Child Victims of Human Trafficking (Central Government Responsibility) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

There was a big row about the POPPY project and I am broad-brush about this: I think the Salvation Army operation has been a huge success, and I am absolutely convinced that no other country in Europe looks after rescued adult victims of human trafficking better than ours, and we can be very proud of that.

Let me rewind a bit to when I was traipsing around Europe with Anthony Steen. He is a man it is impossible to say no to; I have seen him blag his way into all sorts of establishments that we had no right to be in, and he did so fearlessly. In some places he talked to traffickers and took great personal risks. His influence is what drives me to continue this fight on this particular issue.

At that time, back in 2005, there was a Council of Europe convention on human trafficking. The COE is a very good body. It brings together 47 countries in Europe. The idea is that if we can get something through the COE that everyone agrees with, it is a really good standard. What happened to this convention happened when a Labour Government were in power, but I am absolutely not blaming the Labour Government because it equally would have happened if a Conservative Government had been in power at that time because of the way people looked upon human trafficking: we could not even get the convention signed. Then, after lots of pressure, the convention was signed, and then that turned out to be no use because until it is ratified, it does not come into force, so then we had a fight on that and it was eventually ratified.

Many of the things that were then discussed became part of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, such as tougher penalties for traffickers, quite rightly. There was originally a problem with the hurdle that had to be mounted to prosecute traffickers. The Crown Prosecution Service had decided that in order to get successful prosecutions, it would have to go for lesser charges. That was sorted out; traffickers can be jailed now for 14 years. Tougher border controls are hugely important, too, because I do not want to be punishing traffickers and rescuing victims, as I do not want them to be victims in the first place. There is a lot to do in Europe on that, but obviously, our border control is important. In a wonderful example of co-operation, the Metropolitan police and the Romanian police worked together and broke up a notorious gang and saved many people from being trafficked. Police operations all come down to intelligence and working together across Europe.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is not just an issue with border controls, but a lot of concern about forged documents and passports? There is a report in today’s press that the United States is thinking of withdrawing its visa waiver scheme for some European countries—for example, for Belgium—because there are up to a million forged EU passports in circulation.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is quite right that this is not, as I have portrayed it, just a European Union issue. I wanted to use that example because I did not want to get into the arguments about immigration and migration control. People from the EU have the right to be here and can be trafficked, but of course human traffickers operate across the world. Traffickers bring people in from Nigeria, and use all sorts of terrible things to keep them in prostitution. If someone were in a town and forced into prostitution, one would think that there would be ways for them to escape, and there probably are, but they are under acute mental pressure. They may be told that their parents will be killed or that their children will be harmed. If they come from Nigeria—this may seem strange to us—voodoo spells may be used. All those things have to be dealt with, and we are beginning to deal with them. The problem of forged passports is important.

I do not accept what the Home Office used to say, which is that if we create a safe environment for people who have been trafficked, it will be a pull factor. That is complete and utter rubbish. People can come in and claim asylum anyway. They do not need to pretend to be trafficked; there is no advantage to that at all, and I really reject the idea. There are more slaves today across the world than there were in Wilberforce’s time; it is just that we do not see them on the docks. Great credit should go to the Government for what they have done in this regard.

Going back to the Council of Europe situation, a good convention was eventually signed and ratified. One thing we wanted for the protection of people who have been trafficked was the appointment of a rapporteur —I would say a commissioner because the word rapporteur sounds far too “European Union” for my liking. We had a long battle on that with the Government. By this time, we were in the coalition Government. A cross-ministerial group was appointed, which was complete rubbish. We knew that by how many times the Ministers bothered to turn up. It was a complete farce. We had a battle on that. MPs from both sides of the House and from all parties—the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) was a great support—called Westminster Hall debates to put pressure on Ministers and to ask lots of questions. That all followed on from what Anthony Steen did.

When I first came to the House, Anthony Steen was the only person doing anything, and then everybody started to realise that there was a problem. People may think that the Government make all their decisions in Downing Street and that we are just here to tick the boxes, but it was not like that, and we proved that with the previous Bill. On human trafficking, it was absolutely not like that. Private meetings went on, and so on. We finished up with a Modern Slavery Act 2015, which increased the penalties for trafficking, toughened border control and improved the rights of victims to prove that they were victims, which is a complicated thing, but we did not deal with the situation of child victims. We dealt with victims, but forgot that there was a huge loophole.

Members will recognise that probably every week in their constituency advice surgeries, they have someone in front of them who is clearly in need of help and social care. The problem is that the health service says the person needs social care and the local council says the person needs social care, but they blame each other for not funding it. I will develop the argument a little later.

Adult victims of human trafficking are a central Government responsibility, that of the Ministry of Justice. Unbelievably, children who are victims of human trafficking finish up in local authority homes and, bizarrely, are indirectly the responsibility of the Department for Education. How that works I have no idea. In fact, it does not work.

I do not know of any legislation in which we deliberately set out to treat adults better than children. I return to my example of the 18-year-old who was tricked into coming to Belfast and started off in the restaurant but finished up in a terraced house. It must be an horrendous experience to be repeatedly raped, and many of those people come from countries in central Europe that are deeply religious.