Westminster Hall
Tuesday 3 February 2009
[Mr. Bill Olner in the Chair]
Human Trafficking Convention
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Meg Hillier.)
9.30 am
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes) (Con): Let me introduce the debate by saying that, by and large, the Government have done a pretty good job regarding human trafficking. That strangely corresponds with the inauguration of the all-party group on trafficking of women and children two and a half years ago.
It is worth saying, for the record, what has been achieved since the group was formed in July 2006. A number of people and organisations have visited us, including the POPPY project and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, who explained why so few charges and convictions are directed against traffickers. In October, we asked the director of children’s services at Manchester city council and the co-chair of the social services asylum taskforce why trafficked children go missing from social service care so quickly. In December, we heard about Operation Pentameter 2 and the police prioritisation of tackling human trafficking, received presentations by the head of the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield, and heard the chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency speak about how trafficked children slipped through the immigration system.
In conjunction with the all-party group, the police launched the Blue Blindfold campaign in the House of Commons to raise awareness about trafficking in and around the United Kingdom. Officers visited the asylum screening unit in Croydon and immigration control at Gatwick, and I had the privilege of going with a Home Affairs Committee delegation to Ukraine and Russia as an expert. The group heard a presentation by the chief constable of Gloucestershire police, and a pan-European campaign to establish parliamentary groups such as ours in EU member states’ Parliaments to press Governments to take action against trafficking was launched at Speaker’s House.
While all that was going on, there were parliamentary debates and more than 100 parliamentary questions were asked. Since the formation of the group, the Government have done a great deal across the UK to publicise and make people aware of human trafficking problems. They announced the review of the current reservation on the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. The Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings was signed in 2006, but will come into force only this year.
I am sorry that the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing is unable to attend this morning. I am told that that is not because of the snow, but because he is speaking for the Government in the Policing and Crime Public Bill Committee. The House knows that he is committed to ridding the country of
trafficking. I nevertheless welcome the Under-Secretary—not only have I always found her sympathetic, understanding and well informed, but I think we see eye to eye on the problems of new slavery. I realise that this subject is not her ministerial responsibility, and that she has been wheeled in at relatively short notice. She will enjoy fielding the range of questions that I will be asking; although she might not be able to answer some of them today, I know that she will write to me and members of the all-party group later.
Not only is the group a force to be reckoned with in the Commons, but it is also a force in the Lords. Baroness Butler-Sloss takes a particular interest, as a vice-chairman of the all-party group, in what is being done to tackle child slavery, and Baroness Nicholson who, as the Minister will know, virtually single-handedly caused the Romanian orphanages to close, has helped immeasurably with the plight of children in Iraq. We are, indeed, fortunate that we have such women of distinction serving as officers, including the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride).
One of the things we achieved collectively was to persuade the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to sign the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. That was, in fact, in March 2007, and nearly two years passed before its ratification, the week before Christmas. The Home Office said there was a delay because it was, understandably, the Government’s policy not to ratify until everything was in place. Now the Government have ratified the convention, there is another delay and it will not take effect until 1 April. Will the Minister explain what will happen between ratification just before Christmas and 1 April? How will 1 April be different from the situation just before Christmas? What will be the changes in Britain if someone who is trafficked is found either just before Christmas, just after Christmas, or after April?
May I ask the Minister some specific questions about the convention? I shall mention a number of articles. First, article 10 deals with the identification of victims. The European convention suggests that international good practice is that there is no lead department—a single competent authority—and that decision making should be devolved across a range of authorities at a regional and local level, so that it is closest to the location of the victim, rather than being hundreds of miles away. Support services could then be agreed, co-ordinated and provided quickly. For children, that would be through local authority children’s services.
Competent authorities are the key to getting support flowing to the victims of human trafficking as soon as they are found. However, the Government propose to make the UK Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield the single competent authority, with decisions made by UK Border Agency staff inside the UK Human Trafficking Centre. There is now a groundswell of opinion from nearly every non-governmental agency that that is precisely the wrong way to proceed. Although the Government have delayed another three months, it is a great pity to get it wrong at the outset when there has been so much progress on getting the convention ratified. If the UK Human Trafficking Centre is, in fact, the only competent authority, the suspicion is that decisions will not be
transparent because it is within the police authority and the immigration focus will be organised by the UK Border Agency—the UK Human Trafficking Centre will have a number of UK Border Agency staff. There will be no appeals process, so nobody will know what is going on.
Instead, the Government must ensure that decisions are made quickly and efficiently to enable the fast referral of victims to support services. Therefore, all local authorities, the police, the UK Border Agency and the UK Human Trafficking Centre should all be competent authorities. Perhaps the Minister will explain why we cannot have four competent authorities. I know that it is tidier to have one, but it will not work. It will not be good, and it will not get the support of those who are working in the field. That is the view of those who know what they are talking about, rather than of the officials, who often do not.
If the UK Human Trafficking Centre is the sole competent authority, there will also be operational problems. Let me give a vivid illustration. I did not believe that human trafficking would come directly to south Devon, but just before Christmas I became aware of the case of a young Czech woman, who was flown into Bristol airport—rather than London—and believed she was going to work in a gym or something similar. She was trained as a gymnast and a masseur dealing with sports injuries. She was collected from Bristol airport and ended up not in a gym in a salubrious hotel, but in a less salubrious brothel in the centre of Paignton. Needless to say, that is not in my constituency, but that of the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders)—although it is a stone’s throw from mine.
I am glad to say that the girl was absolutely appalled by what she was asked to do. I think that she was raped at least eight or nine times on the first night that she was there. She managed to escape—I do not have the exact details—and went to a nightclub or pub at about 3 in the morning, where she sought refuge, asking the owner to protect and help her. So distressed was the lady in the club or pub that the owner called the police. No sooner had she done so than the owners of the brothel, two Czech ladies, arrived to drag the girl away. I am pleased to say that the brothel has been closed, the owners have been apprehended and the girl was rescued by the police, who behaved in the most impeccable way. They managed to find a hotel in Torbay that would take the girl, and they have flown her back to the Czech Republic.
Let me explain where the problem is. The first problem is that the detective inspector responsible for rescuing the woman said that although he was trained in dealing with victims of trafficking, no one else in his team was. It might be said that in Devon and Cornwall, one would not expect a large number of trafficked people, but only two officers in the whole of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary, which is 3,500 in strength, have been trained in the past 12 months in how to deal with trafficking, and one of those two has retired since then.
There are no more training courses. The UK Human Trafficking Centre ought to be running them for police forces all over Britain. If it is the only competent authority, it should be doing so. If it is not, why is the Home Office not inviting non-governmental agencies to
run courses to train the police? Some very good non-governmental organisations work closely with the Government and are on Government steering panels. How is it that the Government plan to ratify the convention when one of our police forces in Britain has only two people—only one now—who understand anything about trafficking and can identify it?
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South) (LD): Sadly, the situation that the hon. Gentleman described in his constituency is not unique. It is par for the course right across the country. The problem with NGOs doing the training is that the police must understand what the convention is about and the legal implications of giving protection to victims. It is not simply about getting them out of the situation that they are in; the police need training in advising victims of trafficking how they can be protected, give evidence and get ongoing support to remain in the country. Unfortunately, I do not think that many NGOs are equipped to give the police that sort of guidance. That is why I believe that it is up to the Government to provide that training, so that no police force in the country is deficient in it.
Mr. Steen: That is helpful. I thank the hon. Member for Frome for that helpful comment.
Mr. Hancock: Actually, it is Portsmouth, South.
Mr. Steen: That will do; I am happy with Portsmouth, South. It can be Frome or Portsmouth, South. I apologise.
By all means, bring in lawyers to train the police, but most of the grass-roots intelligence and information that our Committee receives—it is extremely valuable—comes from the non-governmental agencies. I pay tribute to the quality of those that we have. I know that they do training—possibly not as entirely as the hon. Gentleman would like; perhaps it should be done in conjunction with them—and I am most grateful for his useful comments. However, there is no doubt that the training of the police must be a central feature of the implementation of the convention. Obviously it is early days, but I want the Minister to say that there will be a lot of training, that the UK Human Trafficking Centre will co-ordinate it and that the centre will also use non-governmental agencies.
I now want to deal with the second problem that emerged from the case in Paignton. To begin with, no money is allocated to repatriate victims of human trafficking who come from the European Union; there is only money available to repatriate victims who come from non-EU countries. So, if a trafficked person comes from Nigeria, the Government will find funds to send them back on a plane. I do not know if the Minister knows this, but if a victim comes from any of the 27 EU countries there is no Government money allocated for them. So there was the girl, desperate to get back to the Czech Republic, and there was no money to send her back.
Needless to say, I have a very ingenious and altruistic constabulary in Devon and Cornwall. Not only did the inspector who was put in charge of this particular case at 3 or 4 am find a very prestigious hotel in Torquay that would kindly accept this girl for the rest of the
night, but he found the transport and air fare for her from the local police budget so that she could return to the Czech Republic.
However, let me explain to the Minister where the problem lies. Other than that hotel, where could the police have put that girl to ensure that she was safe? That is what we are concerned about. The police did not contact the UK Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield, or at least the centre did not know of the case. If it had known of it, the only place that the centre would ever have recommended is the POPPY project. The POPPY project gets more than £1 million from the Government in London. It does a splendid job, but it is only in London and it is for girls of 18 and over.
In fact, the girl was over 18, so she could have been sent to London. However, just imagine her trauma: having thought that she was going to a gym, she finds herself in a brothel; she is rescued by the police, and there is nowhere that the police know of where she can receive the support, consultation, advice and reassurance that she needs. She does not know what is going on and she has no money.
In fact, once again the ingenuity of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary helped the girl. I think that the constabulary found some refuge for her in a church hostel, but that was not ideal. In this case, the traffickers had been arrested so they were not able to take the girl away from the refuge, but that is what can happen. The police were completely at a loss as to what to do with the girl, other than to use their own ingenuity, because it was the first time that they had had that problem in Devon.
I say to the Minister that every police force in Britain should be linked up to the UK Human Trafficking Centre; all the forces should know that that centre is the port of call, at any time of the day or night, for this type of problem, and the centre should have a list of refuges for every part of the country. There are very few of those refuges, but the centre should at least know where they are. Most important of all, however, the centre should have contact with the non-governmental agencies in every part of Britain that can assist with these matters. That was not the case in this particular situation.
I point out to the Minister that we have been talking about these issues for about two and a half years; the all-party group on the trafficking of women and children has been in existence for that time. We have asked enough questions and had enough debates. I was really quite appalled that just before Christmas there was still no network. Despite all that the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing has said, there was no network that the police could tap into in order to help this girl, no funds to send her back and, much worse, no linkage to the non-governmental agencies in any of the EU countries.
The Czech Republic has a lot of first-rate non-governmental agencies. If the Devon and Cornwall police had been linked in to the non-governmental agencies in Britain through the UK Human Trafficking Centre, they could have alerted the non-governmental agencies in the Czech Republic and ensured that someone from those agencies was there to meet the girl off the plane. That did not happen. This is obviously sub judice, so I will not go into further detail. All I will say is that the networking and arrangements that could have been made were not made. I mention that incident so
that the Minister can ensure that such a case does not happen again. As the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) said, the matter is not confined to Paignton, but extends to Portsmouth as well.
Mr. Hancock: The problem is that the Czech Republic takes little or no action on trafficking. It probably has close to the worst record of corruption in the EU, and little or no action has been taken to deal with the source of trafficking. Sadly, though, that is not unique. I am interested to know what happened to the people who were trafficking that woman. They were both Czech citizens in the UK. Were they deported from the country? What was the end result of the prosecution’s case against the brothel owners?
Mr. Steen: I am happy to answer those questions. I was mildly surprised to learn that the girl had come from the Czech Republic because the European Scrutiny Committee—of which I am a member—had been there before the Czech Republic took over the presidency. The Deputy Prime Minister told us that the amount of trafficking in the Czech Republic was so small that he did not consider it necessary to concentrate any time or resources on it, so there was a bit of a conflict. The problem is to persuade all the EU Parliaments to take an interest in such matters. After the European Scrutiny Committee visit, I met some MPs who said that they would be surprised if I found five Members of Parliament in the Czech Republic interested in discussing the matter.
Article 13 covers the recovery and reflection period. The Government decided to offer a 45-day reflection period to victims of trafficking. However, that is not nearly enough, although it is longer than the time outlined in the convention. I have spent time in a refuge in Rome, which is funded by the Catholic Church. It does a fantastic job in rehabilitating women who have been trafficked—many of whom are from Albania. The psychologists there said that a year’s rehabilitation was the minimum, but that three years is needed to get such women back into society so that they can play a normal part in it and get a normal job. Therefore, 45 days is a rather modest period. I also wonder when it starts. Does it start when the police find the victim, when they arrest them in the course of a raid or when they identify them as a victim of trafficking some time after they were initially discovered?
Before I move on to article 14, may I refer to something that the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South said? What has happened to the brothel owners? I am told that they have been arrested and that they are in custody subject to a prosecution, which can only be brought if the girl in the Czech Republic is prepared to give evidence against them. I am told that she is, but the costs and the organisation required are clear.
Let me go back to article 14, which covers residence permits. I am very interested in such permits and have seen them operate in Italy. The trafficked victim gets a year’s identity papers and that is sufficient for them to get a job. Many of them do get jobs. A friendly pizza parlour employed many of the girls who worked in the refuge. The owner was well disposed towards them because he found that they were very good workers, but they needed the identity papers to work. The Minister will know that most trafficked victims do not have passports. That is because their passports have either
been destroyed or taken away by the traffickers, so they—especially those from Europe—have no identification. Some of the younger people crossing from China and Vietnam swallow their passports on that journey or flush them down the loo so that they have no passports when they come off the plane. If they have no passports and no identity papers they do not technically receive entitlement to health care or education. Will the Government ensure that some kind of identity card or paper is given to the victims of trafficking? That is another key point of the convention.
Article 15 deals with compensation for victims. That is an interesting issue. Hon. Members may remember that The Observer identified several cases six or eight months ago. It reported that sex slaves who had been trafficked into Britain were to receive millions of pounds for their “pain and trauma,” following a decision to compensate victims of people trafficking. The first payouts, of more than £140,000, were made early last year to four women who had suffered
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