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Human Trafficking

I am absolutely amazed that I agree exactly with the last point that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) made. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing this debate on a very important subject. It is related to a problem that I have been working on for some considerable time, as the Minister knows to his cost—he has experienced some ear-bashing. The issue of paedophiles is related, although we have not touched on it. I am astonished by my hon. Friend’s timing. There was a report in The Times today about a lonely little funeral on 5 December at a London cemetery. It was for a little boy called Adam who was four, or perhaps five or six—we do not really know. He was called Adam, but nobody knows what his real name was. He was found some five years ago—or at least bits of him were—floating in the Thames. The police think that he had been smuggled here from Nigeria for a Muti ritual murder. He was smuggled in for, in effect, dissection—possibly while alive—and murdered. We do not know how much of that is going on. There has been close co-operation in this Parliament between the Conservatives and the Government on dealing with paedophiles. The Government had the good sense to set up a small taskforce—in fact, the Minister and I should be at a meeting at this very time, but we cannot attend because of the importance of this debate. The taskforce has introduced many organisations, police representatives and some MPs who are particularly interested in the subject to each other. They have broken down the issues and split into groups to work on them. The taskforce could easily include people trafficking, as it is closely related. The Minister might like to think about that. My particular interest in this debate is on the side of children. There is growing evidence that paedophiles may be using trafficking as an opportunity. Children are smuggled into this country for sex—very little children, in many cases. Some paedophiles are looking for children who are still in nappies. It is extremely easy to smuggle them through immigration as children, nephews and so on. They are brought in for domestic slavery, for benefit fraud, for Muti ritual killing and for adoption. But are we sure that it is adoption? Are they being brought in nominally for adoption but actually for other purposes? I do not often support the Government, but they—or at least the law enforcement agencies in this country—are making some progress. There has been close co-operation, surprising as that might be to some of the speakers in this debate, between the police in this country and police forces in some rather unusual countries. A criminal gang working on adoption in Czechoslovakia were caught by a combined effort of the Metropolitan Police and the Czech Republic police. I hope and expect that that sort of thing will continue. The Serious Organised Crime Agency has been set up and has a special duty to look into such activities. That is a good move, and the Metropolitan Police, virtually off their own bat, are working closely on Operation Paladin Child at Heathrow. There is much co-operation between Customs, the immigration service and the Metropolitan Police, but they are looking at only one airport, and there are many others. I have already run through my four minutes. Will the Minister think carefully about more research? I take the points that other hon. Members have made, but we really do not know what we are tackling. The little taskforce that he and I should be working on this afternoon has had vast success. Perhaps its interests could be slightly extended, as its work has already been fragmented into specific topics, and I believe that trafficking is a related issue. We must move forward. There will be co-operation across the House, and the Minister will find, as his predecessor did, that any legislative changes that have been thought through will go through simply, easily and with careful thought to the benefit of this country.