Anti-Slavery Day

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a good sign that you have had to shorten the time limit, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am pleased that so many hon. Members are interested in the subject.

The scale of this worldwide problem has not sunk in. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) opened the debate by saying that 27 million people are in some form of slavery around the world, which is just less than half the population of the United Kingdom. That is a truly shocking statistic.

Some passion has been expended in this House this week, whether on the date of a referendum, the reform of housing benefit, the European Union budget, or contaminated blood. This subject, above all, is one on which we should expend considerable passion. We should state how outrageous it is that 200 years after Wilberforce got rid of the visible slave trade, that cruel and inhumane form of treatment of our fellow human beings has crept back.

We are discussing a truly global phenomenon, which is happening not only in this country and in Europe but around the world. Last night I trawled the internet and picked out relevant press cuttings from the past two days. There are press reports about trafficking across east Africa, and countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda are forming a regional network to do something about it.

A national action plan has been established in Greece, where the situation is relevant to this country. Children and young people, often young girls, from Romania, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Russia are often tempted to travel to Athens. Their families may be in economic difficulties, and they are lured to Athens by the prospect of a better life having been told that they will be working as, for example, a hairdresser. They are taken to Athens before being sent to Amsterdam, London, Hamburg or another great European city, where they end up working in brothels as captives. It is good to see Greece taking the matter seriously.

In Malaysia nine people have been arrested in the past two days, seven of whom are immigration officials. I ask the Minister whether we are checking our staff to ensure that they are not complicit with gangs.

Those examples illustrate that we are discussing a worldwide problem, but at the same time it is a local problem that happens in our constituents’ streets. We know that brothels operate in private houses; we know that people are being used for domestic servitude in private houses; and we know that people are being forced to work as bonded labour in businesses that are close to us and to our constituents. We can all do our bit, because we can all be eyes and ears. We all need to look out and help the police and the authorities. Even buying Fairtrade chocolate provides us with an assurance that the chocolate that we are eating has not been produced by children who have been forced to work on cocoa plantations in Africa.

Prevention is obviously better than cure. How much public education and awareness raising is being done in the source countries from which people are being trafficked? How engaged are the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development in trying to spread public education and awareness, so that those young girls realise that there is great danger in being lured to be a hairdresser in Europe, and that it will probably not end up that way.

As Members of Parliament we all have a close relationship with our local newspapers, yet virtually all those newspapers—this is certainly true of the five newspapers in my constituency—carry advertisements for “adult services”, as they are euphemistically called.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions advertisements in newspapers. Will he praise Newsquest, the newspaper publishing organisation, which has just banned such advertisements?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady is obviously a mind reader, to add to her other talents, because that is exactly what I was about to say. The Newsquest group has set an example, and I ask all hon. Members to ask the editors of their local papers to follow that example. That is something practical that we can do. This is not just about asking the Minister to do things; we can do things in our constituencies and we can get our constituents involved in doing something.

Can we have a minimum sentence for traffickers? Diplomats have been mentioned briefly. Any diplomat who is found to be involved in human trafficking should not have the right to be an accredited diplomat at the Court of St James’s, but should be expelled forthwith. I think that that suggestion would find wide support in the House.

We desperately need better co-ordination between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary, because these cases often fall down. We need the Ministry of Justice to get the police and the CPS together to work out how we can have more success with getting convictions, of which there have been pitifully few in the UK. That is not for lack of trying, through legislation, by many of us in this Parliament. There is a real problem with things not working as well as they could.

We also need much better liaison between the police and local authorities. That is working well in some places, such as with West Sussex county council, Operation Paladin at Heathrow airport, and at St Pancras with the Eurostar. There are very good relations between the police and social services in that regard. In Westminster, too, there is a very good protocol between the police and the council on forced marriage and honour-based violence. They are looking into incorporating that further in relation to trafficking in connection with the MARAC—multi-agency risk assessment conference—procedures.

This is a big issue and a worthy cause for all hon. Members to pursue throughout their time in Parliament. We are called to this place to pursue big issues, and there can hardly be a bigger issue than this. Let me close with the words of Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”