Anti-Slavery Day

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). We sit together on the European Scrutiny Committee and also share a common interest in the subject of this debate.

This is an historic and significant debate, and it is pleasing to see that so many right hon. and hon. Members wish to contribute. I welcome the advent of anti-slavery day, even though I was not in the House when the Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010 went through, not least because it is an important tool in bringing these issues into the limelight and giving them the prominence that they deserve. The one thing that is absolutely clear from the debate is that slavery is alive and well in our society and throughout the world. It is therefore right that the House discusses it. I should like to echo other hon. Members in paying tribute to Mr Anthony Steen, who is a great loss to the House. It is a great shame that he cannot be here to make his own speech today.

The simple fact is that it remains unacceptable 200 years after Wilberforce fought so long, so admirably and so hard against slavery that we live in a society in which slavery endures. It is perhaps not the same as in his time, but it is no less deplorable. In the 18th century, slavery was part of a distasteful and distorted economy, and was witnessed in the full light of day. Now, as the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said, it is to a large extent invisible, hidden and underground. It is a hidden abuse of people who more often than not simply cannot speak up for themselves.

Of course, slavery surfaces from time to time. Sex trafficking is the crime that most often captures the media headlines, but earlier this week, Romanian children who were forced into working on the streets of the capital like Fagin’s gang were rescued by Operation Golf. I pay tribute to the Metropolitan police for their work on that. I hope the Crown can in due course mount successful prosecutions of those responsible.

It is worth remembering, however, that that is not an easy task. The women and children involved are often a long way from home. They do not speak the language and are away from such family as they have, and the authorities can seem remote and unhelpful. Getting valuable witness statements from those individuals—most often, it is women and children—is very difficult, particular given what they have suffered. The prosecution rate for such offences is woefully low. Will the Minister say what the Government intend to do about that? We have the laws, as has been said, but we do not seem to enforce them to their fullest extent. That might be a problem of mechanics, but I should like to know what the Government will do.

I also want to mention briefly, if I may, an issue alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), namely the plight of domestic staff working in conditions that amount to slavery right here in London for embassy staff protected by diplomatic privilege. Unlike those on ordinary domestic visas, those on diplomatic domestic visas are not permitted to change jobs. They are stuck in their employment and with their employer, and essentially have no legal status. They do not and cannot go to the police if they suffer abuse. It is about time the Government dealt with that. The House is entitled to ask why we cannot get rid of those visas and issue normal domestic visas to those workers, which would enable them to have the same access to help as anybody else who needs it. What is the Government’s position on that?

I end simply by reminding the House what Wilberforce himself said in the House of Commons in May 1789—of course, that was not in this building. He said that

“the nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance, we cannot evade it; it is now an object placed before us, we can not pass it; we may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we cannot turn aside so as to avoid seeing it; for it is brought now so directly before our eyes that this House must decide, and must justify to all the world, and to their own consciences, the rectitude of the grounds and principles of their decision.”—[Parliamentary History, 12 May 1789; Vol. XXVIII, c. 63.]

We are simply debating anti-slavery day today, but the decision for the future is whether we are prepared to continue to accept situations of slavery which pertain to our society some 200 years after Wilberforce and his colleagues successfully fought the battle to end slavery in this country.