Wright Committee

Debate between Peter Bone and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

As the hon. Gentleman and I recently slept together—[Laughter.] I must explain that a little; it was an attempt by the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), who is in the Chamber, another colleague and me to take a little power back from the Executive. We spent four nights sleeping outside the Table Office, so that we were first in the queue for presentation Bills. We presented about 50 Bills last week; we took that power away from the Executive, so that we could introduce Bills. One of the Bills that I introduced was for an allowance for married couples, which I did not realise that the Chancellor was to take up this very week. In a small way, doing such things achieves something, although it is ridiculous that we have to spend four nights sleeping in a small attic room to take a little power back for Parliament.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) look at the minutiae of how things might get done, but what about the broad idea of considering private Member’s Bills on Wednesday afternoons, rather than on Fridays, so that Members do not have to disengage from their constituencies and stay here for matters that are prioritised by those who are in the ballot?

[Mr Bone]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I would argue differently. Absolutely, we need to reform how private Member’s business is done. I do not like the idea of, in effect, reducing the amount of time Members are in Parliament, so I like sitting for 13 Fridays a year. We do not sit that often in the House, and I do not want to consider private Member’s Bills on a Wednesday if that means no one is here on a Friday.

If someone has a really important Bill, which the Member wants to get through but the Executive does not want to put on the agenda, it is incumbent on that Member to get other Members to feel passionately enough to turn up on a Friday. That is one of the hurdles that we should have to overcome; it should not be easy to get a private Member’s Bill through, but it absolutely should be possible, and it should not be possible merely to talk it out, as happens at the moment.

I do not want to speak for long, because other eminent Members wish to contribute, but I will run through some of the things that annoy me about how the system works. One is programme motions. When the Conservative party was in opposition, we routinely opposed programme motions; we thought they were the worst things because they reduced scrutiny, as happened to a terrible degree under Prime Minister Blair’s reign. Yet what have we done? We have come into power and made it 10 times worse. Every single thing, even if it is an amendment to the Scottish provisions for something or other, is timetabled, which is patently absurd. An important issue will be timetabled to such an extent that some of the amendments that we want to debate on Report will not be reached.

I tabled an amendment to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, for example, proposing a referendum, but it was not discussed, because it was not reached in time. When a controversial issue is due to be discussed, it is a sure bet that there will be two statements on the same day, reducing the time even further. If statements are made, we should be able to go through the moment of interruption on a timetabled motion and add on the amount of time taken by the statements.

I would move away from programming; the House is quite capable of running its own affairs. We would not be sitting to 4 o’clock in the morning every night, but if an issue needs proper discussion, we should let it be discussed; if Members want to be here, let them. I do not understand how we have allowed the Executive to make the House of Commons so ineffective that we do not scrutinise Bills properly. Without the House of Lords, most of the Bills would not get the proper, detailed scrutiny that is desired. I would get rid of programming at a stroke, which, in opposition, the Prime Minister indicated needed to happen.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North talked about only the election of Chairs of Select Committees, but we need the election of all Chairs of all Committees. Why on earth can we not do that? Why on earth does the Chair of the Statutory Instrument Committee, for example, have to be appointed? He or she could be elected.

Some key Committees absolutely need to be elected. The Committee of Selection is a farce; it is appalling that the Whips try to appoint its Chair. Earlier this year, we blocked an attempt to throw out the current Chair, but in general that Committee needs to have members elected by the whole House, and it should then do the proper job of selecting the membership of Committees and choosing Members who are interested in the Bill to be scrutinised. That would make a huge difference to how we work.

The Backbench Business Committee has done a tremendous job, and we are lucky to have its Chair, but the Whips are slowly undermining it—there is no question about that. We can have a vote on something in the House of Commons, but the Government might have said to their Members, “Please don’t turn up and please don’t vote.” It is not only the Executive who are wrong about this; the Opposition, or shadow Executive, also do not want to change anything, because they are planning to get into power and to behave in exactly the same way. That is one of the saddest things about how parliamentary democracy works at the moment.

We need a proper business committee, which should run the House on the basis of the Jopling priorities. The Government should have enough time to get their business through, but equally the Opposition should have enough time to scrutinise that business, and Back-Bench Members should have time to bring forward their own proposals. That is what we desperately need. I am agnostic on whether we keep the Backbench Business Committee separate or roll it into the business committee, but a committee for the business of the House must be introduced.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Peter Bone and Michael Connarty

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is an excellent vice-chairman of the all-party group, and he is making a powerful point about the rapporteur. As he rightly says, many of these people do not have any immigration problems anyway, because they are EU citizens. However, the great example from the Netherlands to the Government, who have not grasped this point, is that a rapporteur is hugely to a Government’s benefit. The rapporteur is able to prove what the Government are doing independently, and the Netherlands has found it to be so good that it now has two more rapporteurs in different fields.

[Michael Connarty]

That is very true. The hon. Gentleman and I met the rapporteur from the Netherlands at a meeting; interestingly, he had been given the additional responsibility of protection of children from abuse; that relates to another Council of Europe convention—the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. That role has been extended, so that it is much wider. One of the great criticisms of the way in which we deal with human trafficking is that we do not deal well with children. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

I want to quote some other organisations, because when it comes to this subject, I am probably a bit too subjective at times; that can happen when a person decides to immerse themselves in an organisation such as the all-party group, or to work alongside someone like Anthony Steen, who has been doing this work for such a long time. When he was on the European Scrutiny Committee, we would go off with the Committee and stay on extra days, wherever we were, to connect with people who were dealing with the countries of origin and transit. That is why, with support from ECPAT UK—End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes—he has got a project going, called Parliamentarians against Human Trafficking. That is an EU-wide, EU-funded organisation that aims to build these networks in every area. However, it is possible to become somewhat frustrated, and to see things a little bit too emotionally.

The Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking has produced a review of the rapporteur for trafficking. It talks about the Finnish, the Dutch and the observatory in Portugal, which we have been to, and we had discussions there. It also talks about the UK, and what it says is not flattering. It argues that it should follow Finland and the Netherlands in appointing a designated national rapporteur on trafficking in human beings. It discusses the independence of the role from Government, with the ability to call the Government to account. I know that the Minister has a promising career. He has a style that will probably take him far, but he is not yet powerful enough to hold his own Government to account, because that is not what happens in junior Ministers’ careers. If they try to hold their Government to account, they find that they are soon on the Back Benches. It is a very nice place, the Back Benches—I have been here for 20 years—and, in fact, it is probably more effective than toadying up to any Minister. It is the death knell of their career if a junior Minister thinks that he can hold the Government to account, but a rapporteur can do that, which is why we must have one.

The review discusses

“A place where the widest possible information can be gleaned on the numbers considered to be trafficked”.

That is the point that we found in the Netherlands. We are talking about being surrounded by non-governmental organisations that clearly believe in the purposefulness of the rapporteur and their ability to make a difference to the issues to which people in NGOs give their lives, even though they probably do not have a great incentive in terms of money or career. That means people from faith groups, non-faith groups, civic society and elsewhere. It comes down to it being a post

“which clearly defends human rights and acts as an independent monitoring party regardless of party or governmental vicissitudes of attention.”

That is a wonderful idea that we should grasp, and that the Minister should take away from the debate. The report is welcome—no one would doubt that—and it is good that it has been produced, but it shows the inadequacies, rather than the adequacies, of what the Government are doing, and it highlights the problems that we should be dealing with but are not.

I must say a little about domestic slavery, because the report says that one of the rising figures is that for trafficking for domestic slavery or domestic service. Every organisation that I have spoken to outside Parliament has been not just critical but condemnatory of the Government for withdrawing the domestic servants visa, which was brought in after a lot of pressure and discussion, and late in the life of the previous Government, because it was clear that people were being kept as slaves. There were reports of people living on the scraps from the table. They were being fed after the dogs. That was in some of the big, palatial houses in west London, where people from the diplomatic and business communities live.

I have been reading a book put together by Baroness Caroline Cox and Dr John Marks called “This Immoral Trade”. It talks about the 27 million men, women and children in the world who are in slavery. Some in Sudan and Burma are enslaved after a war and are sold on, or traded, to people who willingly hold them and sell them back to their communities. It turns out, when we read the book, that many of those women and men in Burma and Sudan are held in Arab communities. In fact, disturbingly, arguments are made in present-day Islamic law that slavery is all right, is acceptable. That is in sura 16:71 and sura 30:28 of the Koran. Sura 4:3, sura 23:6, sura 33:50-52 and sura 70:30 recognise concubinage, whereby slaves can be held by a master and used as concubines—for sexual favours. The Koran bans the sale of those people for prostitution, but they can be used as concubines. We would think that all these things must be ancient history, because there was also support for slavery in the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, but in fact Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzam has written a religious textbook in the 21st century that is used in Saudi schools that says:

“Slavery is…part of Islam…Slavery is part of jihad”.

The book goes on to say that he argued against the idea that slavery had ever been abolished, and said that those who espoused that view were

“ignorant, not scholars…Whoever says such things is an infidel.”

In the far reaches of the world, slavery is still associated with capture because of war. Clearly, we can do little about that unless we can have a dialogue with people who believe that they can justify slavery. The question of domestic servants—why are people kept in such terrible conditions in the homes of people from those countries who come here as diplomats and business people?—may be too close to that debate for us to talk about comfortably, because saying anything against someone’s beliefs is somehow taken as a form of racism, but it is not. There are human rights that run through everything—that challenge the ethics of any organisation.

The domestic servants visa recognised that. It said that people who were being treated like that should be able to leave a bad master and transfer to another employer. Kalayaan, the organisation that such people could go to, was well known to the police in London. To take that away from people, the Government argue, will expose those who come in as domestic servants and are illegal; it will make them easier to see. It is funny that the hon. Member for Wellingborough agrees with that; I thought that he made a very good point when he said that in Sweden, when people are told that they cannot sell their body for sex, the practice goes underground. If we say to people, “You can’t leave a bad master because you don’t have a visa,” that does not mean that people are not brought in. It does not mean that people are not kept in captivity and treated as domestic slaves. It just means that they have no right to leave a bad master. It is important that the Government examine that. I am surprised that there was not a hue and cry about it among the faith groups—perhaps they did not know that it existed—and among people of ethics and principle. What worries me is that the all-party group did not have a debate and come to a conclusion on that. I therefore feel that we are complicit, as an organisation, in not calling for Members of this Parliament to debate the issue and make their voices heard. I hope that at some time in the future we will.

The treatment of children is criticised by everyone who reads this report, because 67% of children who are found to have been trafficked and are put into care run away. They vanish—no one seems to know where they go—and they end up being re-trafficked, and back among groups that re-abuse or reuse them. There are cases of 14-year-olds who are trafficked, caught thieving, put into care and run away. They are found working as “farmers” in houses that are being used for growing cannabis, and are criminalised for being caught taking part in a cannabis-growing organisation. There is no question that at the age of 14, 12 or even earlier—whenever it started—these people decided to have the life of a criminal.

As has been said, some people get involved in prostitution at a very early age. One of our colleagues came back from India recently. He came along to one of our forum meetings—brought by the chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Wellingborough—and he said that, in India, children were being kidnapped or taken from their parents on the promise of a better life and brought to cities to have sex with men who thought that if they had sex with a virgin, they would have a cure for HIV. The vast majority of those children were of primary school age, and some were under school age—under five years old—when they were kidnapped. There are things going on in the world, but that does not mean that they are not going on in our communities and within the EU.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Peter Bone and Michael Connarty

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

Thank you, Mr Weir. Do not encourage me.

The UKHTC costs £1.6 million a year and employs 30 people. Support for victim care, which the Government have increased, costs nearly £2 million a year and services nearly 1,500 people. There seems to be a little discrepancy there. We could take a fraction of that £1.6 million— perhaps, at most, £250,000—and establish a national rapporteur. It would do all the things we want at the fraction of the cost. The Minister could then go back to the Chancellor and say, “By the way, Chancellor, here is £500,000 back that I have found.” I know his career prospects are good, but that would be an added incentive for the Prime Minister.

Three components are required for a national rapporteur to make an effective contribution to combating human trafficking, as opposed to simply writing reports that gather dust: independence from Government; unlimited and direct access to all relevant information, not just Government information; and annual reports that should be made public, with their recommendations debated in Parliament. It is important to keep in mind that, while a report by the national rapporteur on the status of human trafficking is designed to cover the scope of the problem and the changing trends as well as the appropriate responses, it should not lose sight of the ultimate goal: to end this vicious modern-day slavery.

The UK Government’s human trafficking strategy clearly states its main four objectives and how to achieve them. If established in the UK, a national rapporteur could gather and synchronise the information to assess the Government’s progress on its timely and efficient implementation, make recommendations on where more attention and action were needed, and ensure the adequacy and appropriateness of services provided to victims of trafficking.

Another point that was brought to my attention is that the Dutch Government discovered that having a national rapporteur actually helped them. When outside bodies said that the Dutch Government were not doing enough, they could point to the rapporteur’s report and say, “Yes, we are doing the job.”

In conclusion, not only am I being a good European today, and not only am I making the Minister’s life easier—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says that there is a first time for everything. Not only am I saving the taxpayer money, but I am arguing for a big step towards ending the evil of human trafficking.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

rose—

Anti-Slavery Day

Debate between Peter Bone and Michael Connarty

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

We should be focusing not so much on what is happening in the UK as the fact that there are still 27 million people in some form of slavery throughout the world. We should look seriously at the heritage left behind by Anthony Steen. He was not talking about the UK; he never talked about the UK. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, he travelled around Europe urging other Parliaments to set up similar organisations and to get their Governments focused on the problem, whether they were in the transit countries, the departure countries or the countries where the criminal gangs organised.

It is interesting to look back in history. Oddly enough, the story of Oliver Twist is based on factual historical records of the trafficking of Italian children who were scooped up in the villages and promised jobs, and then brought to the UK to be thieves and robbers in the Paddington area of London. There was never a Jewish Fagin organising that—there was an Italian gangmaster and an Italian gang.

This is not just something that happens locally, but, as we have heard, it is happening locally in people’s constituencies, and in mine—two brothels were broken up, and trafficked women were found in both. Positive Action in Housing, based in Glasgow, does wonderful work in Scotland. Many Members have spoken about their own local organisations that are helping people who are then released from such bondage—not just sexual bondage, but low pay or poverty pay. A Chinese gentleman came to see me after I spoke at the annual general meeting of Positive Action in Housing. He had been moved from one Chinese restaurant to another, throughout the whole of the UK, for nine and a half years, and told that if he ever went to see anyone he would be sent back to China. It is going on all the time. Sixteen children were recently rescued in London. In Scotland, in the three months up until August, the newspapers reported that 18 children were found in some sort of exploitation.

I urge us, as a Parliament, to look wider than we are at the moment. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is not completely carrying on the heritage of Anthony Steen if he does not focus on broadening the outlook. We should stop trying to throw a ring around the UK, and we should expand our movement outside.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, of course—the ring needs to be around everywhere. I will let him into a secret. Anthony Steen and his Human Trafficking Foundation are working with the all-party group on human trafficking every week, and we intend to set up all-party groups across the whole of Europe, as Anthony wants.

[Michael Connarty]

Sign me up to that.

I wish to ask the Minister—I have never yet heard a decent reply to this question, including when I wrote to the Prime Minister in September—why the Government are not clear that we need to sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said that we need a Europe-wide organisation, and that is on offer in the directive. It is not a protocol, and it would be binding on all countries. We have sections 57 to 59 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, but they are not capable of dealing with cross-border trafficking in the EU.

The EU directive would give us extra powers. It would give us not just the power but the duty to pursue any UK citizen, or anyone habitually resident in the UK, who was involved in trafficking anywhere in the world, with the support of the EU. It would be our jurisdiction, so we could do our duty by people who were trafficked and enslaved. It would also give us the option—it would be a power, not a compulsion—to decide to pursue anyone habitually resident in the UK who was involved in organising people trafficking, which can lead to slavery, outside the UK.

I give the following example quite seriously, not to diminish the terrible thing that happened to the McCann family. If Madeleine McCann were an adult young woman who had been trafficked out of Portugal by a gang of people who were not in the UK, we would not have had the power to take jurisdiction. It is true that we can go to Interpol. I went to Portugal during that terrible time, as the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, and we met the policeman sent from Lisbon to try to pick up the pieces of the local police’s terrible approach immediately after the loss of Madeleine McCann. We realised the police’s inadequacy, but although we had liaison officers we did not have the ability to send in the Met to do the job properly. We could have that power for an adult if we signed up to the EU directive. That is its greatest attraction to me—we would have a duty and responsibility to people in this country who may end up being trafficked.

At the moment, young women and men affected travel around and live in other parts of Europe. They do not necessarily always live in the UK. If they are trafficked out of other countries by someone who is not a UK resident, at the moment we have no jurisdiction. That is a very strong argument for the directive.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) came nearest to expressing the aspiration that existed when the decision to mark anti-slavery day was voted through in the House. It is a worldwide business that we must fight against. We must recognise the clear link with organised criminal gangs in the advanced economies of the world, particularly in the EU states and those around them. We must do everything we can to be vigilant locally. All the organisations that have been mentioned deserve support, and we must try to build an anti-slavery, anti-trafficking alliance at Government and non-governmental organisation level. I hope that the Minister, and eventually the Prime Minister, will recognise that one major step will be taken if we sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking and join that battle properly.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Peter Bone and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on securing this very important debate. There is no doubt that a modern day slavery exists in many forms. I liked most of the speech of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) but I was rather disappointed by his limited UK-centric views and ambitions. He seems to feel that we can stop human trafficking by throwing up gates around the UK. However, it is not a UK phenomenon, but a worldwide one. There is no doubt that trafficking can be for sexual exploitation. In many cases, it exists down our street. In the Falkirk and West Lothian areas of my constituency, brothels have been broken up and trafficked women have been found. At Prime Minister’s questions in September, the deputy leader of the Labour party raised a scandalous case in London in which some of the organisers were Iranian who lived in London. They were not necessarily UK citizens, but people who were habitually in the UK. If they had not been captured in the UK, we would not have been able to pursue them outside the country. Under the present law, if they had gone to any other EU country, we would not have had the right to pursue them.

[Mr Bone]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Connarty]

I will continue for a while, but the hon. Gentleman can intervene later. That is the problem that we need to address. Many people are trafficked not just for sexual exploitation, but for domestic exploitation. They think that they are coming here for good, well-paid jobs, and they end up being handed over as domestic servants. They are paid a low wage, trapped in the house, have their passport taken off them, and told that if they go out they will be reported and sent back to wherever they have come from. There are thousands of people in this city who are living like that. We had the scandalous case of the Saudi Arabian prince who murdered a domestic slave in his household in London, and that happens in large homes in this city. It is a scandal and something that we should be worried about.

Many other people are in poverty-wage jobs. For example, someone came to see me recently who, over nine and a half years, had basically been moved from Chinese restaurant to Chinese restaurant around the UK. They were told that if they ever went to see anyone, they would be exposed and sent back home to China where, for various reasons, they do not want to return. They came to see me because I had spoken at the annual general meeting of an organisation that deals with such people in Glasgow, which of course is the only city in Scotland that takes people who are asylum seekers who have been dispersed from London. So human trafficking is a very big trade that, in fact, has sexual exploitation at one end, but, as has already been said, that sexual exploitation is not necessarily the biggest part of the trade.

Many people are trafficked with the promise of a good job or a better life. When I spoke at the AGM that I just referred to, a young man also spoke who had been here in the UK for 10 years. He was the last remaining member of his family, having escaped from a violent situation in Africa. He was told that he was going to a better life and was dumped in Glasgow. Quite frankly, being dumped in Glasgow would be a frightening experience for some English people, on the basis that they cannot always understand the language. [Laughter.] That young man was dumped in Glasgow and was totally impoverished. Thank goodness that there was an organisation in Glasgow, called Positive Action in Housing, which deals with such people. It has now been going for 15 years and I pay tribute to Robina Qureshi, its director and the person who set it up. It rescues people from exactly that kind of domestic slavery and exploitation, whereby people pay to be trafficked. Indeed, sometimes their families gather large amounts of money to pay for them to be sent through human trafficking routes run by gangs in Europe and elsewhere in order to get a better life, only for them to end up being dumped on the streets of the UK or other EU countries. So it is a much bigger issue that we are talking about. There are two parts to the issue—one is about people trafficking and the other is about enforced prostitution—and we must focus on both parts.

The reference to Anthony Steen was very timeous. He was the former MP for Totnes and a member of the European Scrutiny Committee. He did an excellent job in setting up and becoming the chairman of the all-party group on human trafficking and then in setting up and chairing the Human Trafficking Foundation.

I think that the way that Anthony Steen worked was a key to how we should go on as a Government, regardless of which party is in power. He used his travels as part of the European Scrutiny Committee to go round Europe trying to convince every Parliament in Europe to have an all-party group against human trafficking. I am sorry, but we cannot set up a ring around Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or the UK as a whole—it cannot be done. We have to work with everyone across all the countries involved.

No doubt Anthony Steen aspires to do things beyond the EU, but when I talked to him he said that basically it was the countries that were used as transit countries, or the countries of departure, that had to be focused on. It was the countries where the criminal organisations exist; those organisations do not necessarily exist in the countries that were targeted for trafficking people into. It was not just the reception countries, such as the UK, that should be focused on. Therefore, it was important to Anthony Steen that the UK Government should sign up to and opt into the EU directive on human trafficking because that directive is necessary, so that we can have bigger and more useful powers than we have at the moment.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech. Regarding the opt-in to the EU directive, I just wanted to say that what concerns me as chairman of the all-party group is that, if we opt in, we are saying, “That’s it”. I do not think that the EU directive goes far enough and I do not want signing up to it to be an excuse for not doing more.