agencies when, at a time of austerity and many other demands, investment in forensic investigators is often not a priority. The second reason relates to the high hurdles relating to evidence, which create a disincentive for the Crown Prosecution Service to apply for restraint orders. If there is insufficient evidence, the CPS can incur costs through losing an application. The resulting delay in freezing assets often means that they can be difficult to trace and expensive to identify. The Joint Committee has looked at this matter.

The new clause seeks to make it easier to freeze assets within the first 24 or 48 hours. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip has spoken in the House previously on the merits of that, and of learning from the example in Italy. Amendment 151 seeks to achieve that in relation to the presumption about criminal assets being dissipated post-arrest. We need to give the police a clearer incentive to invest in forensic investigators. If I were a chief constable, why would I make such an investment this year if I knew that it would take several years to recover the money, and that if the money were recovered, the Home Office would take 50% of it? We need to change that. We need to overcome the objections of the Home Office and the Treasury so that those who carry out the investigations are those who benefit from the assets that are secured, once the victims have been compensated.

We also need to place a higher duty on financial advisers. At the moment—I say this having worked for such an institution—it is very easy to hide behind a suspicious activity report. In essence, that report is a defensive mechanism, and more than 350,000 are filed with the Serious Organised Crime Agency each year. At the point of an arrest following an investigation by financial investigators, a higher duty should be placed on financial institutions, should they then choose to move the assets in question. We should freeze any assets over and above those that are required for reasonable living and business costs, so that money can less easily be moved offshore. We should also require an asset declaration that could be used to demonstrate an aggravating factor, should assets that had not been declared be discovered following further investigation.

There is a suggestion from the Home Office that some of these issues will be addressed in the Serious Crime Bill, but it is clear that it will not address many of the matters that have been raised in the Joint Committee and by Members here today, so I hope that the Minister will look again at the extent to which the measures in this Bill that relate to the financial proceeds of crime can be strengthened so that we can tackle the root cause of the problem—namely, the funds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I will address the hon. Gentleman’s points in the course of my remarks.

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) introduced legislation on gangmasters in 2004. I pay tribute to him, because that is effective legislation. It has protected workers in three key sectors—agriculture, shellfish collection and horticulture. It has done something all hon. Members should be proud of: it has driven out poor standards, protected work forces, and ensured that we do not undercut legitimate workers in those sectors.

My argument in new clause 1 is that we should give the power to the Secretary of State to extend that. Following the Government’s triennial review, they said:

“There is no change to the remit or funding of the agency”,

yet there is ample evidence that the agency should have its work extended, particularly following the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill, on which a number of hon. Members present in the House served. The Committee considered a number of issues in detail, including the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. In paragraph 189 of its report, the Committee states:

“There was consensus from our witnesses over the excellent reputation of the GLA…the GLA has been held in high regard as an example of good practice.”

In paragraph 190, it states:

“We heard from the Authority itself that there are limitations to what the GLA can currently do. Its Chief Executive, Paul Broadbent, told us that the GLA’s underpinning legislation was ‘good up to a point’, but did not provide for the GLA to carry out what he described as ‘hot pursuit’”.

The Committee said:

“Several witnesses made the case for widening the industrial remit of the GLA to other sectors where forced labour is prevalent”,

and that:

“The weight of evidence we received suggested that expanding the GLA’s powers and industrial remit would yield positive results.”

The Committee was comprised of Members of both Houses from all parties, but the TUC report, “Hard Work, Hidden Lives” concluded:

“The GLA needs to be extended to hospitality, construction and catering as these are usually small businesses that are open to abuse.”

Oxfam, which hon. Members will agree is a well-respected charity, has said:

“Gangmasters have diversified into sectors beyond the reach of the GLA where there is less regulation of labour standards.”

It concluded that

“the GLA’s remit must immediately be extended to the sectors of construction, hospitality, and…care”.

[Stephen Barclay]

When breaches by a gangmaster operating in a regulated sector such as agriculture are found by the GLA, would it be reasonable to assume that that same gangmaster operating in the hospitality sector is carrying out the same abuses, which therefore deserve to be investigated?

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on the point the Opposition made in Committee. Gangmasters are diversifying. They are moving into horticulture, catering and the care homes sector. I do not want to ruin his reputation, but the amendments he has tabled have the Opposition’s support, because he has indicated that measures can be taken to tighten up how we operate the current gangmaster legislation.

In his original Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North sought to protect people who are exploited, but such legislation is also about supporting legitimate businesses working in those sectors who find themselves being undercut by people who are operating sharp practices. What is good for the horticulture, agriculture or shellfish collection sectors should be good for other sectors, such as care homes and construction. New clause 1 does not specify that, but simply says that the Minister has the power to extend legislation. I hope we can give her the power and make the case, both up to the election and I hope in my case beyond it, for introducing changes to improve how the legislation operates.

[Stephen Barclay]

One reason why the Government have resisted such a measure is the view of the Secretary of State for Defence, who, as a Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills felt that we would be adding additional red tape. Aside from the fact that targeting criminals who abuse people is not the sort of problem on which the deregulation challenge should focus, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that going after those people is not red tape, because many of the large businesses would welcome the fact that they are not being undercut by those abusing the market?

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman sits on the Government Benches, so I am not sure it is in order for us to agree again. The British Retail Consortium supported our proposals in Committee. This is not some kind of mystical issue; this will help to protect the work force, stop undercutting and protect legitimate businesses working in specific areas. What is good for the three sectors currently covered should be good for others too.

I do not just pray in aid Oxfam, the TUC and the Joint Committee. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said:

“Many have called for extending the authority…of the GLA to cover all industries where there is known risk of exploitation and forced labour associated with labour providers. The evidence from the JRF’s programme points to the same recommendation.”

In Committee, I prayed in aid Andrew Boff, who is not a member of my party but the Mayor of London’s representative and deputy. In a report on slavery in London, he recommended strongly the extension of gangmaster legislation. That is very important, because we need to send a very strong signal on exploitation.

An answer to a recent parliamentary question revealed that the number of criminal investigations under the current gangmaster legislation has dropped from a high point of 134 in 2011, to 76 in 2013 and 65 to date in 2014. This information has come to light since the Public Bill Committee last sat. The Minister said in Committee that this was a growing problem. I would welcome her view on why the number of investigations into gangmaster activity has dropped over the four-year period.

The National Crime Agency, the general secretary of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the British Retail Consortium and the Ethical Trading Initiative have all said we should consider extending gangmaster legislation. New clause 1 would give the Minister the chance to do that speedily. I pressed her on this in and outside Committee. With due respect to her talent as a Minister, I do not think she has made an effective case for why we cannot extend it to the areas suggested by me and the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire.

I think there is a general consensus outside the House that exploitation is exploitation, be it in relation to shellfish or care work. We therefore need to look at this in an effective way. This is not, dare I say, a fly-by-night issue for the hon. Gentleman. He has pursued it over many months. His amendments do not deal directly with the matters addressed in new clause 1, but we sat on a Bill some time ago in the mists of this Parliament and he raised the same issues then. He has a real opportunity to ensure that his amendments enhance the 2004 legislation and build on the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. He has our support, and if he wants to use that on his election address in due course I am sure that will be even better for him.

New clause 2 addresses protection from slavery for overseas domestic workers. The previous Government put in place a regime for migrant domestic workers who accompanied employers to the UK. The current Government changed the regime in April 2012. Overseas domestic worker visa holders are now tied to their original employer and the visa is not renewable beyond its initial six-month duration. We have had two-and-a-half years of the new regime since April 2012, and there is real concern that it has been detrimental to domestic workers and is causing real challenges in the system that need to be considered.

That is my view—I am open and honest about it—but it is shared by the Joint Committee that scrutinised the Bill, including Members in their places today who supported recommendations on a cross-party basis. Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader of the London assembly, is of that view, too. In his report on human trafficking, he said:

“I don’t think it intends to be, but the Government is actually licensing modern-day slavery… through their changes to tie a visa to an employer.”

There is cross-party support for the Government to review the issues covered by new clause 2. In agreement are a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, comprising and dominated by Government members, the leader of the Conservative group on the London assembly, along with many organisations interested in this topic from outside the House—notably Kalayaan, which carried out a study on the impact of the Government’s proposals.

Kalayaan has thrown up some really concerning figures. Between 6 April 2012 and 3 April 2014, 402 migrant domestic workers registered with Kalayaan. Of those, 120 were tied to their employers and 282 had entered the UK prior to April 2012. There was a real difference between the way in which these groups were treated. The Minister said in Committee that it was a “small sample”. Yes, it is, but if that sample shows that 62% of overseas domestic workers on tied visas report being paid no salary at all, and if 85% of those on tied visas are not given their own room to sleep in, with 86% saying that their passports have been taken off them by their employers, 96% not allowed to leave the house unsupervised, 74% reporting having suffered psychological abuse and 95% paid less than £100 a week, the size of the sample is not the crucial thing. Whatever the size of the sample, real and difficult challenges are evident, and they can be traced back to the change in the granting of these visas in 2012.

The Joint Committee recommended in its draft Bill that we return to the position of April 2012—prior to the changes the Government made. That proposal was put in Committee, and there was a tie with nine votes to nine votes. Members of the governing party voted with other members of the Committee; some Members did not, which was their choice; some Members supported the draft Bill’s recommendations and voted against them in Committee, which was their choice. I believe, however, that there is a real consensus on ensuring that this issue is looked at in the other place. I hope the Government will consider it further. New clause 2 provides an opportunity to do so.

Let me move on from new clauses 1 and 2 to the other contentious and wide-ranging issue suggested by this group of amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) raised this initially in Committee—the issues of how to deal with sex workers and prostitution and of how prostitution should be dealt with by society as a whole. My hon. Friend will undoubtedly speak to her new clauses. MPs do not need to look far into their inboxes to realise that a range of views are being expressed, including by the all-party group chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker). My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has also filtered through a range of issues for Members to consider. People have different views about how to deal with this.

Let me put it on the record from the outset, however, that all the different views focus on the fact that there are around 80,000 people, mainly women and girls, involved in prostitution today. Nobody can deny that many of these workers carry out this work voluntarily, yet a lot of them are involved in sexual slavery, having got here through different routes. They are often pimped by people they know and can be trafficked by organised gangs. They are often extremely vulnerable, having been abused in the past. About 95% of women in street prostitution have problematic drug use; over half of women involved in prostitution in the UK have been raped and/or sexually assaulted; and the vast majority of those assaults are committed by people who have purchased sex from them.

According to recent statistics, there has been a recent and rapid increase in the number of non-British women selling sex on the street in a significant number of London boroughs. There are real concerns about trafficked women being exploited in on-street as well as off-street prostitution and about the fact that this exploitation is now being controlled and organised by criminal gangs. This is a real issue that the House needs to address.

A number of solutions have been proposed. The Nordic model, which is effectively the basis of the proposals from my hon. Friend the Member for Slough, looks at how we diminish street prostitution—particularly by making it an offence for people to buy sex. One argument put forward is that street prostitution has diminished by half and that the number of brothel businesses is also diminishing, or certainly has not increased. There is evidence of the flow of human trafficking having been slowed in Sweden because of that. In Norway there is evidence that that is contributing to the reduction in demand for and volume of prostitution. But we do not have to look far into our email inboxes to know that there are very strong views from people involved in the trade that that potential model and others could lead to further violence against those who are involved in the industry and/or to driving prostitution underground.

The Opposition have tabled new clause 22, which seeks to place upon the Government a legal responsibility to undertake a review of these issues in detail. We are seeking to deal with this matter effectively. We have said that within six months of Royal Assent the Government should look at all the discussion points that are before us today. The review would investigate the extent to which current legislation governing prostitution in England and Wales acts as an effective deterrent to demand for sexual services from exploited persons. It would look at the extent to which current legislation governing prostitution in England and Wales enables effective enforcement action against trafficking people and sexual exploitation, and at the very points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough in her amendments today: the legal frameworks for governing prostitution adopted by other countries within the EU, including Northern Ireland. The review would look at the examples of Sweden and of Norway to help inform the debate.

All of us will have different experiences in our constituencies about the impact and challenges of this problem and I am not intending to come to conclusions today. The purpose of new clause 22, effectively, is to give a spur to a wider discussion on the topic. I hope that the Minister can look at it in that way because there are strong views on how we deal with the issue. It is important to have a proper debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I do not think that we made a financial assessment of the value of the trade when I was a Minister. I know that it is being discussed currently, as part of other discussions relating to the Treasury’s contributions to Europe.

I do not want to be diverted, because we have only a short time available. I have tried to compress the material for a long series of debates into a fairly short contribution. Let me now sum up that contribution. New clause 22 concerns a review, and it commits the Government to nothing other than that review. There is a real case for extending the gangmaster legislation; new clause 1 simply gives the Secretary of State the power to do that, which I hope she will welcome.

I was pleased to hear the comments of the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay). I think it important for us to revert to the April 2012 position in regard to overseas domestic workers for a number of reasons. I also think it important to stimulate a debate on the issues of prostitution and sexual exploitation, without reaching any conclusions yet, and that has been possible today through new clause 22.

I commend all three of our new clauses to the Minister. I hope that she will be able to deliver a positive response, but—as ever, Mr Speaker, you will have expected me to say this—in the event of her not doing so, I should like at least to reflect on the possibility of testing the House’s opinion in due course.

[Stephen Barclay]

I want to develop the theme of how we can make prosecution and enforcement quicker and easier. I am aware that a number of Members who wanted to speak earlier have not yet been able to do so, and I shall therefore keep my remarks short.

I want to speak about new clauses 16, 17, 18 and 19. Let me begin with new clause 16. At present, it is very difficult for police in areas such as Wisbech in my constituency to identify houses in multiple occupation. The presence of 20-odd people in a two-storey house often does not meet the legal definition of an HMO. One of the ways in which we can make life easier for the local police is to give them clearer powers and rights to inspect letting agencies, and require gangmasters to keep records in the form of rent books and tenancy agreements. At present, when there is a breach of a tenancy agreement, it falls to the tenant to bring a private prosecution. How realistic is that? How realistic is it to expect someone who has been trafficked, who does not speak English and who does not understand the law to bring a private prosecution against his landlord?

We need to make it quicker, easier and therefore cheaper for the police to identify concentrations of HMOs. They need to be able to go into those houses, establish whether the law relating to, for instance, rent books is being adhered to, and take action if necessary. That will necessitate rights of access to the records of letting agents, and a requirement that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority can then use for leverage in relation to gangmasters.

New clause 17 seeks to build on the lessons this House can learn from scrap metal merchants being forbidden from taking cash payments and asks how we can create an audit trail for financial investigators in terms of the known abuse around the minimum wage legislation and the way people are being paid. At present wage slips will often simply show that someone was on for one day—it could have been seven hours, it could have been 12 hours—and when payments are made, they are made in cash. Straight away, deductions are taken for accommodation and for vehicles, so the abused worker never actually receives that money. Often they are told when they come into the country that they are not allowed a bank account. Obviously that is erroneous information, but they do not know otherwise. New clause 17 therefore addresses how we can make it easier for the police to follow the money—follow that audit trail—so that once money goes into an account, it is with the worker and it becomes harder for the rogue gangmaster to deduct it at source, which is what currently happens.

New clause 18’s provision is, I fear, almost a well-worn theme. I had a debate on it in Westminster Hall in 2012 and 2013. The measure was being blocked by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, although I was told privately that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was supporting it. The reality is that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority does not have the full range of tools available. It has draconian penalties available in terms of criminal sanctions, but they are almost never used because the standard of proof is high and the amount of time required is extensive.

To put this in context, do Members know how many inspectors the GLA currently has? It has 35 for the whole country. There is one covering the whole of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. An inspector could spend their entire time just driving around my constituency, never mind the rest of the county and the two counties combined. The LGA has 35 inspectors and a budget of £4 million. We need only think about how much a supermarket makes in a week to see how well resourced the GLA is.

[Mr Nuttall]

Not Tesco.

[Stephen Barclay]

Tesco has some serious questions to answer in terms of its supply chain and the way some of its operations have been conducted. I do not want to return to the earlier debate, but if one looks at some of the difficulties Tesco is having in terms of its profit warnings, one wonders how accurate some of its statements on its website might be, especially given its statements on other areas.

My point is we need to make it easier for the GLA, at a time when it is resource-constrained, to take enforcement action. One of those ways is to hit rogue gangmasters in the pocket, through civil fines. There is a lower evidential requirement for that and it is quicker and cheaper, and we should be facilitating that. I hope the move of the GLA from DEFRA into the Home Office gives more clout within Whitehall for this long-overdue change.

New clause 19 addresses what happens when a gangmaster is found abusing workers in one sector. The shadow Minister touched on that in his opening remarks. It is illogical that where someone is operating in one sector or industry illegally, we seem to assume that that sinner is suddenly a saint in another sector. The additional costs of the extra 1 million temporary workers currently within the unregulated sector would place a huge burden on the GLA, so I am sympathetic to the Minister in terms of the constraints on extending into the unregulated sector, but we need to make that easier. Where a gangmaster has been shown to be rogue in one sector, that is the gateway through which we can make a foray into the unregulated activity of that specific gangmaster, not of the whole unregulated industry.

This is a very good Bill that will make a huge difference in constituencies such as mine and it signals the Government’s intent in this area. When the Minister responds, I hope she will consider the operational difficulties faced by the police and the GLA in particular, and bring forward measures that make their job easier, quicker and cheaper, and therefore more likely to be achieved.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 6 and 7 and amendment 1, which have been tabled in my name. In doing so, I want to focus on an issue that is the driver of a great deal of the exploitation and human trafficking in Britain today. Before I do that, however, I want to thank the Minister for her relatively helpful letter on the issue of domestic servitude, which is one of the matters being addressed in the Bill. I drew to her attention the case of a young woman who had been forced to use employment law in order to be paid. I remain shocked that the police did not take notice of that case or prosecute her exploiter. The reality is that domestic servitude does not, on the whole, involve big organised gangs, although they are often the ones that bring the people to the UK in the first place. It is within domestic settings that people are grotesquely abused, and unless we help those victims to help themselves, as the new clause proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) would do, we will continue to see an increase in that kind of trafficking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

If my right hon. Friend will allow me to continue my comments, I will speak first about new clause 1. The new clause would open the way for the GLA’s remit to be extended to any area of work or sector, which would be a much broader role than its current territory. I have concerns about such a broad role, which I want to put in the context of the Government’s plans to ensure that the GLA delivers its critical role. The GLA is both a licensing and an enforcement body. We need to make progress on both fronts. Licensing can be a blunt instrument in that it affects the compliant business and the rogue gangmaster alike. If a licensing regime is not targeted at known risk factors, it will not provide effective underpinning for enforcement. Therefore, simply extending the current licensing regime into new sectors would not of itself improve efforts to tackle exploitative employers who flout the law.

I want a GLA with a strong anti-slavery and worker exploitation focus that will support the Government’s broader strategy on modern slavery. That will be best achieved by developing an approach that builds on the GLA’s excellent work. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned that the number of GLA investigations had declined over time. I want to put it on the record that, over time, the GLA has undertaken a reduced number of investigations, but they have been more complex and have focused more effectively on serious and organised crime. That reflects a targeted and risk-based enforcement approach.

We can do more to increase the GLA’s reach and effectiveness. We are working with the GLA in three main areas: through the better business compliance partnerships, the review of licensing standards, and work on the supply chain. I do not have time to go through those points in detail.

Looking ahead, the GLA is well placed to tackle the serious worker exploitation that lies between the more technical compliance offences investigated by HMRC and the serious and organised crime addressed by the National Crime Agency. We will consider how to introduce more effective and targeted enforcement action by the GLA. We will also consider changes to the GLA to support its greater role in addressing exploitation. However, we believe this requires a more considered analysis of the types of changes required than simply changing the law today. I believe we should continue the hard work with the GLA rather than simply assuming that the answer is to extend the remit of the GLA beyond the core areas set out in the 2004 Act, as envisaged in the new clause. I therefore hope that the right hon. Member for Delyn feels able to withdraw it.

On the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), he has made some very good points and I would like to discuss many of them with him outside the Chamber. New clause 16 would require formal tenancy agreements where a gangmaster provides accommodation for workers. I reassure him that the GLA already addresses this risk. The current suite of GLA licensing standards already imposes requirements on gangmasters who provide accommodation. Specifically, licensing standards 4.1 and 4.2 require a licence holder who provides, or effectively provides, accommodation to ensure that the property is safe for the occupants. A licence is required by the local authority, for example if it is a licensable house of multiple occupation. This is a critical standard for the GLA, so failure to meet the criteria will mean that a licence application is refused or a licence already issued will be revoked.

There are also existing legal requirements affecting the relationship between tenant and landlord. I believe that these, together with the GLA’s licensing standards, provide strong protection for workers. However, I have considered the amendment in detail and I will ask the GLA to consider adding a tenancy agreement to the documents to be provided to demonstrate compliance with the licensing standard as part of its forthcoming review. In doing so, I also wish to ensure that we are balancing protection from exploitation with our desire to reduce bureaucracy for small businesses.

[Stephen Barclay]

I thank the Minister for that reassurance and I will not be pressing the amendments to a Division. As part of those discussions, may I flag up an area that Anthony Steen has highlighted and which we did not come on to today? What happens when people come out of the shelters after 45 days? What measures might be put in place on that, and is it something on which we could have further discussions?

[Karen Bradley]

That is a point for the review of the national referral mechanism. The interim report of that review has been issued and the final report will be issued shortly. If my hon. Friend would allow it, we could perhaps discuss this outside the Chamber; I am sure that that would be helpful to both of us.

On overseas domestic workers and new clause 2, I welcome the opportunity to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to protecting individuals who have come to the UK on domestic worker visas. I know that Members feel strongly about this. The Government, and I personally, share their commitment to ensure that no individual in this country is subjected to abuse and exploitation. Holding anyone in modern slavery is totally unacceptable. Overseas domestic workers, like anyone else, deserve protection as well as support and help if abuse takes place. The Bill will give that protection to all victims regardless of who they are, why they are in the UK, for whom they are working or their visa arrangements. We already have a range of measures in place to protect overseas domestic workers and we are intent on strengthening them further.

It is very important that overseas domestic workers know their rights in the UK and where they can seek help. The House will be pleased to know that a pilot is now under way to hand out very simple and easy-to-understand information cards on arrival to the UK, in addition to the information already provided with the visa. I absolutely understand and sympathise with the intention behind new clause 2, but, as I said in Committee, I do not believe it is the solution to those cases where an overseas domestic worker suffers ill treatment in the UK.

I pay tribute to the work of the voluntary sector in supporting domestic workers who have been the subject of abuse or poor working conditions, including that of Kalayaan, which both supports individuals and campaigns on their behalf. One case of abuse is one too many and some of the treatment reported by Kalayaan is absolutely appalling. However, without in any way minimising the distress those individuals have gone through, it is important to remember that those reports are based on a very small number of cases and represent a small proportion of those in the country with an overseas domestic worker visa.

Kalayaan’s figures are based on 120 overseas domestic workers issued with visas after April 2012 who approached it for help over a two-year period. During the same period, more than 30,000 visas were issued. Home Office internal management information suggests that between May 2009 and July 2014, there were 213 confirmed cases of trafficking for domestic servitude involving non-EU nationals. Of these, only 41, or less than 20%, were linked to the overseas domestic worker visa—an average of eight per year.

Focusing on the visa risks obscuring the main issue, which is protecting those at risk of domestic servitude. Our key concern should be that victims understand that they will be believed, that they will receive support and that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Before the changes in April 2012, the ability to change employer did not prevent instances of abuse and poor treatment, and we have seen no evidence that instances of abuse of those here on overseas domestic worker visas have increased since the right to change employer was removed. Moreover, even while there was a right to change employer, there were still complaints of abuse and poor treatment.

The important point is that we should not be tackling this problem through one, albeit relatively simple, response. We need to look at the underlying problem and tackle it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) made an important point when he said that much of this could be tackled and dealt with through policy changes. That is what I am working on.

In the limited time available, I shall deal with the issue of prostitution.

UK Drugs Policy

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

There is no criticism of you, Mr Deputy Speaker, of the new chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar or of anyone in Gibraltar, but we have discovered that some areas of the world are being used to launder money from drugs. Our financial authorities are not strong enough to deal with the way in which money goes through the system. That is why the Committee believes that bankers at the very senior level should be held criminally responsible if they know or are aware of laundering, or if they did not take action to prevent it.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to consider asset recovery to deal with money laundering and criminal actions. He will be aware that we have an opportunity to consider that under the Serious Crime Bill. Does he share my concern about the drafting of the asset recovery clauses? Will his Committee consider that before we debate the Bill? Does he agree that the Bill needs to take on board lessons from places such as Italy?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am not sure that the Committee has time to consider that before Christmas, but I will do so with him. Let us sit down and see whether we can get an amendment together. I am happy to support him to make the Bill tougher, because it needs to be.

I commend the proposers of the motion.. This is a very important debate, and we do not debate UK drugs policy often enough. We need to ensure that we have more time to debate this serious and important subject.

UK Visa Applications (Malawi)

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex]

My hon. Friend makes a good point on the growing sense of frustration felt by many of those involved in Malawi on the difficulties people have had in securing visas to visit the UK. I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond to some of these more detailed points as we develop them this afternoon.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Would it not be odd if citizens in Malawi were being deprived of visas to come to the UK when those against whom corruption allegations have been made were still able to secure visas?

[Tom Greatrex]

I assume that the hon. Gentleman is alluding to the ongoing investigation into the misappropriation of aid funds in Malawi and more widely. He makes an important point. The examples I am talking about are individuals involved in projects, partnership arrangements or exchange visits, often with schools or Churches and other organisations. They are not part of that wealthy elite. In many cases, they struggle to secure a visa when they have a legitimate reason to visit the UK and are support the underlying Government policy on aid and development in Malawi. He makes that point very well.

A recent example, provided to me by the Scotland Malawi Partnership, is the experience of Donald Osborne, who has worked with Malawi for a number of years. He was organising a visa for a Malawian teacher to visit Scotland, and the application was rejected not once but twice, and without any notification. That speaks to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

Malawi is 170th out of 187 in the human development index. In Malawi, around 60% of the population live on £1 or less a day. For every 1,000 children born, 68 will die before the age of five. Only 16% of children will have the opportunity to attend secondary school. The partnerships that Malawi has with the UK, in my constituency, in Edinburgh and elsewhere across the UK, promote development to address those issues through a person-to-person model. The relationships between individuals, communities and families enhance the effectiveness of Government-to-Government relationships to tackle poverty. Some of those relationships have been under strain as a result of the events to which the hon. Gentleman alluded.

Many aspects of the visa process make it extremely difficult for Malawians to visit the UK. Lord McConnell highlighted in the other place last week how damaging the application process can be. He asked the Government whether steps could be taken to improve the system. The revised system provides a remarkably long, complex and often confusing process. The online process requires details from the applicant and the sponsor and has a detailed application form that requires an extraordinary level of supporting evidence and runs to 15 pages. That it is online is a clear difficulty for many people living in Malawi, as access to the internet is often difficult, time consuming and expensive. Power supplies and connections are unreliable and unpredictable.

I completely understand the need to be thorough—the process should be thorough—but the Government need to be aware that an online system, which seems straightforward from our perspective in the UK and in Europe, is very much more difficult for those applying from Malawi, particularly those doing so through the third-party contractor that has been running the system. I know that the operator of that system changed relatively recently. How many complaints have been made about the online system? Are the Government aware of the proportion of Malawians who have regular access to the internet? Was that taken into account prior to the changes to the system being introduced through Pretoria? Do the Minister and the Home Office have data available on the number of online applications that are started but never completed?

There is also a lengthy series of offline processes, which include posting passports to another country for assessment. At every stage, the process seems to confuse and frustrate many prospective applicants. The minimum cost for applications is £144, including the basic visa charge. It costs £59 just for an appointment. That translates to some 2,500 South African rand or some 107,000 Malawian kwacha, which is more than 30 times the weekly wage for the average Malawian and for which there is no refund if the application is unsuccessful. Indeed, I have heard of many cases in which repeat applications have been made, so how much money has been taken through unsuccessful visa applications, in particular from people from Malawi?

Furthermore, the move to a cashless system has made applying for UK visas in Malawi difficult for many people. In debates in the other place, Lord Steel explained the issues with a cashless system. International credit cards do not exist in the same way in Malawi, and it is illegal to pay in rand without the specific permission and authorisation of the national bank. The Government are therefore asking people to pay in a currency to which they have limited access. That has become a barrier to visa applications and has also worryingly led to an increasing number of industry intermediaries, who make onward electronic transfers on behalf of applicants, often involving high fees and cursory regard to the system’s robustness and whether applications are ever formally concluded. That is but one aspect of the system that causes discrimination based on wealth.

The Minister will be aware that many Malawians do not have an internationally recognised credit or bank card, but I wonder whether the Home Office took that into account when deciding how the system would work. Has any consideration been made of how much industry intermediaries make each year through charging to make electronic transfers? Are there any concerns about the quality of those transactions and the potential for fraud in the visa application process? We are told that the solution is for the UK sponsor to pay the fees, but that rarely works. The IT system regularly crashes and is unclear, making it hard for the sponsor to be able to get to the appropriate place in the application and make the payment. How many UK sponsors have been unable to pay fees for applications? What is the figure as a percentage of all applications?

The system also means that all UK visa applications from Africa are now handled in regional hubs, which causes delays as passports, birth certificates, bank details and other essential documents are sent back and forth across the continent, not always reliably. Decisions are then made by those who have almost no knowledge of the country concerned. Applicants have even had to fly across the continent to collect their passports in urgent situations. I understand that the move to regional hubs was partly about efficiency, but the Government should be concerned about reliability. How has the move to regional hubs affected the time scale involved in securing visas? What is the current backlog of the hub in Pretoria?

In last week’s debate in the other place, Baroness Northover stated:

“Poorly paid people from Malawi are not discriminated against in applying for visas. There is no income threshold.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 October 2014; Vol. 756, c. 858.]

While it may be correct that there is no income threshold, that is not the same as there being no disincentive based on income. For example, applicants must demonstrate that they have sufficient funds to cover the costs of their visit and to return to Malawi, meaning that more than 90% are simply not rich enough to be allowed to accept an invitation to the UK. They must also prove that there is a strong reason for them to return to Malawi, through either employment or family ties, but Malawi has a great deal of poverty and a lack of formal employment—85% of Malawians are subsistence farmers. Often, the events that people want to come over and take part in are run by organisations that are willing and able to provide any necessary assurances that the event is the reason why the applicant wants to come over and that the person will return, but that is almost impossible to prove in the application process. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that.

Before I conclude, I will outline one recent example. Members will be aware of the work of Mary’s Meals, which feeds many people in Malawi and across poorer parts of Africa. The head of programmes for Mary’s Meals in Malawi, which currently feeds 690,000 children, was refused a visa on the grounds that he was likely to abscond, despite letters from the charity’s UK chief operating officer, as well as the country director, providing reassurances about the work that the individual was undertaking.

In conclusion, I return to my central point about the frustration caused by the visa system, how it operates, its cashless nature, which is inadequate for many Malawians, and the implications and consequences. Thousands of people in the UK are involved in projects and community initiatives to support Malawi, often on a local, project-by-project basis involving schools, Churches and community organisations. They want to help, support and underpin the work that the UK Government’s aid programme is engaged in delivering to one of the poorest countries in the world. The Scotland Malawi Partnership is a phenomenal organisation that is helping to facilitate that. It is not an unreasonable group of people, but it has repeatedly highlighted the concerns and the scale of the problem.

We have heard the line-to-take response from Ministers in other Departments, but I hope that the Minister can commit today not only to answering my questions but to re-examining the effectiveness of the system and its processes. This is not about immigration policy so much as the way the system is applied and how it affects people in Malawi. In the short term, will the Minister consider giving the high commission in Lilongwe a front-facing officer to provide face-to-face support to those applying for a visa to visit the UK and guide them through a process that can be confusing, frustrating and incoherent in equal measure? We all understand the importance of ensuring that immigration policy is well designed and robust, but there are real concerns that it is not as effective as it could or should be and that important charitable and support work for one of the poorest countries in the world is being undermined by the system. I implore the Minister to reconsider the matter and to provide a better system in the interests of the people of Malawi and of the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on securing the debate, and on how he advanced his points about the visa arrangements for Malawi and underlined the connections between Malawi and the United Kingdom, and Scotland in particular. I also recognise his direct constituency interest, it being the birthplace of Dr David Livingstone, whose connection with Malawi started in the 1850s, and I recognise the history involved. It is important to underline the connections between the UK and Malawi, and the movement of people ensures closer engagement between both countries. The visa service has an important part to play in facilitating that movement, while, as the hon. Gentleman understands, protecting our borders and preventing illegal immigration.

In addressing the hon. Gentleman’s questions and points, it is important to give the broader context of our performance and the number of visa applications received from Malawi. I believe that we provide a good service to customers from Malawi. Of the 2,160 visa applications received from Malawian nationals in 2013, 86% were successful. That is an important figure to highlight, given his question about the number of refused applications.

Looking back at the figures for 2010, I note that the grant rate then was 74%. The hon. Gentleman suggests a worsening picture, but it would seem that the grant rate is higher than it was four years ago. The number of applications that we receive from Malawi is comparatively small—I will come on to talk about some of the challenges that that creates—but it is important to see the context of the overall grant rate.

We do process applications within our published customer service standards, and often much faster than that. The global published service standards are to process non-settlement applications within 15 working days and settlement applications within 60 working days. On the gov.uk website, we have published the August figures for the processing time for applications submitted in Malawi for business visit visas; 69% were processed in five days, 90% in 10 days and 100% in 15 days. With regard to settlement, 100% of applications were processed in 60 days. I point the hon. Gentleman to the current performance figures on the website. I take the performance in individual countries seriously, so that we can ensure that we are delivering a quality, timely visa service for the citizens of those countries who want to visit the UK.

In the current economic climate, it is not possible to offer a free, five-day-a-week visa application network in all countries of the world. However, where possible, we do not want to require someone who wishes to travel to the UK to travel to a different country first in order to apply for a visa. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that point.

In order to offer the option of submitting an application for a UK visa in Malawi as well as in other locations, UK Visas and Immigration had to make changes to our visa application footprint. Those are in line with a global model that includes requiring customers at lower-volume visa application centres to provide a contribution to the running costs, and reducing the opening frequencies of some visa application points. The alternative was to withdraw our visa application network from Malawi entirely, which we did not want to do.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the additional £59 charge. That was determined solely to recover the costs of operating the visa application points in this location. Malawi is one of a number of countries in which such arrangements have been put in place. I reassure him that the charge is in no way a means of trying to make money. The UK does not make any money from such charges, which support the visa application service in-country.

The arrangement to clear visas in Pretoria was put in place in about 2008-09. The concept of having a smaller number of hubs to ensure an efficient and effective service has been adopted by us around the globe. We have not seen inefficiencies in it, and it has led to—I hope—better decision making on the applications received. I will come on to that point.

[Stephen Barclay]

Will the Minister give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I have four minutes left, and as this debate was secured by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, I need to give credit to him in the time available.

There is a close tie between Scotland and Malawi, which dates back to the 1850s, and the Scotland-Malawi Partnership plays a key role in supporting links between our countries. My officials in Pretoria, where Malawian applications are considered, have established a good relationship with Mr David Hope-Jones, the principal officer of the partnership, to ensure that citizens from Malawi can apply for visas.

One particular problem raised has been the difficulty in accessing the internet in Malawi and, therefore, in submitting a visa application. UKVI has moved to an application and payment process in which almost all customers apply and pay for their visas online. We have introduced that arrangement around the globe; it is part of the Government’s “digital by default” strategy.

The Visa4UK application portal has been upgraded to provide an improved customer interface, as well as to introduce a number of new features designed to make applications clearer and easier to complete. The move to online applications and payments has delivered a streamlined process that is consistent with a wider global trend for online transactions and payments. It will also be a safer system for both customers and staff, as it reduces the risk associated with handling large amounts of cash.

Customers who do not have a credit or debit card can seek a sponsor to pay online, as the hon. Gentleman said. I made further inquiries and discovered that prepaid credit or debit cards from the major suppliers can be provided by Malawian banks and used for our gateway. There is, therefore, the ability to go to a mainstream Malawian bank to secure that. We have received no official communication from the Malawian Government saying that the permission of the Reserve Bank of Malawi is required for visa payments. The situation in Malawi for applications has improved, and my officials continue to work with sponsors to ensure access to the visa service.

The hon. Gentleman and others have raised concerns about it being difficult for a Malawian to be issued a visa, owing to their modest economic circumstances, even if a genuine sponsor in the UK is meeting the cost of the visit. All visa applications from anywhere in the world are considered on their individual merits against the immigration rules. Applicants should provide evidence to show that they meet the rules and that their circumstances are as they outline. Those intending to visit the UK should provide evidence to show that they can be adequately accommodated and supported during their stay, and that they can meet the cost of their onward journey. That is important to ensure that only genuine visitors come to the UK, and to protect our system.

There is flexibility within the rules for visitors to be maintained and accommodated by friends or relatives. Entry clearance officers will take into account all information provided by applicants and their sponsors when making decisions on visa applications. They will make inquiries directly with sponsors where necessary, but the onus is on the applicant to provide all relevant information in support of their application, including full details of their sponsor’s ability to maintain and accommodate them. However, it is important to note that visitors must meet all the other requirements of the immigration rules. I recognise the point about return.

I have had limited time in which to respond, but I will reflect carefully on what the hon. Gentleman has said. Perhaps I could write to him with further details following the debate.

Modern Slavery Bill

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I will do that and I agree with my hon. Friend. We would like the law and the Bill to be strengthened on child guardians and child offences. Let me make a few points about that.

My hon. Friend is right that the situation for children can be complex, and often the adult who is abusing them is the only adult they know: the only adult with whom they have contact and who speaks their language, if they have been trafficked across borders.

Charities describe finding children who do not even know which country they are in. Some are sexually exploited in brothels or tend cannabis factories, like Deng, who was trafficked from Vietnam to work as a gardener in a cannabis factory. When police raided the house, Deng was arrested and spent almost a year in prison. On release, he fell back into the hands of traffickers, who regularly beat him so badly that he was hospitalised. Passed from local authority to local authority, his case was eventually assessed and an independent age assessment concluded that he was only 16 or 17. He had already experienced years of abuse, including a year of imprisonment at the hands of the British authorities. Children like Deng have their childhood taken by the traffickers. By 17, they have often been held by the traffickers for several years, moved through several countries and forced to grow up very fast, but they are still children in desperate need of care.

If those children know no other life and nothing of the UK, they can often return voluntarily to their traffickers because they feel that they have no choice. There is a real problem with the idea that a child could ever consent to their exploitation. That is why we believe that we should pursue a separate offence of child exploitation. I listened carefully to the Home Secretary’s points and, clearly, we do not want to make it more difficult to prosecute. I think that we have the same objectives, but I did not find her answers very convincing or clear on why creating such an offence would make it harder to prosecute. Of course, there will be cases where the age may be difficult to identify at the margins, but surely it is possible to draw up the law in a way that allows the prosecutor to decide whether the case is clear cut and can be prosecuted as a child offence or whether it is not clear cut and therefore should be prosecuted under the wider legislation on the basis that somebody is vulnerable.

If the Home Secretary has any overwhelming objections to that, she needs to explain them much more clearly. The Opposition simply cannot see why we should not pursue the Joint Committee’s proposals for a separate offence of child exploitation and why that would not help us all in our objective of tackling slavery, particularly the awful and extreme abuse of children.

We would also like a system of independent guardians to be introduced. They are a requirement of the EU directive that the Government eventually signed up to, and the system has been implemented elsewhere in Europe and shown to work well. After three years of campaigning, we welcome the Government’s pilots for child advocates and the enabling provisions, but we do not believe that they go far enough. The position is unclear, but the advocates do not appear to be the same as the child guardians for which a huge coalition of charities, including Barnardo’s, UNICEF and the Children’s Society, have called. During the Bill’s passage, we will seek to strengthen the powers given to child advocates, thereby establishing guardians who can act independently of local authorities and in the best interests of the child.

I raised those who are in domestic work conditions and are particularly at risk in an intervention on the Home Secretary. I urge her to look again at the domestic worker visa and the risks to those forced into domestic slavery, unable to escape. Earlier, I cited the evidence from the charity Kalayaan. The Home Secretary knows that when the tied visa was introduced, many, including Kalayaan, warned her that it would increase the risk of servitude and domestic abuse.

In addition to the figures that I cited earlier, Kalayaan also found that 92% of those on the new visa were unable to leave the House unaccompanied. That is slavery. The Home Secretary seemed to suggest that that was just a small number of people, but that is not the point. One of the examples that Kalayaan gave was the case of Rupa, who arrived in the UK with her employers. She had worked for them in India and had little choice about coming to the UK. Once here, she worked long hours and got no proper breaks. Looking after a baby, she was on call all the time. Like 85% of those interviewed by Kalayaan, Rupa did not have her own room, so she slept on the floor, next to the cot. For all that, she was paid just £26 a week and had her passport confiscated. Eventually, Rupa ran away and a stranger helped her find her way to Kalayaan.

However, because of the changes that the Home Secretary introduced to the visas, Kalayaan could do nothing. Under the old system, the charity would have contacted the police, had Rupa’s passport returned to her and helped her find other work. Now Rupa’s options were limited: to return to her employer or be deported. With a sick family to support in India, Rupa decided to return to her employer and a life of servitude. That is slavery. It is what the Bill should abolish. The Opposition will table amendments on the matter, but I hope that, if the Home Secretary has an alternative remedy, she will come forward with it during the Bill’s passage. We cannot have a situation whereby all the work that the House is trying to do to tackle modern slavery is undermined by visa changes elsewhere in the system.

We also need more action in the world of work. The Home Secretary talked about the importance of tackling the supply chain, and we agree, but again, we would like to go further. The Bill provides a great opportunity to build on the work of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. We would like to consider how that can be extended to cover exploitation in hospitality, care and construction, and also how the law on exploitation in the workplace can be strengthened.

Slavery in the UK is only a small part of the problem. The Joint Committee was clear in its recommendations for stronger action on supply chains. Other countries are legislating on that, and there is a growing consensus that legislation that requires large companies to report on their actions to eradicate slavery in their supply chains will make a difference.

In the past few months, all hon. Members will have been shocked by, for example, the details of the investigation by The Guardian into the fishing industry. There were stories of men trafficked from Burma and Cambodia, forced to work 20 hours a day for no pay fishing for prawns for shops in the US and Europe, and also for British supermarkets. One rescued worker, Vuthy, a former Cambodian monk, said:

“I thought I was going to die. They kept me chained up, they didn’t care about me or give me any food… They sold us like animals, but we are not animals—we are human beings.”

Another said that he had seen as many as 20 fellow slaves killed in front of him, one of whom was tied limb by limb to the bows of four boats and pulled apart at sea. All Members will be horrified by such stories, but it is even more horrifying if that slavery, abuse and murder could be linked in any way with the goods that end up on shelves in our supermarkets. That is why we believe that the Bill should go further.

According to polls, 82% of the UK public want legislation on the matter. The charity sector is equally clear and the Joint Committee supported action. So, too, did the businesses that gave evidence to the Committee. Marks and Spencer said that legislation could play an important role. Amazon, IKEA, Primark, Tesco and Sainsbury all gave evidence and said that they could support legislation. Many businesses have said that they do not want to be undercut by unscrupulous employers.

That is why the idea of a voluntary agreement simply does not go far enough. The Ethical Trading Initiative and its 80 corporate members that are campaigning for legislative measures in the Bill are right to do so. Perhaps the Home Secretary will let the Prime Minister know that the Opposition will table amendments on that. I hope she can persuade him that the House should be able to support that action, which so many businesses support. It will allow them and all of us to be ethical, and to recognise how far the problem stretches—it stretches not just across this country, but across the world.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

There will be support from Government Members for the supply chain proposal. Those of us who defend a free market do not want the competitive distortion of those who are undercutting legitimate businesses through the abuse of their employees.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right on that. That is why so many businesses and major retailers are supporting that proposal. They recognise not only that it is morally right, but that it is very hard for them to identify abuse among their competitors, and to identify when they are being undercut by something that is so immoral and criminal throughout the world.

I believe we can build a consensus in the country and in Parliament. We have rarely seen a Bill that has such overwhelming support from Members on both sides of the House. Let us be clear that we will work with the Government to ensure that the Bill passes within the limited parliamentary time available, but we will also push for it to go further, so that we can make a real difference in wiping out the horrendous practice of trafficking and enslaving men, women and children in this country.

Almost 230 years ago, a milkmaid from Bristol, Ann Yearsley, had her poem on slavery published. It tells of the anguish and woe of a woman taken away from her home country and sold into slavery. It talks of debasement and degradation. Parliament was slow to respond, and it was another 45 years after Ann’s poem was published before Parliament introduced the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The Home Secretary rightly spoke of the rare moment of consensus. We need to seize that. We have legislation before us, and we need to build on it. We need to seize the moment with the legislation and make it go as far as we possibly can. Let us push to get those further improvements and safeguards, because we know that, in the end, it is about stopping evil people committing terrible crimes; ending the enslavement, abuse and degradation of modern-day slavery; and giving everybody the liberty and freedom that they should have a right to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) speaks with both experience and passion, and highlights a number of harrowing cases involving children. I welcome this Bill because it consolidates the legislation, addressing a number of the cases she mentions. But it does more than that: it sends a powerful signal from the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister of the importance of this issue to the Government, and today’s debate shows the importance that Parliament attaches to it on a cross -party basis. May I take the opportunity to join other Members in paying tribute to the work of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who chaired the Joint Committee, and of others on that Committee? They produced a good report, and I hope that the passage of the Bill will provide an opportunity for some of its recommendations, particularly those relating to the supply chain, to be given further consideration.

I wish to pick up on a point highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) about the remit of the anti-slavery commissioner. The appointment will be a welcome one, and one understands the logic behind the narrow focus given to the post. I believe the Minister said that the Government were hoping that the appointment would put a rocket up the role of the law enforcement agencies. In part 3 of the Bill, clauses 35 and 36, the remit of the anti-slavery commissioner is defined quite narrowly when it comes to working with law enforcement agencies and I wish to highlight a number of practical areas where that remit might impose restrictions that I doubt would be the will of the House.

Housing legislation often requires private prosecutions to be brought against a landlord. It is well known that those who are trafficked are often trafficked into squalid accommodation—often houses in multiple occupation. It is beyond reason to expect the victims of trafficking, who often do not speak English, do not have financial means and do not understand the English court process, to initiate private prosecutions against their landlord. Instead, we need to have a vehicle whereby referrals can be made by the police to a statutory body in order to take forward those prosecutions on behalf of the victims. It strikes me that the commissioner would be well placed to be the repository for such referrals, so that if you become aware of victims in squalid housing in your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, the anti-slavery commissioner has a remit to take up those cases, which would often currently fall outside the express powers of law enforcement agencies.

There is a second area where there are gaps in the existing powers of law enforcement agencies and where the commissioner would be working with them. Although a new commissioner will redefine the role—I am sure that if the commissioner were someone of the calibre of Baroness Butler-Sloss, they would redefine it more broadly —we must remember that bodies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority are resource restrained and do not have many of the powers they should have. In Westminster Hall debates in June 2012 and 2013, I highlighted the fact that the GLA has no powers to issue civil fines—civil penalties. I was particularly pleased that the Migration Advisory Committee report earlier this year stated that there are insufficient resources devoted to key regulatory bodies such as the GLA. So this issue has been around for some time and it remains unclear, within the narrow definition in clauses 35 and 36, the extent to which the commissioner will proactively be able to champion the addressing of some of those deficiencies, which have been known to Ministers for some time but have still not been fixed.

Clause 37 allows the commissioner to

“request a specified public authority to co-operate”.

That is a very welcome addition to the Bill, but it is silent on the interaction between the commissioner and companies. Let me give just a few examples. I am reliably informed that in my constituency there are agencies where multiple payments to workers are paid into the same bank account. That would be a relatively easy issue for a bank to address, as it could easily conduct checks that would pick up such payments, but at the moment no such pilots are doing so. I would expect the commissioner to be proactive in that space, working with the banks.

Likewise, letting agencies will often let multiple properties to the same individual. The commissioner should be collecting data on that from letting agencies and should have the power to compel letting agencies to collect such data. Yet letting agencies are clearly not public authorities and so public authorities will not have those data, which should alert law enforcement agencies to where the HMOs are and where the high-risk houses are. We also know that many vulnerable people are paid in cash, and so existing minimum wage legislation is not being complied with because automatic deductions are made at source. Again, the commissioner’s role in ensuring that, across government, other Departments are enforcing legislation extends beyond the narrow remit set out in clauses 35 and 36.

All that speaks to a wider point. Although I am sure it is the Government’s intention for the commissioner to have a wider remit in terms of other Departments, at the moment there is a gap in knowledge. Let me give an example from my local schools. When a child is absent from school and the school becomes aware of difficulties, its natural first response is to go to social services, and that puts pressure on the parents. The first response of schools is not to think that the parents have been trafficked and need support, or that that those children are in a HMO. They do not think about the need to address the trafficking as opposed to addressing the fact that the parents are failing. Likewise general practitioners have access to information that should be alerting the law enforcement authorities, but many GPs are not trained to recognise the warning signs they should be picking up when it comes to getting those data and sharing them with the police.

Let me provide an example from my constituency. Cambridgeshire police had great difficulty getting any information on people with injuries as a result of violence from accident and emergency in King’s Lynn. Such information could have alerted them to problems in areas such as Wisbech, but issues of data protection and patient confidentiality were quoted at them. It became difficult for them to act on behalf of victims because of the silos in which the Government were operating. The commissioner’s role in looking at that data and at working with the Department for Education and the Department of Health is extremely important.

We should also extend our consideration to the practice in our courts. A number of Members have focused on how we support victims once they have been identified. At the moment a gap exists from the end of the 40 days in which people are protected through the national referral mechanism and the date of the trial. During that gap period people often find that they face intimidation, which puts the trials at risk. They are also subject to the risk of further exploitation. I am keen to hear what we can do, in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, to fast-track the trials so that we reduce the risk of the trial being prejudiced. There will be those who will naturally be fearful of giving evidence, fearful of the language difficulties and fearful of the different court system. We must consider how we speed up the process to reduce the risk of the prosecution being thwarted.

Finally, the international remit of the ombudsman is flagged up in the very good report from the Joint Committee. Let me explain why that international remit matters. People come to the Cambridgeshire fens to work in the agricultural sector and they are often promised jobs that simply do not exist. We can go on the internet and see adverts for jobs with recruitment agencies that have already been closed down. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority closed down those recruitment agencies and removed their licences, but jobs with those firms are still being advertised in countries such as Latvia. That is creating a pipeline of victims who are being brought into the country on false promises of a job that does not exist and of good accommodation that turns out to be squalid. They then quickly get into debt, which triggers the exploitation. The international remit of the commissioner is particularly important in addressing these fake adverts, which is why I hope that that recommendation will be taken forward.

This is an excellent Bill. It shows the Government’s commitment to tackling the problems of the most vulnerable in our society. I hope that, with the help of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, some of the recommendations from the report will be taken on board as the Bill progresses through the House.

Modern-day Slavery

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) is absolutely right to focus on the acute risks in the supply chain, because subcontractors are often responsible for the worst abuses, particularly in relation to payslips and wage legislation. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), I think that the problem is particularly acute in rural communities. In recent years there has been a perception that it is largely confined to cities, so powerful speeches, such as the one my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made, are helpful in highlighting the full extent of the problem right across the UK.

I very much welcome the opportunity to have this debate before the draft legislation is published. There are three specific concerns relating to legislation that I do not think have been particularly well aired in the debate so far and that I therefore want to draw to the House’s attention. The first is the importance of wages being paid electronically. In parts of my constituency, such as the middle of the fenland farming community, the tradition is for gangmasters to make payments in cash. That lends itself to abuse, both of tax and in the form of deductions at source. As soon as the wage is paid in cash, deductions are often made for transport, food, counterfeit goods supplied and the debts that are part of the mis-selling that got people over to the UK in the first place, often on the false promise of jobs.

The Home Office could learn some interesting lessons from the recent legislation banning cash payments in the scrap metal trade. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister, who has a reputation for his commitment to detail and who has the great confidence of Government Members as the Minister introducing this legislation, will look at electronic payment, in particular, because that is a key enabler that could allow law enforcement agencies to track where abuse has taken place.

It is wrong, particularly as regards the subcontracting that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk identified, that we allow so much cash payment to take place given its links to criminality and the abuse of people who are often not in a position to complain. Requiring payments in electronic form would also deal with another common abuse whereby migrants, including those who come to my constituency, are misinformed by gangmasters that they are not allowed to have a bank account.

My second point, which not been much aired, although the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) touched on it, is about the importance of having civil fines rather than requiring enforcement authorities always to pursue a criminal route, which is more resource-intensive and time-consuming and requires a higher standard of proof. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority possesses draconian criminal sanctions, but they are very rarely used. In the past two years, it issued 300 warning notices but undertook just 11 criminal prosecutions. The sorts of penalties imposed in those prosecutions are very ineffective. In two cases in Northern Ireland, the fine was just £500. I do not think anyone would imagine that the profits made did not exceed that sum.

The fact that 300 warning notices were issued gives us an idea of the gap between enforcement and the scale of the problem. There is sympathy within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the idea of further empowering bodies such as the GLA. Guidance issued in 2012 by the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), in relation to the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 curtails the ability to issue civil penalties against firms with fewer than 250 people. My right hon. Friend has a well-deserved reputation as a champion of tackling red tape, and I fully support him in that, but I do not think for a minute that it would ever be his intention to protect those guilty of criminality. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will consider dealing with that issue in the Bill so as to make it less resource-intensive for enforcement bodies to take action against those abusing the vulnerable within our communities.

The third issue that I want to bring to my hon. Friend’s attention is the definition of an HMO—a house in multiple occupation. In recent months, we have seen excellent progress in North East Cambridgeshire in taking action to restore confidence within the community. Last month, we had Operation Endeavour, with 300 officers conducting dawn raids and making 10 arrests. The problem is that most of the houses raided were not HMOs even though they had 20-plus people living in them, because an HMO is defined as a house with three storeys. Indeed, there is some contradiction between that definition and part of the local authority definition. That takes us on to a further point about clarity as regards what enforcement action should be taking place ahead of the legislation. To what extent should letting agencies be putting in place tenancy agreements? Is there a requirement for tenancy agreements?

I mentioned the abuse of wage slips. When I tabled a parliamentary question last week, I found that there had not been a single prosecution for the abuse of wage slips, so we have existing legislation that is not being enforced. The same is happening with the abuse of planning legislation. My local council has issued many a letter warning rogue landlords to change their behaviour, but to date it has not enforced it. I welcome the work of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), on pilot funding to tackle rogue landlords. Fenland district council has made a bid for such funding. I spoke to him about that earlier this week, and I look forward to the announcement on it. Before we legislate again, it is crucial that we enforce existing legislation and clarify why the issue of 20-plus people living in a house, which leads to many antisocial problems, including street drinking, urination on streets and community tension, is not being tackled by local authorities through prosecution.

I make a plea to the Minister about resource allocation. This House has a tendency to legislate and then to assume that the job is done, but legislation is effective only if it is enforced. This is a problem in the fens, which is hidden and where the crime is often unreported because people’s backgrounds mean they are too afraid to report it to the authorities or because they have language difficulties and are isolated and vulnerable. They have been misled into coming to the UK in the first place, have got into debt and have then been abused. Women in particular are led into debt much more quickly and then pressured into sham marriages, abuse and prostitution as a consequence.

It is important to look at the resource allocation. The Home Secretary’s recent launch of the National Crime Agency is particularly welcome, because it is ideally placed to take a leadership role on the issue. Where I am in the fens—on the border of three counties—people often work one minute in Lincolnshire, the next in Norfolk and then in Cambridgeshire, so the issue is not always applicable to a county police force. The NCA has a role in tasking regional organised crime units and in looking at the resource allocation and where the issue sits in its priorities. What will the budget allocation be? Rather than advising on arrests, as the NCA did very helpfully on Operation Endeavour, to what extent will it take investigations through to prosecution? Will it also be able to address the second and third waves, given that each enforcement activity tends to be finite in terms of the number of crime gangs that can be investigated at any one time? The issue of resource allocation needs to sit alongside any announcement about legislation. I hope the Minister will provide clarity on that.

The NCA also has a role to play with regard to the source country. As a number of Members have said, this is an international issue. In the case of the fens, people from Latvia and Lithuania—dare I say that this will also be true of people from Bulgaria and Romania in the months ahead?—are being misled and told that they can have a job and accommodation, only to find that the situation is different when they get here. Such a case was raised with me just last week. Someone was brought into my constituency on that basis and told that his job was to drive. When he pointed out that he could not drive, he was told that either he drove—which would have obvious, various risks to other motorists—or he would be out on his ear without a job. The important role that the NCA should play in the source country has a resource implication and that needs to sit with the legislation.

The leadership shown on this issue by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary sends a remarkably powerful signal of the Government’s commitment—there is also cross-party commitment—to tackling this horrific issue in our communities. I welcome the proposed legislation, which will make it easier for us to act and build on the wonderful work done in the previous Parliament. I wish the Minister well in addressing any further areas where we can tighten up the rules.

Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I should like to associate myself with his concluding remarks about guide dogs, and to commend the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association for the spirited campaign it has led on the subject.

It is a great pleasure to speak on a subject of obvious concern to everybody in the country. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, who spoke earlier, I have been in the House since 1997, and I can genuinely say that antisocial behaviour has been at the centre of my casework, both in terms of concerns that people have raised, and of the relief and respite that has been brought about. This is a continuing process; no Government have a monopoly on virtue or effectiveness. However, I want to emphasise that the Labour Government made significant strides in combating antisocial behaviour, and in putting victims at the heart of the justice system; I recall the surprise at that in more conservative legal circles in the early days of that Administration. Mercifully, we have moved on since then.

The controls put in place for statutory partnerships under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 have been enormously important to us in Blackpool, where partnerships between the police, local authorities and others to tackle crime and disorder have worked extremely successfully. I want to make a point that is specific to my constituents and to the town: like many seaside and coastal towns, and many inland towns with a high degree of transience, in Blackpool issues associated with houses in multiple occupation and the problems faced by a minority of rogue landlords and rogue tenants have been very much to the fore. As the House of Commons research paper makes clear, antisocial behaviour injunctions have been valued by social landlords; they have been used successfully against tenants in attempts to tackle vandalism, violence, noise, harassment, and threatening and un-neighbourly behaviour.

As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made clear, none of this can be done without resources. That is why it was very important that more than 12,000 extra police, and more than 16,000 police community support officers, were introduced under the Labour Government, including in Lancashire, which has particularly benefited from the beefed-up powers that were provided.

What are the issues that any antisocial behaviour Bill should at least touch on and try to address for my constituents in Blackpool? First, there is the question of disorder, particularly in the centre of the town. As many people know, we have millions of visitors every year. Most of them are a delight, but a small proportion are not. The same is true of residents. Problems such as alcohol, petty crime, drugs and general threatening behaviour have always loomed large. Secondly, the issue of houses in multiple occupation is really important. I praise the work done over a long period by the public protection department of Blackpool council, ably headed by Tim Coglan, all who have worked with him, and the cabinet member with responsibility for housing, Councillor Gillian Campbell.

I should like to quote from a couple of letters that I received recently that underline some of our problems. A hotelier—it should be borne in mind that there are some 600 hotels and guesthouses in my constituency—said:

“I run a hotel with my partner situated…in South Shore. We unfortunately have a HMO adjoining us…and one opposite…Both properties have drug and alcohol problems and are situated with ourselves in the ‘Holiday Zone’.

We persistently suffer ‘users’ calling up at the flats for drugs, the police are constantly parking outside our hotel to visit our neighbours. The flat adjoining our hotel on the first floor have dogs, who are rarely taken out of the flat.”

The good news in this story is that Blackpool council, together with other organisations, is working on this. I quote the letter I received from the council:

“Officers of the Housing Enforcement Team have been tackling issues...one of the problem tenants has already been evicted and the managing agents…are in the process of re-housing the tenants with the dogs.”

Another letter from another part of the town mentions the importance of alley gates, which have been a particularly effective way of dealing with antisocial behaviour in Blackpool.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

On HMOs and antisocial behaviour, including in alleyways, are there not already powers available to councils? The issue is whether councils are using the powers they already have, rather than whether new powers are required under the Bill.

[Mr Marsden]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I do not disagree with him on the powers, which are already there. What is important is enforcement by councils, and the resources that are available to them. Sadly, Blackpool council’s ability to do the stuff it would like to on alley gates has been severely hindered over the past couple of years by substantial cuts in funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Police and community support officers are crucial, particularly now, when we have problems not just with houses in multiple occupation, but with houses that are bought at low prices when owner-occupiers move out, and landlords rent them out to problem families. I have many examples of that. I pay tribute to the activities undertaken in our town by the police and the community together. I am thinking of a group, ably chaired by Mr Dave Blacker, who are concerned about their PCSOs. Issues of funding and what might be available from Government have come to the fore.

Other really important issues are vandalism—Stanley park and other parts of the town have been badly affected by it recently—metal theft, the protection of war memorials and dumping. Those are all issues on which PCSOs can make an important contribution. That is why we need to look critically at what the Government are doing in the Bill. The crime prevention injunction—the proposed replacement for an antisocial behaviour order—is significantly weaker. A breach of the new injunction is not a criminal offence and will not result in a criminal record. Other proposed measures against antisocial behaviour also appear weak. The Government’s proposed community trigger has seemed weak in the areas in which it has been trialled, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made clear earlier. As her colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) said, breach of ASBOs was a criminal offence; breach of injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance is not. Nor does the Bill guarantee a response from the police or the council. It guarantees a review. In my region, the north-west, police in Manchester recorded nearly 26,000 cases of antisocial behaviour in 2012-13, but the trigger was activated a mere four times.

When it comes to tackling antisocial behaviour, the elephant in the room is the way the Government have cut the police budget. Police community support officers, who are so often at the forefront in tackling day-to-day antisocial behaviour, have been hit particularly hard. That has led to Lancashire losing 9% of our front-line officers in the first two years of this Tory-led Government, and 500 police officers.

I shall touch briefly on knife crime, which has been a key issue in Blackpool. The Government have, to be fair, introduced a new crime of “threatening with article with blade” in public or on school premises, but the Prime Minister told MPs in recent months that the Justice Secretary was reviewing the powers available to the courts to deal with knife possession, and the Lord Chancellor has said he is revisiting the whole topic of knife crime. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary rightly said, this is a Christmas tree Bill. It is unfortunate that the outcome of those reviews has not informed the detail of the Bill.

The topic of firearms has been touched on. I entirely associate myself with the comments that have been made about the dangers presented by people with a history of domestic violence. We know that only too well in Blackpool from the Justice for Jane campaign, which concerned the case of a young woman who was tragically murdered by her partner, who had a history of domestic threatening and violence. Such ticking time bombs need monitoring, and the Government should be monitoring some of them far more carefully and providing the legislation that would make that possible.

Lastly, I return to the subject of dangerous dogs. I have not been convinced by what the Home Secretary said. Many other organisations—not just the RSPCA, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Blue Cross and the Select Committee—feel that the proposals, rather like my 15-year-old Jack Russell-Chihuahua cross, are somewhat toothless. Dangerous dogs are a real problem and they need a special and specific remedy. I know that only too well from my former colleague in the House, Joan Humble, who almost lost the tip of her finger when canvassing in Blackpool in 2012. These Government measures, as has been said, are simply too weak. Instead of these piecemeal proposals, the introduction of dog control notices would be wide ranging and enforceable in the sorts of areas that have been discussed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) spoke very powerfully about emotive and clearly tragic cases. I am sure that all Members of the House join her in paying tribute to the families of those victims. She is right that the dangerous dogs legislation introduced by a previous Government did not achieve the desired outcomes; I think that most of us would accept that.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, therefore, I would like to pay tribute to a piece of legislation introduced by Labour. The role of police community support officers in tackling antisocial behaviour has been much maligned over the years, and my party opposed the measure at the time, yet when I look at the work of Aivaras Krochalev and others PCSOs in my constituency who have done so much work, particularly with parts of the community where English is not the first language, it is clear that many of them have helped in freeing up officer time and delivering value for money on the front line rather than sitting behind desks at headquarters.

That is why I welcome the Home Secretary’s measures in the Bill to strengthen some of the powers available to PCSOs. For example, it is illogical for a PCSO to be able to disperse a group from an area but unable to direct an individual to leave it. The Bill is right to give senior officers discretion to tackle that. It is also illogical for PCSOs to be able to fill out forms in those instances but not to issue them. The streamlining of some of the powers that apply to PCSOs will free up police officer time for doing the things that warrant officers should be doing.

Following that logic, I want to press the Minister to consider extending PCSO powers to take on other responsibilities. For example, a PCSO is able to seize drugs, but not search for them. They can search for alcohol and tobacco, and if they happen to find drugs during the course of those searches they can confiscate them, but if they can smell cannabis they are not allowed search for it; they have to divert the time of a warranted officer instead. The feedback I receive from senior officers is that that is not an effective use of police time.

Minor issues can also be annoying to officers. For example, a PCSO can issue a fixed penalty notice for cycling on a towpath—we do not have many towpaths in my constituency, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) finds that to be a useful option—but they cannot issue one for cycling without lights. There are a number of other similar areas; I cite those two examples simply to illustrate my argument. If we follow the Bill’s logic and its welcome measures on, for example, dispersal, we will see that PCSOs could take on more powers in tackling antisocial behaviour and that that would free up police officer time.

Another issue that the Bill does not tackle is that of potential cross-departmental work to enforce antisocial behaviour measures. Last year, there were an estimated 15,000 foreign vehicles on our roads. Once such vehicles are here for more than six months, they have to undergo an MOT and be insured and registered. It is illogical to assume that every single foreign vehicle on our roads has complied with that requirement, yet last year there was not a single prosecution of an unregistered foreign vehicle. Part of the frustration felt by Cambridgeshire police and others is that there seems to be intransigence on the part of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. It uses automatic registration recognition for stolen vehicles, but not in relation to the licensing of foreign vehicles. That has a knock-on effect in community tension; some people feel that they have to insure and register their car while others do not. Clearly, discussions need to be held between the Home Office and the Department for Transport. I would be grateful if the Minister wrote to me to confirm that he will take on that cross-departmental work. From some of the cases that I see at my constituency surgery, the issue is causing considerable annoyance.

Another area where significant time is being wasted and where cross-departmental work is suboptimal is that of licensing. It may surprise the House to hear that an area such as Wisbech in my constituency has more licensed premises in the centre than a student area such as Cambridge. Indeed, we are using existing powers on the accumulated number of licensed premises in order to try to effect change. It is clear that when the police make representations, significant time is spent on compiling long reports that are then often ignored by local councils. It would be beneficial for further work to be undertaken by the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government in order to look at police representations and whether the time spent on cases involving licensing and antisocial behaviour in communities is used as effectively as possible.

The Bill’s measures will be welcome only if they are enforced. In our rush to legislate, one of the traps that we fall into in this place is that we suspect that just introducing a Bill on antisocial behaviour will effect the change that we seek. It is clear that some of the existing measures to tackle antisocial behaviour are not being enforced. For example, an illegal rave took place in my constituency on new year’s eve. It may surprise the House to learn that the police were at the scene but—understandably, because of the numbers of people present—took the view that it was not safe for them to intervene at that point. However, even though the police were on site when the illegality took place, and even though the business owner took countless photos and the Home Secretary, no less, expressed her horror and shock and desire for enforcement when I spoke to her about the case, I discovered last week, without the police having the courtesy to tell me, that after six months they had simply dropped the investigation.

It is difficult for the community to understand exactly what evidence the police need to tackle the crime given that they were there as it happened. I welcome the Bill’s antisocial behaviour measures, but I would be grateful if the Minister took up that issue up with the chief constable of Cambridgeshire and addressed why, in a case that involved more than £50,000-worth of damage on new year’s eve and that caused concern to other business owners, no enforcement action has been taken.

I am conscious of your diktat on time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so with a minute remaining let me finish on a positive note. Under the wonderful leadership of Inspector Sissons in Wisbech, we have launched Operation Pheasant, which has so far raided 80 houses of multiple occupation and has a number of live inquiries. It demonstrates what can be achieved when effective enforcement action is taken. That would not have happened without the active support of the Home Secretary, which, along with the Bill’s measures, will do much to tackle other cases of antisocial behaviour in the months and years ahead.