Modern-day Slavery

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing the debate. It is a timely opportunity to start contributing to the welcome review that the Government have announced. I congratulate all hon. Members for covering so much ground in so little time—I will try to do a little bit of justice to the debate.

I pay tribute to the work of the all-party parliamentary group. It is not just the chairs who have incredible expertise and commitment. At the few meetings that I have attended all the members have contributed fantastically, as has been illustrated by hon. Members’ speeches. It is also good to see that the Minister and officials are engaging. I think everyone is genuinely committed to doing their best to try to tackle this horrendous issue. Hon. Members have, quite rightly, paid tribute to the huge range of individuals and institutions that are doing tremendous work on this issue. We are dealing with horrible offences, as the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) eloquently and powerfully set out.

The question we have tried to cover is how we can improve some of our response. The first issue raised was support for victims. There have been calls to put support on a statutory footing, as has happened in equivalent legislation in Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Government here may now want to do that. We have also talked about extending of the period for which support is in place to 45 days. After consultation with victims and NGOs in Scotland, the Government there have extended the period from 45 days to 90 days. We have to be evidence-led, and it may well be in due course that that is shown to be insufficient—the Government here may want to look at that as well.

That brings us on to the immigration rules. I used to be an immigration solicitor. I have to say, I find it incredibly difficult to understand what the status of victims is after they have been through the national referral mechanism. There is definitely a need for clarity and simplicity. I agree with the recommendation of the Work and Pensions Committee of an automatic period of leave, which could be for up to a year.

A number of hon. Members raised issues about training and the resourcing of frontline staff who will encounter victims of modern slavery. We heard about the police, and we have had reports from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary as well as the Haughey review. There is a lot of work to do around sharing best practice from forces that do a very good job, such as Greater Manchester police. Some forces are doing it well, but can we expand that work? Other hon. Members mentioned local authorities and the health service as well.

Finally, there are a couple of issues that I will just mention in passing. We need to look again at the stage at which victims of modern slavery are entitled to legal aid, because they have big decisions to make before they have access to important legal advice. Finally, one or two hon. Members touched on Brexit. We could have a whole separate debate on the implications of Brexit for ethical trade, justice and home affairs co-operation and all sorts of other things, but I will leave it to the two other Front Benchers to expand on some of those points.