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Human Trafficking

I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow him when we are on the same side of the debate. On this occasion his speech is the longer and mine will be the shorter. As hon. Members will know, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, recently completed a lengthy inquiry and published its report. It is widely accepted that trafficking of human beings is not merely a criminal justice or migration issue, but a significant human rights issue too. There is a positive legal obligation on states to investigate, prosecute and punish traffickers, but in accordance with human rights standards, the effective protection of victims must be the starting point. The hon. Member for Totnes rightly drew a distinction between trafficking and smuggling. Far too many people confuse the two. The essence of trafficking is that people are coerced, conned or kidnapped, and exploited. Smuggling is a voluntary activity, which is always illegal, and does not involve the exploitation at the end of the process. The scale of the activity is a big issue. People have spoken about 4,000 women in sex slavery, but those are old numbers from 2003 which I believe to be a significant underestimate. Ten years ago, 85 per cent. of women in brothels were born in the UK, whereas now 85 per cent. are born overseas. We have no idea of the number of children who have been trafficked—not just for sex purposes, but also for labour exploitation. We have no idea, either, of the number coming as adults for labour exploitation. Each of those individuals is a real life story. It is true that trafficking and exploitation are going on everywhere. Even my local newspaper in Edgware reported under the heading ““Sex slave gang jailed”” the appalling kidnapping and exploitation of a Lithuanian woman. The focus in the debate and in the country has always been on the sex trade, but I should like to mention one or two other aspects as well. Children may be smuggled for domestic service, often through family and community links. It is often a cultural practice, going back to Africa where the tradition is that people are farmed out to relatives for food and education and to be cared for. They come here and are exploited, often as a result of debt bondage of the family in the source country. We even heard evidence in our Committee of children from Vietnam being brought here to farm cannabis, looking after the plants in the greenhouses. Domestic workers are also exploited and subjected to violence and abuse. Under the new visa rules, which we want changed, they cannot change their employer, so they are trapped. A third of domestic workers are not allowed out. Some, we heard, sleep in corridors or under the kitchen table. Agriculture is a source of labour exploitation, too. We heard from the TUC of a case in which legal Portuguese workers had to pretend to be illegal Brazilians pretending to be legal Portuguese, so that they would be open to exploitation by the employer. That was bizarre. Our Committee found that the Government were doing quite well on enforcement, but we were extremely concerned about the lack of a victim-centred approach. We want a rebalancing of the Government’s initiative. There is inconsistency in approaches around the country, primarily because of a lack of training and knowledge. Victims are often seen as criminals themselves or as illegal migrants, rather than as the victims of horrific crime, multiple rape and slavery. They are often taken straight to the removal centre for deportation. The Home Office operates a case-by-case approach, whose discretionary basis gives no guarantee against arbitrary removal. People can often be removed even while they are deciding whether they want to support a prosecution. The fear and trauma that those women have experienced is often underestimated by the authorities. The Poppy Project gave us a very good example, when we went to see it. Not one of its clients had been given asylum on the first decision, although many succeeded on appeal.