Modern Slavery Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

As ever, having had a ministerial career in the last Government, I have form on these issues. In 2008-09, when I was the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough presented proposals in Committee that were similar to those that she has presented on this occasion, and the Government did not accept them. We look and we learn, and a new issue is now evolving. I think it fair to say that there is a greater involvement of criminal gangs in trafficking people for prostitution than there has ever been before.

The purpose of our new clause is simply to make the Secretary of State legally responsible for producing a review within six months. Six months from Royal Assent will mean something between the middle and the end of next year. The evidence enabling the next incoming Government to make judgments will already have been gathered, so that they—not me, and not the present Minister—can make those judgments on the basis of a full review.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

If my right hon. Friend had had Home Office evidence that this trade was worth £130 million a year when he was a Minister at the Home Office, would that have changed his view of the proposals that were being presented?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

I commend new clause 22. We need the review that it proposes and a thorough investigation of the links between human trafficking, prostitution and exploitation. It seems to me that that is the only way we will change the minds of the legislators and the wider public to bring about some of the changes that my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) suggests.

Any trade that can be estimated to be worth £130 million a year should command our attention. We should look to understand it fully, with the purpose of undermining and collapsing it. That is what we are here for, and what we should do.

Finally, I want to mention Juliet, a young woman who currently resides in my constituency. She is supported by the asylum charity Restore. She fled here from Nigeria to escape slavery, brutality and a forced marriage, and she fell into the hands of traffickers and ended up working in a brothel. The Home Office, sadly, intends to deal with that by sending Juliet back to Nigeria. We need to smash the link in this trade altogether, and we have to tackle a situation that punishes the victims while the traffickers carry on their trade and the clients who make that trade viable are largely unaffected by the misery that they generate and perpetrate. New clause 22 would make a good contribution to that and help this Bill achieve some of the aims that most of us here back.

[Sir John Randall]

As you know, Mr Speaker, I am standing down at the end of this Parliament, so I hope that I am allowed to say a few things.

I support the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay). I would give a piece of advice to the talent spotters on our Front Bench. He is becoming an extremely good Member of Parliament and they should harness that by putting him into a ministerial position so that he can be useful—not, of course, to stifle that dangerous streak of independence.