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3 Feb 2009 : Column 163WH—continued
“a sustained period of sexual abuse”.
The problem is that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, which paid out that money, gave away public money—taxpayers’ funds. Why cannot the law be changed to use money confiscated from traffickers to compensate victims? Why does the money have to come from the public purse? How much of the more than £500,000 confiscated from traffickers under Pentameter 2—the police operation involving every police force in Great Britain—has been given to victims? I know the answer—none of it. The money has gone into the Treasury.
The recovery-of-expenses provision in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 could have enabled the proceeds from traffickers to fund support programmes for trafficked victims, but it did not. Does the Minister agree that we could add a new clause to the Policing and Crime Bill, currently in Committee, to allow the proceeds from traffickers to go to the victims? I would be grateful if she considered that. We could add a new clause when the Bill comes back before the House.
Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): Before the hon. Gentleman moves on from articles 12 to 15, may I raise this point? He touched on the 45-day period, but he clarified earlier that the Government have not yet introduced that and it will be introduced only in April, along with the residency provision. It is important to understand why that need cannot be provided for now and whether a shortage of accommodation prevents the victims from being treated even for 45 days—I think everyone recognises that they really need a period of 90 days.
Mr. Steen: It is a pleasure to have a question from one of the three joint secretaries of the all-party group. We did have a problem in that regard. I think that, given that we had two secretaries, the powers here thought it was a bit excessive to have three, but I explained that the hon. Gentleman was a medical doctor and that given the subject of the group, it would be useful to have a medical doctor on board. For that reason we are, I think, the only all-party group with three secretaries.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. What he says is absolutely right. The Government’s approach
is that they will give the women a so-called period of reflection—a strange phrase—but at the moment that is linked to whether they are prepared to give evidence against the traffickers, and many of them are terrified to give evidence. They have been warned of the consequences for their brothers and sisters or other members of their families of their giving evidence. The gangs are very powerful. If a girl has been trafficked into Britain and turns against the gang, she knows that she could be in for a very rough time for the rest of her life. The reflection period ought to be longer, ought to start now and ought not to be linked to giving evidence against the traffickers.
I shall move on to article 28 in the short time left—I know that many hon. Members wish to speak and I would be glad to hear what they have to say. There is a serious problem about how to treat vulnerable victims. The problem is that social services cannot treat vulnerable victims. The victim strategy is one of the biggest challenges facing the police. They can make arrests all right, but they cannot do anything further with the victims, such as putting them in social services care. Often, the children are released by the police, go back to the traffickers and go back on the streets or move on to another country. There is a big trade in trafficking between Britain and Spain. One merely needs to look at what is happening on many streets. Much of the begging in London involves young people, and women with babies, who are fluent in Spanish as well as English, but are not from Spain or Britain.
I have the privilege of participating in the police service parliamentary scheme. As part of my police duties, I went out on patrol with Baroness Butler-Sloss and the police in the Marble Arch, Edgware Road and Paddington area. We were looking for young Roma children overtly begging on the streets. Some 1,015 Roma children have been identified by police as trafficked from eastern Europe. They are organised by criminal gangs for the purpose of criminal exploitation on our streets: begging, shoplifting and the commission of ATM thefts. Some are under 10, the age of criminal responsibility.
It is a major problem for the police. They are trying to tackle it, but they cannot do so without greater help. The problem is that they can offer the children, whom they arrest in order to take them to a place of safety, little incentive to tell their story or testify against their traffickers, because the children do not see themselves as victims and have developed a relationship with their traffickers similar to what is known as Stockholm syndrome. They see their lives as ordinary rather than as lives of exploitation or slavery.
Local authority care is proving a major headache. The local authority where a child lives is responsible for the child’s care, but the child is often found on the streets committing crime in another local authority area. As the local authorities do not communicate with one another to arrange transfer of that child’s care, the responsibility falls on the police, who can offer no provision of care except a police cell, as they have been known to do at the Charing Cross police station. I have visited it, and I have seen what the cells are like. They are certainly not up to even the bed and breakfast standard. I would not wish a child to stay there for a single night. It is clearly not suitable.
The recent case of a child arrested by the West End Central police team in Westminster was rather indicative. Westminster has one of the best social services departments in the country, yet no one turned up to do an assessment. Westminster understandably claimed that with only one social worker on duty during the night, it was unable to assist, despite the fact that the police believed the child to be a victim of trafficking. That child was never placed in care but was released back into the community. Examples such as that make the implementation of the convention urgent and crucial so that local authorities can finally have practical guidelines, strategies and resources to deal with victims of trafficking, especially children.
On my police visits, I discovered a young woman in her teens in Marble Arch underground station. The situation was only too familiar. She knew that after five hours’ questioning in Marylebone police station, with an interpreter paid for at the public expense, she would be released back to her family in Seven Sisters. She said that it was her uncle, but we did not know. On that occasion, Haringey social services, again understandably, said that they could not take the teenager into care because she would abscond within hours and there was no place of safety to put her.
Furthermore—this is also significant for the Minister to understand—many such children are from Romania and Bulgaria, and there are no Romanian or Bulgarian foster families on the Government lists. That is something on which initiatives should be taken. As she will know, there is no POPPY project for children under 18; the project deals with adults, principally in London. The police can place children in local authority care only. The problem must be addressed. How can social services, which have enough problems dealing with children from our own country, deal with the children from every EU country who happen to be found on our streets? We have not got to grips with the problem, and the police are despairing.
The legislation on baby trafficking is not quite strong enough. It uses the double intention: it must be proved that the trafficker arranged or facilitated the travel and that the trafficker intended to exploit. Those two things are necessary. The police often have evidence that they did arrange and facilitate the travel, but cannot prove intent to exploit, or vice versa. That is especially true if the victim is as young as they often are and therefore unable to express themselves at all. The problem is that there is a gap in the legislation as it relates to babies. Clause 4(4)(d) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 states that a person is exploited if
“he is requested or induced to undertake any activity”,
but a child is not able to do that.
I wrote to the Home Secretary before Christmas after she suggested that I should send her a letter highlighting some of the non-governmental organisations that had the best possible practices in trafficking, and for the past two and a half years we, as a group, have worked with several of them. The problem they all have is funding administrative costs. They can always get grants to do research, run conventions or arrange training, but they do not have funds to underpin the administrative costs, which are modest but essential. I feel sure that the convention could be implemented better if the five NGOs that I specified in my letter to the Home Secretary
were taken more seriously—it has been nearly two months since I wrote the letter, but I am sure she will acknowledge it soon.
NGOs are terribly cheap for what they do, as their work is invaluable. For every £1 the Government give, they probably get £3 more from private enterprise and other charitable trusts. I wonder whether the Minister, or at least her officials, could look at my suggestions and meet those organisations, because the convention could be implemented better in many fields if they were on board. The amount of money required by each of them is probably the equivalent of one civil servant’s salary from her Department. I am not suggesting that she should make redundancies, but that is the amount of money we are talking about.
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind): The hon. Gentleman is a doughty campaigner on trafficking, and has put it on the map and done a great public service. On adult trafficking and the convention, Pentameter 2 revealed that many victims come from Africa and countries in the far east, such as China and Thailand, and that they are procured in a different way and have different problems when they come to this country. Is the convention sensitive enough to deal with the different issues that arise from the trafficking of adults from different countries and cultures?
Mr. Steen: My hon. Friend—I will refer to him as such because I expect him to come back to the party soon, as perhaps this is just a little mid-life crisis—is absolutely right that there are different approaches from different countries: the Vietnamese boys tend to specialise in growing cannabis and an enormous number of Chinese come for work, the largest figure in fact. All those people have an economic thrust in wanting to better themselves, and I am sure that there is sufficient flexibility in the convention.
The Government’s track record is one of the best in Europe, and it is now a question of implementation and of whether the new Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department will be as flexible and passionate as the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing has been. I do not know the answer to that, but we will keep an eagle eye on it.
I am interested to see that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) is present. He is Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—there are so many Select Committees that it is difficult to keep up with them all—and much more of an authority on the international aspect of trafficking than I am. My understanding is focused much more on trafficking in Europe, but I know that the big problems in that regard come from the far east.
I have had a good run and given a few answers to a few questions, but I am sure that colleagues would now like to join the debate. I hope that the Minister, whom I am delighted to see, will be able to deal with some of those issues, if not now, then later, and make Britain one of the worst places—
Mr. Bill Olner (in the Chair):
I intend the winding-up speeches on this important subject to start at 10.25 am, starting with the Liberal Democrat spokesman, followed
by the Conservative spokesman and then the Minister, so Members should exercise some discipline in the length of their speeches.
Mr. Steen: On a point of order, Mr. Olner. May I just say, so that the Hansard Reporters understand, that when I said, “the worst place,” I meant, “one of the worst places to traffic people”?
10.10 am
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing this debate and on his tour de force of a speech. I will take your comments to heart, Mr. Olner, because he did not leave a great deal for the rest of us to cover.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am Chairman, has done a lot of work on the issue. We started an inquiry on it some three years ago and were all pretty horrified by what we found. The inquiry is still open, and we have been nibbling away at the Government throughout the period, as the hon. Gentleman has, to improve their response. Compared with three years ago, the situation now constitutes a significant and major improvement—I do not think that anyone would dispute that.
One issue that we raised in our report following the inquiry was the lack of hard evidence about the scale of the problem. That issue remains. Operation Pentameter 2 was helpful in that it found 167 victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. However, the figures also show how difficult it is to track down the traffickers, because many operate out of private homes, and many victims are unwilling to co-operate with the police or simply disappear. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am particularly concerned about child victims of trafficking. Operation Pentameter 2 discovered 13, six of whom were returned to their home country. I am very concerned that not enough is being done to protect those victims.
A key issue on trafficking—the hon. Gentleman focused on victims, which I will address in a moment—is the importance of the police operation to track down, arrest and prosecute traffickers. I was concerned when I heard that the Government were withdrawing funding for the Metropolitan Police Service human trafficking team next year. I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), on behalf of the Committee on 9 December about that, and received a prompt reply from him:
“the Home Office has decided to provide additional one-off funding for the Metropolitan Police Service Trafficking Team”
for 2009-10. Everyone will agree that the team is the country’s leader but, obviously, that prompts the question: what will happen after that period? The reply stated:
“Human trafficking is now part of core business for all police forces. This funding is designed to enable the MPS to mainstream this work into its daily activities in a planned and organised fashion”.
The inference is that the money will not continue beyond the financial year. We were told that the idea is
“to find more efficient methods to mainstream this work effectively”,
but that is like trying to get a quart out of a pint pot. The MPS is always having its budget squeezed—London
MPs have had lots of representations about that this year, as we do every year—and it would be very difficult for the team to be maintained in the absence of the relevant funding.
The hon. Member for Totnes did a good job when he spoke about victim-focused issues. I entirely agree with him on the recovery and reflection period. When we investigated the matter, my Committee recommended a far longer period than the 45 days that is currently provided.
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on compensation to this extent: it is appropriate for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to pay the compensation, because to do otherwise would lead to significant delays. The CICA is slow enough as it is, but if we rely on the proceeds of crime, which might be seized much later than the orders are made, the victims would go uncompensated for even longer. That money goes into central funds. He had a point when he said that it might be useful to earmark it for particular projects of a more general nature, but it should not be for individual compensation—that would simply lead to delays and further problems.
The hon. Gentleman was right to point out the difficulties of accommodation. The Joint Committee received a note from the Home Office, in reply to inquiries that we made following a session last autumn with my hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, saying that the Government are seeking to grant-fund 55 intensive crisis refuge places for victims in England and Wales. However, that will not begin until the next financial year, as the hon. Member for Totnes said earlier. It is difficult to understand why we have a hiatus of three months or so before such things are put into place. The hon. Gentleman also made the important point that the POPPY project does not cater for under-18s, so we have something of a lacuna in the provisions.
The Committee welcomes the decision to lift the reservations on the UN convention on the rights of the child. That is an important development, and I hope that it will lead to additional protection.
The ratification of the Council of Europe convention has been a long and painful process. The hon. Gentleman’s all-party group and my Committee were bashing away at it for some time, as were hon. Members in all quarters of the House. I do not know how many debates we had about the issue, but, eventually, they bore fruit, and, although the hon. Gentleman has highlighted many of the bad things that we have seen, dealt with and haggled for over the years, it has become apparent that we in the UK do receive international recognition for our good practice.
We have much to learn from other places, however, and my Committee, like the hon. Gentleman, learned much from what happens in Italy. He and I went to the Inter-Parliamentary Union special conference in Vienna last year. We both made presentations to people from around the world, and it was linked to the United Nations conference. In April 2008, I was invited to speak at the IPU assembly as its rapporteur on the issue of people trafficking. Again, I described the good practice in this country and what ought to be done in other countries, so we are able to put our experiences to good use around the world. This week, we have the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference,
which will focus on trafficking. Again, the hon. Gentleman and I will participate in it to try to spread our good practice.
Although we beat up the Minister and the Government because of all the things that have not been done, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. We should recognise that over the past three years, since the problem started to hit the news, we have moved on an awful lot.
10.16 am
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen). He does not need to be reminded by anyone in the House of the debt that we owe him and his all-party group. In two and a half years, it has achieved an awful lot, and that is much to his credit. Even though I have disagreed with some of his views on the matter during that time, I congratulate him first, on his consistency, and secondly, on his determination to bring the issue to the fore time and again.
I am delighted to say that as a member of the Council of Europe, I am pleased that the United Kingdom has at long last ratified the convention. The big disappointment of UK colleagues on the Council of Europe is the failure of other member states not only to sign and ratify the convention, which is the easiest part, but to implement it. The real failure has been on the part of those countries that know they are the origin of so much pain and suffering, whether it is to do with children, organs or women, or the economic exploitation of men who are brought in for cheap labour. Those countries, with very few exceptions, know that it is going on, but little or nothing is done to offer protection to the trafficked women, children or others when they are returned to their country. It is a bitter disappointment to me, as somebody who has written reports on the issue for the Council of Europe, to see the abject failure in many countries of origin, where little or nothing is done to protect the victims on their return home or their family—to give them some assurance that the process will not be repeated.
I have interviewed people and seen at first hand the consequences, when people are returned—indeed, from the United Kingdom—simply to be recycled through the machine. They are trafficked once again out of Moldova, through Romania, into Turkey, the Balkans and then Italy, only to be returned yet again. I met one young lady who was trafficked five different times through seven countries, because her parents were held almost captive back home by the ringleaders. They were well known to the authorities, but nothing was done about it.
In my own city, a brothel was recently raided and some Chinese girls were removed. Those victims were out of the country within a matter of days. Where were they returned to? China. Anyone who knows anything about the Chinese system will know that their families will pay a very high price for their return. It was as if the women were to blame for their traffickers’ arrest. The prosecution of those traffickers has still not taken place. They received asylum here, have become British citizens and will not be returned to China. They will serve a prison sentence, if we are lucky, and then be back in the game.
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