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Written question asked by John Bercow (Conservative) on Monday, 8 May 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 10 May 2006. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Wednesday, 21 June 2006 on behalf of the Home Office.

People Trafficking

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the UN report Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns; and what steps are being taken by his Department to tackle people trafficking.
Answer

The UN report Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns, is an informative fact based report on the process of human trafficking from source and transit countries with the aim of providing an unbiased picture of the global extent of trafficking in human beings.The Home Office has recently conducted a public consultation on tackling human trafficking which ended on 5 April. A summary of responses report was published on 21 June and the responses obtained used to develop a National Action Plan on Trafficking which will be published later in the year. The action plan will take a comprehensive end-to-end approach covering the different elements of our anti-trafficking strategy: from prevention (including demand reduction); investigating and prosecuting the traffickers; through to protecting and supporting the victims. We will consider whether any of the information contained in the UN report can assist with the development of this action plan or with other strategies designed to combat human trafficking and the organised criminals who benefit from it.We continue to tackle trafficking through Reflex a multi-agency task force aimed at tackling organised immigration crime. Operation Pentameter a Reflex funded multi-agency initiative involving all UK police forces and immigration service aimed at tackling the Trafficking of Human Beings for Sexual Exploitation was launched in February and has already made a real impact rescuing 84 women from traffickers and made 232 arrests.The Home Office announced on 7 April 2006 additional funding of £2.4 million over two years to expand the provision of support services for victims of trafficking currently provided through the POPPY Scheme. Not only are we delivering on our commitment to continue funding for the core service (25 crisis spaces), we are also funding 10 additional step-down places

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
447 c2018-9W; 70020
Session
2005-06
Subjects
Human trafficking
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk