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Human Trafficking

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing this important debate and on his chairmanship of the all-party group, on which I serve as treasurer. I know that he is determined that we should get things done rather than just talk. I welcome the Minister, who I know is very concerned about the issue. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman), who set out the problem so clearly. It is amazing that a young woman is probably being sold for between £4,000 and £4,500 at Heathrow today. We are talking principally about slavery, not prostitution. The fact is that women are held against their will and given no choice but to have sex with men. Such things have happened so many times that people are now beginning to realise that they are happening. If one talks to any hard-nosed police officer, he will say that there are sex slaves in every town in this country. Let me give hon. Members one example, of a woman whom I will call Sarah. She was one of the young women who came to the House and she was saved by the NSPCC. She was 16, I believe; she was from Africa and she was attractive. She came to this country when she was 14, arriving through immigration with a middle-aged white man, with a passport that was not hers and did not even have a picture of her on it, yet she was allowed into this country. She was locked up in a flat and forced to have sex with men continually. Thankfully, she escaped after a few days, came to London and heard to someone speaking the language of her home country; that person took her to the authorities and she was then protected. She was an extremely lucky young lady, but there are thousands of others who are not. You might say, Sir Nicholas, that the problem is a big city problem, which happens in Liverpool, Manchester or London. But the truth is that it is everywhere. I was at my surgery one day in Northamptonshire and a letter dropped through the letter box. It was an anonymous letter from a local prostitute, who said that she was approaching me not because she was losing trade, but because she wanted to tell me about Albanian gangs in Northampton who were ruthlessly exploiting women whom they had trafficked into this country. I went to see the police, and they told me, ““Yes, that is happening, and we have taken action.”” They had raided a brothel in Northamptonshire and released several young women whom they suspected had been trafficked. However, none of the women was prepared to say so, because they were so scared about what would happen. They thought that they would be returned home and that their families would be persecuted. Very cleverly, Northamptonshire police prosecuted the Albanians on the basis that they were here illegally, and got rid of them in that way. The point is that the problem affects every part of the country. It might also be thought that the problem is nothing to do with the House of Commons—that it is nowhere nearby. Well, I walked across the bridge to St. Thomas’s hospital and, unannounced, I went to the sexual health clinic. That little room was packed with young women, virtually all of whom were foreign. None could speak English. There were young, eastern European men there. They might be thought to be loving, kind partners, concerned about the young women’s welfare, but I do not think so, because when one of the young women made a bolt for the door to escape, a man, swearing, chased after her. I have no idea whether the young woman got away. Right on our doorstep there are trafficked women who are being forced to be slaves. I know that time is limited, so I want to end with some questions to the Minister. I think that a number of things can be done, some very easily. One is publicity. Perhaps every brothel in the country could have a notice telling young women that if they are trafficked they will not be persecuted by the police, that they will be looked after and that there is a telephone number they can call. That is simple and would work. The notice could also be put up in ports and railway stations. Northamptonshire police took the initiative when they discovered the problem. What happens if at 10 or 11 o’clock in the evening a beat bobby comes across a young woman who says, ““I’ve been trafficked.””? Until the recent initiative there was no procedure, but now every police officer in Northamptonshire knows what to do, where to take the young woman, and how to treat her. It does not cost any money and is a simple procedure. We talked briefly about immigration control and I think that that is one of the keys. Again, such a measure would not cost a lot of money. However, the most important thing is to have safe houses across the country where young victims can be looked after for a year or two—because it can take that long for a case to come to court. It is no good looking after them for a couple of months and sending them home, because there will then be no chance of continuing the prosecution. The victims will be got at in their home country. I do not quite understand why we are not signing the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, but leaving that aside, let us bring in legislation or regulations to provide safe houses. That would help greatly.