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24 May 2007 : Column 530WH—continued
The question of support for victims needs to be addressed. As has been said, it is not good enough for
the Government to identify that there are organisations outside London, and organisations other than the POPPY project, that can provide support. Such organisations need to be nurtured and funded. That has not yet been done, according to my reading of the UK action plan. Given that this is such a huge humanitarian issue, I do not understand why Government funding cannot be provided in this way.
Similarly, as the hon. Member for Hendon pointed out, the short-termism in funding that the POPPY project has always faced is not fair on the people working in this difficult area. It does not enable them to plan for the future. There would be enormous pressure on their places were the Government to implement some of the other recommendations in our report that would encourage victims to come forward and the so-called clients of victims to report them. It may well be that the Government know that, if they did more, they would have more people to support and they would therefore have to fund more. There is a weird consistency about the Government’s position of just keeping the heads of the support services above water from a financial and capacity point of view.
This country has about 1 per cent. of the number of trafficking prosecutions—and, effectively, convictions— that Italy does and about 1 per cent. of the number of victims identified in any given period. I do not believe that 100 times more men use prostitutes in Italy than in this country, so the reason for the discrepancy is that we are failing to identify victims and traffickers. I urge the Minister to consider examining best practice worldwide.
I do not want to be wholly negative about the Government’s response. As the hon. Member for Hendon has said, there is plenty to welcome in the action plan, and the Government are at least engaging. I urge them not to be to complacent about their position.
Following a comment from the hon. Member for Totnes, the hon. Member for Llanelli said that perhaps the Government were felt to be in the lead on the basis of having signed the convention. I understand that the UK was 28th to sign out of the 29 countries that have done so, that we were followed swiftly by Ireland and that there have now been seven ratifications. The countries that signed well before us included Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Sweden in 2005, and France and Denmark in 2006. Few countries had yet to sign when we had yet to sign, and such countries included the likes of Lithuania, Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Estonia and Hungary. I have nothing against those countries, but we would have been better placed to claim leadership in this area if we had been early movers. The issue now is ratification.
What legislation is needed to ratify? The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) raised the matter when discussing the UK Borders Bill, when he tabled a probing amendment that included some provisions from the convention. He asked how soon we would be in a position to ratify, and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) said something that I did not understand:
“He is right that his amendment provides for some key measures from the convention, but we could probably implement those sooner by signing the convention”—
that was a week or so before signing it—
“than by waiting for the Bill to be enacted, although, of course, we can implement some of those measures without legislation or the convention.”—[Official Report, UK Borders Public Bill Committee, 15 March 2007; c. 401.]
Clearly, something must be done to ratify, not least about renewable residence permits and reflection periods. Will the Minister make it clear what legislation is required and when that can happen, within the constraints of Government business, so that we have a clear idea of when we will ratify?
I thank the Chairman and other members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights for their valuable service to the House in analysing these issues so carefully and for bringing to the House such a well-considered and well-evidenced report.
4.21 pm
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I approach this debate and the wider subject with proper diffidence because I am not, unlike the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), the Chairman or even a member of his Committee; I am not, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen), chairman of the all-party group; I am not, unlike the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), a member of both; and I am not, unlike the Minister, a Minister with responsibility for this area of public policy. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who is sitting behind the Minister for the moment, having temporarily moved her position in the Chamber, is, of course, also a member of the Joint Committee. I am surrounded and chaired by people with immense knowledge of the subject.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes is a former practising member of the Bar, he will understand the expression “a return”. I have been handed this brief by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) who, regretfully, cannot be here today for a number of reasons. Had he been here, I am sure that he would have provided a far more interesting and coherent response to the debate on behalf of the Conservative party. None the less, it is fair to say that despite my relative newness to this home affairs subject, I need not enter a competition to see who can speak the longest to make one or two points.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon, not as a matter of formality, on his chairmanship of the Joint Committee. He has produced a number of interesting reports and held a number of interesting evidence sessions on a range of issues concerning human rights, but on the subject of human trafficking, which is a matter of growing public salience and concern, he and his colleagues have done a particular service, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes.
My only caveat, which has nothing to do with the hon. Gentleman, but concerns the usual channels and those who arrange the timing of these debates, is that his evidence sessions took place last summer, and the Government responded before Christmas, but it is now nearly the summer of 2007 before we have had an opportunity to debate the matter. Perhaps on future occasions it may be better for the development of
public policy and the chiding of Government, which my hon. Friend did during his powerful and bravura performance for several minutes, that these debates should return to this Chamber or the Floor of the House rather more quickly than the Joint Committee’s report and the Government’s formal response to it.
I shall not repeat what everyone else has said in describing the context of the debate. All hon. Members in the Chamber, and many who will read our debate later or who may be listening to it now, know precisely the context of the problem, and its huge dimension and hideous nature, as well as the damage caused to victims of trafficking. My hon. Friend was entirely right to concentrate during the 30 or so minutes of his speech on the problems suffered by children who are trafficked. He was also entirely right to concentrate his fire on the Government to ensure that they do something to alleviate the conditions of such children, both by deterring trafficking of them and, if they are victims, ensuring that they are cared for humanely and sensibly by genuinely providing them with assistance, rather than terrifying them or forcing them underground, which leads to further problems.
Baroness Stern is a member of the Joint Committee, and she and I share an interest in prison reform. One thing that concerns me as the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman on prisons is the huge number of damaged children who were sexually abused and so on when they were under 18 and end up in custody because they themselves become criminals. In cases of sexual abuse particularly, the victim, 10, 20 or 30 years later, often commits the offence that was committed against them against their own children or others like them. Trafficking children has consequences and a ripple effect into our whole criminal justice system, which the Home Office and/or the Ministry of Justice must closely concern themselves with.
I do not want to avoid the subject, but I do not think repetition will assist, and I want briefly to give an outline of my party’s view of the matter. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon correctly pointed out that my party has been a front-runner in lobbying the Government to sign and ratify the convention that we have been talking about. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer to the reservation about the United Nations convention, not because I am hiding something, but because I genuinely do not know the answer.
I understand that the Government’s position—the Minister will explain this better than I can—is that the United Nations convention, as distinct from the Council of Europe convention, contains provisions that are antipathetic to our domestic law on immigration. I fear that the Minister will have to resolve that in his own mind while he is in government.
It is fair to say that the Conservative party’s view—I say this without advice from my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford—is that anything that interferes with the protection of trafficked people in this country who are genuine victims and not cheats should be removed. However, I have not studied the niceties or details of the two conventions, nor the current state of our immigration law. None the less, it is also fair to say that the Government have introduced a number of changes to the criminal law that add greater protection to those who are trafficked.
Mr. Steen: It is not a question of passing more laws. We have endless laws. Does my hon. and Learned Friend agree that the problem is enforcing the laws and having a body of people who do what the law already says? Playing around with the details will not change the problem. The problem will be solved only by bodies of men and women, not just politicians, but operatives, the police, the immigration service and non-governmental organisations doing things with vigour and fervour.
Mr. Garnier: My hon. Friend is right and wholly uncontroversial. Common sense goes a long way in this world. We have had at least 60 Home Office Bills since 1997, and if they were all designed to rid the country of crime and had been successful this would be a crime-free society. In fact, our prisons are now fuller by 20,000 than in 1997, yet the Government proclaim that our crime rate is down. I do not know how they manage to marry up those two assertions.
The convention has been signed, but as others have said, we want it ratified. That requires political will, leadership from the Government, and energy and verve. All they have to do is to get on with it. If we think that the convention is good enough to sign, surely it is good enough to ratify. We should not be one of the last countries to do so.
The Conservatives have said—I am repeating others who have spoken on behalf of the party in other forums—that a UK border police force should be established with a specialist expertise, first, to ensure that those who come into the country are doing so legitimately, for reasons such as tourism or business or whatever, and, secondly, to ensure that those who may enter the country under duress can be humanely filtered. I do not mean to use “filtered” in an inhumane or derogatory sense, but people need to be assisted through careful handling at ports of entry.
For example, minors who enter the country with adults who are not their parents or guardians should be interviewed as carefully as possible to ensure that they have some understanding of why they are travelling to this country. Non-related adults who accompany youngsters may not be their traffickers, but they may be the mules or cat’s paws of the traffickers, and they, again, should be interviewed separately so that their bona fide problems can be discovered at an early stage.
We want to strengthen co-ordination between the relevant Departments; this is a matter not only for the Home Office or the Foreign Office. Other agencies such as domestic departments, local government authorities, the police and our various security agencies will be involved. Those bodies would be required as a consequence of Government leadership to co-operate to ensure that, even if the convention is signed and ratified, and even if aspects of it are brought into domestic law, they are implemented, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes said, in a way that leads to positive results and reduces and deters the illegal trafficking of people.
Such action cannot be beyond the wit of man. The Government have had any number of reviews, conferences and summits. It cannot be beyond the wit of even this Government, at this stage, as they draw towards the end of their tenure, to produce some form
of strategy for all their agencies to ensure that the issue is dealt with coherently and sensibly.
Those people who are in the country, who have succeeded, as it were, in getting under the wire, but who none the less find a way of seeking help, need to have reliable access to trustworthy people. It does not always have to be the state that provides such help. Other Members have mentioned non-state organisations and charitable bodies such as the POPPY project and the Eaves housing charity, which has done good work on the rescuing of trafficked people.
Mr. Garnier: ECPAT, also, as my hon. Friend correctly tells me, has done good work. To persuade you, Mr. Bercow, that I have done some preparation, ECPAT stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes, and the organisation’s full name is ECPAT UK. I mentioned several non-state organisations that any worthwhile Government should enable to do more. As I said, the problem does not require us parliamentarians to reserve action, common sense and implementation for the state.
We want to expand the number of safe houses, and support them. At the moment, remarkably few trafficked people who have been rescued are in safe houses, and the people who are trafficked, particularly for exploitation in the sex trade, can be numbered in their thousands. I understand from the Eaves housing charity that, now, almost 10,000 victims of trafficking are working in prostitution in London and the west midlands alone. Ten years ago, 85 per cent. of women working in brothels were UK citizens; now it is the other way around: 85 per cent. of women working in brothels are from outside the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting that all that 85 per cent. represents trafficked people, but I do not need to push those figures far for hon. Members to get the message.
We need to ensure that we start properly to police our United Kingdom borders. Sixty per cent. of illegal immigrants resident in the UK arrive in the back of a lorry. Of course, there are X-ray machines, sniffer dogs and all sorts of other non-human, human and animal ways in which one can try to do one’s best to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. It is bad enough that there are illegal immigrants, but it is worse—I hope that hon. Members will agree—when those people are brought here illegally for an improper purpose and to their own detriment, without us being able to do more of a practical nature about it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes and others mentioned that there have been incredibly few convictions for offences relating to trafficking: only 30 convictions for trafficking offences were secured between 2004 and 2006. In 2004, only 11 employers were prosecuted under the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, and only eight of those were found guilty. There have so far been no convictions for the offence of trafficking for labour exploitation.
I believe that the hon. Member for Hendon, the Chairman of the Joint Committee, mentioned the question of the confiscation of the assets of those who are guilty—[Interruption.] Actually, it was my hon.
Friend the Member for Totnes who mentioned the confiscation of money from those who are responsible for the employment of trafficked people. We know about the failings of the Assets Recovery Agency: is this another example? I urge the Minister to do his best to apply the vim and vigour for which he is renowned throughout the east midlands as a constituency Member to that aspect of Government policy.
Enough has been said, certainly by me, on the subject. I congratulate all who have spoken in this debate on their contributions, common sense and the way in which they have focused their attention on the good things that the Government do and have done, and the good things that the Government need to finish and to do to ensure that this evil trade is stamped out.
4.37 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Vernon Coaker): May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Bercow? I know the frustration that you will be feeling sitting in the Chair, rather than being allowed to contribute to the debate, as the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) said. I know that you have firm views on the subject, and that you will be following proceedings with the utmost diligence and interest.
May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), the Liaison Committee and others on securing the debate? It has been a discussion as much as a debate. As hon. Members have said, the important thing is for us to raise the issues and to consider how we make progress. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and other members of the Committee have made a significant contribution to the development of policy.
It is sometimes said that Select Committee reports gather dust and do not actually make any difference. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, as well as other hon. Friends and hon. Members on the Committee, should know that the fact that the Committee called me before it, raised certain questions and challenged the Government—not in a nasty, sneering way, but in an intellectual and emotional but fair way—made a huge difference to the way in which the whole debate was looked at and is, if I may say so without going over the top, a great tribute to them.
Alongside that was the massive contribution that other hon. Members made. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Totnes. He made some kind remarks about me, which was nice of him. I understand perfectly the challenge that these debates and discussions present. I pay tribute to the work that he has done and to the passionate way in which he continues to raise this issue. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but if I was to deliver him the policy of his dreams, he would try to have an Adjournment debate the next day, saying that it was not enough. I mean that as a compliment. He is continually challenging us and at the heart of what he is saying is the desire to do as much as he can for exploited children in this and many other countries.
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