Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend knows that we are moving to a world in which councils will be funded by council tax and business rates. It is essential that the formula underpinning that is fair to all types of authority. That has been very clear in representations that he and others have made.

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

The Tory election manifesto promised to keep council tax low, so will the Secretary of State explain to the House why he has just written to town halls up and down the country saying that he expects them to force council tax up by more than 20% over the next four years?

[Greg Clark]

I have written no such letter. I remind the hon. Gentleman that council tax doubled under the previous Government. On all the forecasts that we have made, it will be lower in real terms than it was at the beginning of the last Parliament.

Child Victims of Human Trafficking (Central Government Responsibility) Bill

Steve Reed Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

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

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

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

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

[Mr Bone]

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

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

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

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

[Mr Bone]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr Steve Reed]

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

[Mr Bone]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gangs and Youth Violence: London

Steve Reed Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising that issue. He is absolutely right. In addition to age is the fact that, increasingly, vulnerable girls and young women become wrapped up in this and are used and abused and exploited sexually. In the short time we have this afternoon, it is impossible to set out all the reasons why young people end up getting involved in serious youth violence, but there are common themes. My right hon. Friend has spoken about that many times.

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

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has brought this important issue before the House. Does he share my view, which is derived from consulting the communities that are deeply affected by gang violence, that, above all else, they want more of a say and more control over the interventions that are brought to their communities and more control over how resources are used to tackle the problem at source?

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he did very good work as the leader of Lambeth Council, where my constituency is situated. He is an expert in the matter. We have seen the great work the council is doing with its youth community trust, which seeks to do just what he says.

I am struck by the way in which the gang or group that the young people become involved in has become a surrogate family. There are sometimes parenting issues in their actual families, but sometimes there are not. I know of lots of young people who have been involved who come from very strong families. There is an idea that they are in workless households, but sometimes the problem is that two parents are holding down two jobs just to make ends meet and they do not have the time to be there.

The second issue, which is connected, is the lack of things for our young people to do out of school hours. I lose count of the number of community meetings I go to—all my colleagues who have spoken will have had exactly the same experience—when constituents say, “There are just not enough things for our young people to do.” We have to develop the professional occupation of youth work. Youth workers should be seen in the same way as our teachers; they should be put on a pedestal in the same way, because they spend almost as much time, if not more, with our young people.

Often, our young people will want to affiliate with a group because they fear not being affiliated to a group. There is a sense among them that they need to be part of a group for protection.

Another issue is the rampant consumerism that surrounds our young people—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) talked about that in his book following the 2011 riots—and the popular culture that sometimes glamorises the lifestyle that goes with it. I used to be a trustee of a charity, the 409 Project, which unfortunately went under because it did not get funding. We found that money, or specifically a lack of money, was often the cause of the violence and criminality. The young people we dealt with told me how money led to the cycle of robbery and revenge: those who do not have the latest consumer good robbed those who do, but they were equally hard-up. We are not making any excuses—there is no excuse for that kind of violence—but unless we understand why it is happening, how can we hope to prevent it?

Finally, there are not enough jobs for young people, particularly young people who have left education. A disproportionate number of young people who are impacted are people who look like me—black and minority ethnic children. The unemployment rate among our BME youngsters is 25%. For young black males, it is a staggering 35%, in 2016, when we are the fifth largest economy. That is a disgrace.

What are we to do? First, the Government have to reverse their decision to disband the very important ending gang violence and exploitation peer review network, which I know they are planning to do this April. I praise them for setting it up. It is a good network doing important work. It is a retrograde step to disband it; doing so will seriously compromise efforts to reduce gang and youth violence. If it is being done to cost-cut, I say we cannot put a price on the lives of our young people.

Secondly, there needs to be a far more joined-up approach at both local and national levels. It is a constant challenge: there is the youth offending team, children’s services, education and health. There needs to be a much more joined-up approach at a national level. One of the good things the previous Labour Government instituted—my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) was the Minister who set it up—was a cross-departmental working group that brought together Ministers to make sure this issue was being looked at in a holistic, joined-up way at a national level. The Prime Minister should forget that the group was set up by the previous Labour Government and reinstitute it without delay. The chair of the group should submit an annual report to the Home Affairs Committee, which could then call on the chair to give oral evidence.

Thirdly, there has to be an increased focus on the very-hard-to-reach youngsters who are out of work. Clearly, there is still more work to be done—just look at the figures.

Fourthly, we have to do much more intensive work in our schools to educate young people and get into their minds. We need to win the argument about what the lifestyle can lead to. We have to offset the glamorised image of what it is to be in a gang with a proper programme of intensive education. There also has to be much more effective enforcement. Every single lever must be used to send a message to key individuals in gangs that their criminal activities will be dealt with and their violence sanctioned—that is the point: sanctioned. If they are never caught and people do not see them being caught, even for minor infringements, they will carry on doing what they are doing.

Finally, I am sure the Minister would be surprised if I did not mention that this work is costly. It costs money and it requires resource. I agree with my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed). We have to do this at a local level, but I do not understand how our local authorities can be expected to do it when their central Government grant has been cut by 56%. Youth services are particularly hit—more than any other.

[Mr Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend is making excellent proposals, which I hope the Minister will welcome. He has not yet mentioned the effect of domestic violence. As I understand it, one of the single biggest predictors of a young person becoming involved in violence is that they themselves have experienced, or been subject to, domestic violence in the home, leaving them to grow up without a properly formed sense of right and wrong. Does he agree that more work should be done in the home, early doors, particularly where there are instances of domestic violence?

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In advance of the spending review I had a communication from the Local Government Association estimating that the gap, if unaddressed, would be £2.9 billion. In the spending review settlement the Chancellor allocated £3.5 billion, to reflect the need to help our elderly population. That was a significant result for local government. As we come to make the settlement for individual authorities, we will ensure that that is in the hands of local people.

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

At least 340 unaccompanied child asylum seekers disappeared in this country between January and September, which is twice as many as did so in the calendar year before. That leaves them at terrifying risk of abuse, sexual exploitation and radicalisation. Councils say that funding cuts mean they do not have the resources properly to protect these incredibly vulnerable children, so why are the Government going ahead with a further cut to the unaccompanied child asylum seeker grant?

[Greg Clark]

These are important statutory responsibilities of local authorities and it is vital that they discharge them. Through the spending review settlement, the Chancellor has made available funds to local government that make sure that the cash settlement by the end of the spending review period is the same as it is at the beginning. That is a positive result for local government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Britain is actually going further than that by making sure that we play our role not just in the humanitarian crisis that we have discussed, but in collecting evidence about war crimes so that people can be held to account for the dreadful things that they have done.

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

Q4. Does the Prime Minister agree with Lord Stevens and the Home Secretary that stop-and-search needs reform, or does his fear of Nigel Farage mean that he will block it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

When I meet Chancellor Merkel we often discuss the single currency. It is important, whatever one’s views about the single currency—I never want Britain to join—that we respect countries that are in the single currency and want to make it work. At the same time, I believe that there is an opportunity for Britain to argue that the European Union needs to change. We need to make this organisation one that both members of the single currency and members who are not in the single currency can be comfortable in. I think Chancellor Merkel understands that. I also think that Prime Minister Letta from Italy, whom I will be meeting straight after questions, understands that point too. That is why I think getting a better settlement for Britain is achievable, and one we can consider in a referendum by the end of 2017.

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

Q12. The Prime Minister failed to say last week when he would give back the stolen cash that Asil Nadir gave the Conservative party. When will he give it back?

[The Prime Minister]

I have to say, the Whips have been very active with the hand-outs this week. What we need to know is when we will get back the taxpayer money from Mr Mills’s donation. Never mind a donation that happened 20 years ago; this happened about 20 weeks ago.