Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I am very interested in looking further at that idea. My hon. Friend is right that the most complicated and difficult cases are sometimes hard for the legal system to address. It is obviously important to have clear frameworks of family law and of immigration law, but he is right that complex cases sometimes end up falling between the two systems and not getting the kind of recognition that they deserve.

We want the anti-slavery commissioner’s work to have more emphasis on supporting victims. The Bill talks of the anti-slavery commissioner’s obligation to identify victims, not of the need to support victims or to make recommendations to all Departments, not just the Home Office, on victim support, which would be helpful.

[Michael Connarty]

A matter that has puzzled me since I went to the launch of the Scottish report is a point made by the Justice Secretary there: when the Border Force changes people’s status from victim to criminal, those people very soon leave Scotland and end up in Yarl’s Wood, which is outwith Scotland’s jurisdiction. He told me that the problem is the Border Force, or what was called the UK Border Agency. How can we give some comfort to people in the devolved parts of the UK that they will be allowed to decide whether they are dealing with a victim or a criminal, and that they will not be overruled by the Bill and what is basically a UK authority, not a devolved authority?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which goes wider than devolution. Wherever across the United Kingdom trafficking victims are identified, we must make sure that they are properly supported as victims of trafficking throughout the system, and that they are not simply identified by one agency as needing support as victims because they have been abused and enslaved, but end up being treated by another agency as criminals or illegal migrants, with the abuse effectively being multiplied because their vulnerability and experiences are simply not identified within the system. Such a purpose is vital. The Home Secretary is right that this is not simply about legislation, but about the way in which organisations operate, the training given to staff and how staff respond. My hon. Friend’s point is therefore extremely important.

That is particularly important for children, about whom many hon. Members intervened on the Home Secretary to raise concerns. Trafficking is an evil trade, but it can exploit weak systems of child protection. Of the 2,000 potential victims of human trafficking identified in 2012, 550 were children, but that is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Some 65% of those cases were not recorded on the national system, which would have increased the protection of those children. Too often, they are treated as immigration cases, not as trafficking victims. Several of my hon. Friends made important points about the way in which such children can, in practice, be abused, including by being told what to say by their traffickers.

Most appalling of all is the figure that shows that almost two thirds of rescued children go missing again. They have been found, rescued by the authorities, put into care and they simply disappear again, presumably picked up by the same or other trafficking gangs. Already abused, they are let down by a system that is supposed to keep them safe.