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Ms Keeble: I did not go into all the detail of the cases, because I knew that we would be talking about them later this week.
Mr. Browne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am glad that I will not have to take that meeting out of my diary. I was keen to have the meeting, to discuss her concerns and to give her the reassurance in private that I am not able to give in this debate for obvious reasons. I hope that I can reassure her that the necessary steps were taken to investigate the issues that she brought to the Government's attention, and I am sure that when we meet later this week—on Thursday, I believe—I will be able to satisfy her.
I accept, however, that there were failings, especially in relation to the length of time taken to deal with her correspondence on those cases. I could have admitted that in private, but it is appropriate that I admit in public that there was such an error because, as a result of those failings, I ordered a review of the way in which correspondence relating to child protection issues was dealt with on receipt in the Home Office. I am pleased to inform her that processes have now been put in place that enable priority action to be given to letters such as those that she has written previously on such issues.
I want to outline briefly the various stages in child trafficking, and how the Government are approaching those. As we go through those stages, I shall seek appropriately to interweave my responses to the specific requests made by my hon. Friend. I shall refer to the interesting international proposal, which was brought to my attention earlier this month, on which I had a meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre and his gaggle of social workers, as he described them, recently.
First, we need to do preventive work in source countries to stop trafficking happening in the first place. We need an effective enforcement response to clamp down on trafficking when it does happen, and we need tough sentences in place to ensure that traffickers are suitably punished. We need to do all that we can to support the victims of child trafficking, and to help them to overcome their trauma and to restart their lives where appropriate.
First, I want to mention the ground-breaking work done by Operation Paladin Child.
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jim Murphy.]
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Mr. Browne: Operation Paladin Child was led by the Metropolitan police in conjunction with the immigration service, social services and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It took place between August and November last year at Heathrow and was funded by Reflex, the multi-agency task force that tackles organised immigration crime.
Although the operation did not find conclusive evidence that children were being trafficked into Heathrow—which was reassuring, to some extent—it threw up child protection issues that might not otherwise have come to light. Its report made a number of recommendations on how the police, the immigration service and social services could work together more effectively. I know that my hon. Friend has taken a keen interest in the recommendations, and I think her call for closer co-operation mirrors them to a significant degree. As she told us, she visited Heathrow to see what was happening for herself. I am grateful to her for her appreciation of the work that was being done there, and will ensure that her remarks are passed to those who were responsible for the operation.
I can reassure my hon. Friend that I am working closely with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children. We are considering the recommendations, and will be responding to them. I hope to be able to do that by the autumn. I recently met my right hon. Friend informally, and we have agreed to do the preliminary work during the summer recess, with a view to a meeting in the autumn to deal with this and other issues in which we share an interest.
Mr. Dawson: Can my hon. Friend assure me that he and our right hon. Friend the Minister for Children will want to apply the lessons of Operation Paladin Child to all ports throughout the country?
Mr. Browne: That was a timely intervention. I was about to say that a child protection officer is already based at Heathrow, and that the immigration service is developing a proposal for social work teams to be based at major ports of entry. I cannot guarantee that that will include ports of entry throughout the United Kingdom, but it will follow a risk-based assessment, and will involve all ports where there is evidence that such behaviour might take place.
Let me say something about the Government's work with source countries, which is very important. This will, I think, partly answer my hon. Friend's point about travel documents and children. Our work is vital if we are to tackle trafficking at its root. We have a number of initiatives overseas. Some, for example a new Home Office project in the Czech Republic, are intended to build the capacity of our overseas partners to tackle trafficking. The twinning project, funded by the European Commission, is being run in conjunction with the Netherlands Centre for International Police Co-operation and the Czech Ministry of Interior. The aim is to strengthen the republic's capacity to combat trafficking into, within, and out of the country. I travelled to Prague last month to attend the launch, and was able to see at first hand that it is a genuine partnership between three European Union countries committed to working together on this important issue.
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We are also committed to working with overseas partners to raise awareness of trafficking. Bilaterally and through international organisations, we are supporting projects in a number of countries, including those thought to be key source countries for child trafficking. We have given support to Anti-Slavery International for its work with child rights organisations across west Africa to increase awareness of the dangers in trafficking for domestic work. Through the International Labour Organisation, we are supporting a project to reduce the trafficking of women and children in the Mekong region of south-east Asia.
From the information gleaned from those projects, Operation Paladin Child, and my own research following visits to ports of entry and discussions on unaccompanied children with immigration officers, I have come to the conclusion that we need to work not only with other countries and agencies but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North suggested, with the carriers, whose involvement should not be limited to ensuring that children's travel documents are secure. Hon. Members will be aware that the Asylum and Immigration Bill (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill, which is currently before Parliament, includes provisions on the protection of documentation. Under the powers available to the Home Secretary, the Home Office and the Government, carriers will be required to copy documentation, but we must also work with them to ensure that they are aware of the risks of their actions. I was astonished to learn on a visit to Heathrow terminal 3 that a carrier—I will not name it, because it would be invidious to do so without giving it prior notice—recently carried 17 unaccompanied children on one plane, and that that was not an unusual event. They could have been 17 perfectly innocent journeys, and those children could have been well protected, but the fact that the carrier had a history of carrying children in such numbers suggested that something was amiss. When I explored the matter further, immigration officials told me that suspicions were aroused by the children's behaviour and that they and others had had to take action, confirming that there was a problem.
I am not saying that the practice of carrying unaccompanied children, inadvertently or by omission, into dangerous circumstances is restricted to one carrier, but international carriers with the power to transport young children thousands of miles across the globe in a comparatively short period ought to take their responsibilities seriously. Some carriers do so, but it is incumbent on Government Departments to ensure that all carriers approach the issue with the seriousness that it merits. Their principal focus should be the protection of the children they carry, and it is my intention, in consultation with fellow Ministers, to seek to ensure that that objective is met by carriers who carry children into UK ports of entry, insofar as it is consistent with international law.
Trafficking does not take place in a vacuum, and we have good reason to believe that it is closely linked to other forms of organised crime, such as drug trafficking, gun crime and prostitution. I recently read a sensationalist newspaper account in which an immigration officer in a trial for trafficking was reported as saying that some organised criminals had turned from drug trafficking to people trafficking because it was more lucrative. It was implied that that was the fault of
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the UK Government or the Home Office, because they had created the trafficking, but nothing could be further from the truth. The number of people trafficked to the UK, while worrying, pales into insignificance next to the number of people trafficked around the world and the appalling number who die on those journeys. Many of them do not get anywhere near the shores of the developed western world—their objective—before they perish. Given the amount of money that people are prepared to pay to try to make those journeys or be carried by traffickers, I am not at all surprised that criminals are turning from drug trafficking to people trafficking. As a developed country, and given the resources at our disposal, we have a responsibility to interdict such behaviour wherever it occurs in the world. The people at risk from such behaviour are some of the most vulnerable, and as a result of it they are dying in significant numbers.
International co-operation and joint working across agencies are absolutely essential if we are to combat trafficking. In the UK, we have achieved this through the establishment of Reflex, a taskforce that brings together the police, intelligence agencies, the immigration service, Government Departments and the Crown Prosecution Service to tackle organised immigration crime, which includes people smuggling and trafficking. The UK Government are supporting the important work of Reflex with £20 million of funding per year over the next two years. Only through this kind of genuine partnership will we bring together all the agencies that need to be involved in putting a stop to trafficking.
We are seeing excellent results from this multi-agency approach. Between April 2003 and April 2004, 38 organised crime groups involved in organised immigration crime were disrupted. In the same period, 38 convictions were secured for related offences, the most high profile of which was the conviction of a ruthless criminal who had trafficked young girls into prostitution in London. Seven young women from Romania and Moldova were identified, the youngest of whom was only 17. Each victim thought that they were being taken to the UK for employment, but they were forced into prostitution, and beaten and raped by the traffickers. The Metropolitan police and Reflex did a tremendous job on this operation, and I would like to pay tribute to their skills, which resulted in the principal defendant being sentenced to 23 years' imprisonment.
Our work on enforcement goes hand in hand with tough new offences on trafficking. The UK was closely involved in the UN protocol on trafficking. We have also signed the EU framework decision on trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation, which has committed us to introducing criminal sanctions covering these forms of trafficking. Sexual offences legislation that came into force in May introduces comprehensive offences covering trafficking into, out of and within the UK for all forms of sexual exploitation.
We have also responded to increasing concern about trafficking for forced labour, slavery or removal of organs. A new offence covering trafficking for these purposes is part of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, Etc.) Bill, which is currently before the House. We have taken steps to ensure that our legislation criminalises trafficking in both adults and
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children. Indeed, we tabled an amendment to that Bill on Report on 1 March, to ensure that children and vulnerable people were covered. When this last set of offences comes into force, we will have strong and comprehensive laws that send a clear message that we will not tolerate trafficking.
I want to outline what we are doing to support victims of child trafficking, the human cost of which is very high. Being trafficked is a terrifying and traumatic experience. Victims can be forced into domestic service or into the sex trade, as we have heard, and we need to ensure that systems are in place to protect them; only then can we help them overcome their experiences. Of course, we want them to be confident enough to help the police in bringing the perpetrators to justice.
It is the local social services departments that will provide support for victims of child trafficking. Such children are likely to be in need of welfare services and, in many cases, protection under the Children Act 1989.
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