Immigration Detention: Trafficking and Modern Slavery

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

The quote, which the hon. Lady has somewhat misinterpreted, has been amended to give clarification. It should not have been able to lead to such a level of misinterpretation. None of us would ever say that prostitution leads to an ideal way of life. It certainly does not. However, there is much more that we can do, working with Nigeria and our partners to address the particular problem that has arisen there with trafficked women.

The hon. Lady spoke about the safeguards we need to put in place. I will be completely candid with her, and I will give her a couple of minutes to wind up the debate. It is important that we do more. She and I recently attended a roundtable with the Minister for safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, the Minister for Countering Extremism, Baroness Williams of Trafford, and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). At that event, I said that we needed to do much better on safeguarding across Government. That was particularly in reference to victims of domestic abuse, but I am conscious that victims of trafficking are, in many instances, victims of abuse.

We must do better at safeguarding those individuals and treating them as victims. The hon. Lady and I may disagree from time to time, but we must ensure that when we share data, we do it for good reasons so that we can safeguard and protect people in vulnerable situations. There is more work to do across Government. I said at the roundtable and will repeat today: it is no good enough for just the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to be involved; we need the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education involved, too. There is a piece of joined-up Government work there to ensure that we enable victims to be treated as victims, who are safeguarded appropriately, while at the same time recognising the important role of our immigration policies now and going forward.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Jess Phillips will have the final word.

[Jess Phillips]

I like that sentence, Sir Gary.

I thank everyone who spoke today. The strength of feeling in this House is clear: we wish to see the figure for people in our detention estate who have suffered any form of trafficking down to zero. Many of us wish to see the end of detention.

I am heartened by the Minister’s pilot projects. This system can be handled much better in the community with proper specialist partners. I hope we can go away with some sort of assurances that the Government can hear that the first thing we should do with anyone found in a brothel or clearly in a place of exploitation is care about them, not incarcerate them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the immigration detention of survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. We can move straight on to our next debate as I see the protagonists are here. Please will those who are leaving kindly do so quietly and quickly? That would be much appreciated.