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3 Feb 2009 : Column 169WH—continued
The whole issue of what to do with the people who continue to perpetrate the trade needs to be reconsidered. It is no good allowing the people responsible for trafficking to be granted British citizenship. We should be able to remove it from them and they should be deported from the country. They should be forced to serve the length of their sentence in this country. We should not make any concessions to them at all, because the one thing that traffickers do not do is give any concessions to the people whom they traffic, whether they are children, women or men. One can read story after story, but when one physically meets these people and hears their stories first hand, distress does not even begin to explain how one feels. I have done so on numerous occasions and have felt sheer frustration and anger about not being able to do anything to save these people from the ongoing evilness that has surrounded their lives for so long.
Dr. Harris: My hon. Friend speaks with great passion. Does he agree that the tragedy has been—and I hope that the Government will change their policy—that victims are seen as immigration offenders and are removed even before there is any consideration of them helping with prosecution? Does he agree that it is a further tragedy that the funding for the Metropolitan police to deal with this vicious crime has been cut, as the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) said? At the same time, against official advice, the Government have decided to increase the criminalisation of the possession of cannabis, which will take more police resources.
Mr. Hancock: I agree entirely with all that my hon. Friend has said. One has only to look at the case of the Chinese girls, who were deported before the case was even brought. They could not give evidence, but it was as if we had achieved a breakthrough because we had removed people who were immigration problems. As if those people had not been through enough, although they were victims, it was not considered what would be in their best interests.
My hon. Friend is also right about the lack of resources. We only need to consider the pitiful number of prosecutions in relation to trafficking that have taken place in this country. If we were really tackling this issue, there would be a damn sight more prosecutions than there currently are. I realise the time and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for saying that he would not take part in the debate to give me some extra time. I also checked with our colleague with no party affiliation whether he would make interventions rather than speak, so I am aware of the time issue.
I hope that the Government will put considerable pressure on the Council of Europe and the Council of Ministers to say, “Come on. Don’t just have good reports and nice conventions so that everyone can claim the moral high ground by saying they have signed and ratified them.” Conventions are not worth their salt if the situation does not get better and we do not start to prevent such things happening.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD):
Has my hon. Friend any confidence in the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings that will be set up? It has its first meeting in February and its
purpose will be to monitor the implementation of the convention. Does he have any confidence that it will be able to do the job properly?
Mr. Hancock: It is good to know that implementation will at least be monitored. Whether it is the right body to do the monitoring or it has the capability to do it remains to be seen, but I hope that a year after April there will have been a significant improvement in the situation in our country.
More importantly, as I said, the Government must press the Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe. The EU should particularly be pressed on the amount of support it gives to countries that are outside the EU—in Africa and the far east. Part and parcel of that support should be that if we give aid, they must do something about this trade. I hope that it is made clear to all the embassies in London represented through the various Government bodies that it is unacceptable for Governments in Thailand, China and elsewhere not to take action on this matter. The Chinese Prime Minister is here today begging us not to take action on trade, but we should be begging him to take action on trafficking. We should say that we want a real commitment from the Chinese to do something about it.
West African trafficking in children continues to take place and to persist. So many lives are lost in journeys of horror and despair from Africa through Spain, or across the Canary Islands. Every day, people’s lives are lost in the Mediterranean, in one way or another. People are thrown overboard when the hideous crafts that they are on are approached by military or police vessels off the coasts of Spain or Italy.
If one goes to Lampedusa, in Italy, one can see the horrendous problems being faced there. Although the Italians have tried desperately hard, they have a serious problem, as Italy is a hotspot for trafficked women. The Italians may say that their non-governmental organisations are working effectively. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) tells me that one reason why more of the men who procure women are not prosecuted is that many of the women are saved after clients report matters to the authorities.
It is estimated that, on any day in Italy, 10,000 underage girls are working the streets. If they each have five men a night, then 50,000 criminal offences are committed every day by Italian men and visitors to Italy, but there are fewer than a handful of prosecutions for illegal sex in Italy. If we took a fraction of the resources that are spent by men in Europe on trafficked women, and put that into the countries of origin of those girls, perhaps many of them would not, as the hon. Member for Totnes said, see this as a means of escape and betterment. We should be looking to do more in those countries of origin, but only when those countries give us a firm commitment that they will tackle this issue. That is the good thing about the Council of Europe’s convention. The bad thing is that many of the 40-odd countries that have signed up to it are not going to do anything about it.
10.26 am
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD):
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) and other hon. Members, all of whom are articulate
speakers and campaigners on this issue. I shall restrict my comments to allow the Minister time to respond to the many points that have been raised, perhaps at the start of her speech.
Some 200 years ago, slavery was abolished by William Wilberforce’s campaign, but about 12 million people are now estimated to be living in slavery, at least half of whom are children and many of whom are trafficked. We have thus not eradicated that scourge yet. The statistics are very depressing. A May 2000 report from the university of North London estimated that between 142 and 1,420 women were trafficked into the UK every year. The range of that estimate underlines the point made by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) about how difficult it is to obtain accurate statistics about the scale of this problem, even though we know that it is significant and alarming.
The profit from traffic in human beings amounts to about $7 billion a year. In financial terms, human trafficking is on a par with drugs trafficking, so that gives us an idea of the scale of the problem with which we are dealing. Estimates suggest that half a million women were trafficked into the European Union in 1995. Many Members have mentioned Pentameter 2. During that six-month operation, back in July 2008, 167 victims were found, including 12 children, and there were 522 arrests, with the seizure of £3 million-worth of money and assets. Those statistics lead me to my first question. Is the Minister in a position to confirm how many of the people who were arrested were taken to court and how many were convicted? What lessons have been learned from that operation, and are they now being implemented? UNICEF’s report found that 183 of 330 trafficked children who were put into care in the UK later went missing, which leads to further questions about what work the Government are doing with local authorities to tackle that problem and to ensure that children who go into care do not simply disappear a few days later.
The Council of Europe’s timeline for taking action against the trafficking of human beings dates back some years—the oldest reference I have seen was from November 1996—so clearly this situation has been ongoing for many years. A recommendation was put to the Council in 1997, and much action—through many early-day motions, reports and so on—has been taken in Parliament. Obviously, it is pleasing that we have now reached the point of ratification, but it a great concern that that has taken so many years. I am sure that the Minister will argue that the Government have been taking action on other fronts—perhaps the most recent example is action on prostitution in the Policing and Crime Bill. However, there is not a unanimous view on the likely effectiveness of their approach, and there is a risk that their proposals will simply push prostitution further underground, perhaps leaving women even more vulnerable.
We have also heard references to the reduced funding for the Metropolitan police initiative, the welcome establishment of the Human Trafficking Centre and funding for the POPPY project. However, as the hon. Member for Totnes underlined, the latter scheme is available only to over-18s, and because it is based in London, it will not be readily accessible to people in other parts of the United Kingdom. Some progress is being made, however, and I believe that 25 places are available on the POPPY project. Has the Minister assessed
the demand for such a service and, therefore, whether there is a shortfall in the number of places? If there is a shortfall, what plans are in place to ensure that additional provision is made?
The convention has some clear benefits. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), confirmed in a letter that the Government believed that, in some cases, the 45-day period would be increased to 90 days or perhaps even longer. In what circumstances does the Minister expect the period to be extended from 45 days to 90 days or beyond? Various organisations, such as Amnesty International, are keen for the Government to deliver on that.
The hon. Member for Totnes said—I think—that the Human Trafficking Centre would be the only specialist organisation able to investigate whether trafficking had occurred, but the look on the Minister’s face suggested that that was news to her. Perhaps she did not believe that that was necessarily the case. I hope that she will clarify whether the Government have made a decision on what a competent authority is and that she will bear in mind the view of a variety of organisations that specialist organisations should be involved. That is our best chance of helping the victims of trafficking early on.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office explanatory note on implementation states:
“Primary legislation through an amendment in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 ensured that automatic deportation of victims of trafficking under the UK Borders Act 2007 cannot take place where it would breach our obligations under the Council of Europe Convention against Human Trafficking.”
Will the Minister clarify whether the counterpart of that would be that in some circumstances—I assume that there are no such circumstances—the automatic deportation of victims would be allowed because it was not in breach of the UK’s obligations under the convention? If there could be such circumstances, however, what would they be?
I will draw my comments to an end to enable the Minister to respond, hopefully in some detail. Clearly progress is being made in this area. However, there are concerns about the effectiveness of the convention. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) has expressed his concerns that the convention might simply be ratified by many countries, but observed by far fewer. I hope that the Minister can reassure us about the effectiveness of the monitoring organisation that will be set up, with the group of experts. Will it be able to ensure that the very large list of signatories, from Albania to Romania, observe the convention?
10.36 am
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con): I think that we should offer more than the conventional pieties of congratulation on securing a debate to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen). He and his all-party group have done extraordinarily good work in the past two and a half years. Unlike, frankly, most all-party groups, that group has moved the boulder a few inches up the hill, for which it deserves a lot of congratulations.
The Conservatives are grateful that the Government have at last ratified the convention. We called for ratification as long ago as the beginning of 2007, not least because
of the powers of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes to persuade me and the then shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). Having called for ratification for more than two years, it is good that we start 2009 with the position resolved. However, as has already been said, implementation of the convention is clearly key and the relatively slow progress that we have seen up to now is in danger of being repeated.
I have some suggestions and questions for the Minister. One important point, although it has barely come up in this debate, is that we should not merge debates and disputes about human trafficking with debates and disputes about prostitution. That point was briefly referred to by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats in this area. However, previous debates on this issue have been almost entirely about prostitution, which is obviously a hugely difficult and sensitive subject in itself. My fear is that if the debates get merged, action on trafficking might be delayed. Not all prostitutes are victims of trafficking and not all victims of trafficking are prostitutes.
For a few years now, many Members, including me, have been citing figures showing that one of the shocking changes in prostitution is that 85 per cent. of prostitutes working in Britain now come from abroad, and most are the victims of trafficking. However, in recent weeks and months, those figures have been questioned and there is now a legitimate debate about them. Therefore, I fear that framing legislation on combating prostitution might delay necessary moves against trafficking, which would be wholly counter-productive.
Mr. Jorgen Carling, who has studied the trafficking of Nigerian women to Europe, says that
“it is rarely possible to draw the absolutely clear line that policymakers want between ‘innocent victimhood’ and ‘willing participation’”.
There is clearly a spectrum, so I hope that the Government will not get drawn into merging the two debates on prostitution and trafficking.
I now want to talk specifically about trafficking. The steps that the Minister will take between now and April will clearly be welcome. As she has already heard from hon. Members from all parties, there will be some urging of faster movement and questioning about why we have to wait until April for the implementation of the provisions on the reflection period, the renewable one-year residence permit and the formal identification measures, which are the first steps that we are assured that the Government will take. I hope that she can give hon. Members an assurance that the Government will hit those target dates and address the practical problems raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, particularly about the length of time of the reflection period.
I would also like the Minister to deal with enforcement, as people have legitimately questioned the effectiveness of the policy. So far there have been 92 convictions for trafficking for sexual exploitation, and four for trafficking for forced labour. In 2008, 19 people were convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation and, of those, four received suspended sentences. In 2008, there were four convictions for trafficking for the purpose of forced labour. The average length of sentence for the offence of trafficking is 4.69 years and the maximum sentence is 14 years. The Home Secretary has said, in response to
parliamentary questions, that since 2006 the Home Office has invested almost £4.5 million in the law enforcement response to human trafficking, and that 15 per cent. of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency’s resources are committed to tackling immigration crime, of which trafficking is a significant part.
Looking at those figures as calmly and objectively as one can, it does not seem that the amount of resources devoted to this is being reflected in the amount of effective enforcement activity. Even when the relatively few people who are caught and prosecuted go through the process, the sentencing seems relatively lenient compared with the maximum sentence that the Government have rightly put into legislation. I hope that the Minister will address those issues in her closing remarks.
Thirdly, I hope that the Minister can respond to the recent remarks of the French immigration minister, who said that the problems at Calais—of which trafficking forms a significant subset—are essentially Britain’s fault. He said that officials in London had failed to act against human trafficking and that there was poor border security at Calais. She and I are veterans of many debates over Calais, and everyone agrees that things have improved since the darkest days of the Sangatte camp and the large illegal movements across the border. I was not only disturbed by the remarks of the French Immigration Minister, but surprised. I hope that the Government were too, because if conditions at Calais are getting worse again, we will experience an increase in trafficking. Given the progress we have seen, that would be a significant and unfortunate step backwards.
In addition to the questions that I wished to ask the Minister, I have some suggestions. She has already heard from various hon. Members that the POPPY project, while doing good work, is clearly constrained and should be allowed to take in girls under the age of 18, and perhaps to expand its reach geographically. We have also suggested the need for separate interviews at all airports for women and children travelling alone, or with an adult who is not a parent, guardian or husband, so that identification is easier; for better co-operation between the relevant Government departments and SOCA, because the lack of a properly coherent approach has dogged this issue for many years; and to ensure that each police force and each local government authority has a strategy for dealing with suspected victims of trafficking, because as my hon. Friend said, those who think that trafficking victims are only to be found in our big cities are, sadly, wrong—this crime also takes place in small rural communities. We also suggest that a proper helpline should be set up to provide information to women who have been trafficked and those who suspect exploitation. As an overall point, of course, we believe that there should be a proper border police force and that that force should have the necessary powers to act effectively against trafficking, as well as other cross-border crimes.
In every debate that we have had on this topic, Ministers have had to curtail their remarks because responding to questions has taken longer than the time allowed, so I will conclude. I wish the Government well on this issue, but everything seems to be happening slowly and without enough of a sense of urgency.
I hope that the Minister will convince us that that sense of urgency is now coming through in this important policy area.
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