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Human Trafficking

I approach this debate and the wider subject with proper diffidence because I am not, unlike the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), the Chairman or even a member of his Committee; I am not, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen), chairman of the all-party group; I am not, unlike the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), a member of both; and I am not, unlike the Minister, a Minister with responsibility for this area of public policy. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who is sitting behind the Minister for the moment, having temporarily moved her position in the Chamber, is, of course, also a member of the Joint Committee. I am surrounded and chaired by people with immense knowledge of the subject. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes is a former practising member of the Bar, he will understand the expression ““a return””. I have been handed this brief by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) who, regretfully, cannot be here today for a number of reasons. Had he been here, I am sure that he would have provided a far more interesting and coherent response to the debate on behalf of the Conservative party. None the less, it is fair to say that despite my relative newness to this home affairs subject, I need not enter a competition to see who can speak the longest to make one or two points. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon, not as a matter of formality, on his chairmanship of the Joint Committee. He has produced a number of interesting reports and held a number of interesting evidence sessions on a range of issues concerning human rights, but on the subject of human trafficking, which is a matter of growing public salience and concern, he and his colleagues have done a particular service, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes. My only caveat, which has nothing to do with the hon. Gentleman, but concerns the usual channels and those who arrange the timing of these debates, is that his evidence sessions took place last summer, and the Government responded before Christmas, but it is now nearly the summer of 2007 before we have had an opportunity to debate the matter. Perhaps on future occasions it may be better for the development of public policy and the chiding of Government, which my hon. Friend did during his powerful and bravura performance for several minutes, that these debates should return to this Chamber or the Floor of the House rather more quickly than the Joint Committee’s report and the Government’s formal response to it. I shall not repeat what everyone else has said in describing the context of the debate. All hon. Members in the Chamber, and many who will read our debate later or who may be listening to it now, know precisely the context of the problem, and its huge dimension and hideous nature, as well as the damage caused to victims of trafficking. My hon. Friend was entirely right to concentrate during the 30 or so minutes of his speech on the problems suffered by children who are trafficked. He was also entirely right to concentrate his fire on the Government to ensure that they do something to alleviate the conditions of such children, both by deterring trafficking of them and, if they are victims, ensuring that they are cared for humanely and sensibly by genuinely providing them with assistance, rather than terrifying them or forcing them underground, which leads to further problems. Baroness Stern is a member of the Joint Committee, and she and I share an interest in prison reform. One thing that concerns me as the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman on prisons is the huge number of damaged children who were sexually abused and so on when they were under 18 and end up in custody because they themselves become criminals. In cases of sexual abuse particularly, the victim, 10, 20 or 30 years later, often commits the offence that was committed against them against their own children or others like them. Trafficking children has consequences and a ripple effect into our whole criminal justice system, which the Home Office and/or the Ministry of Justice must closely concern themselves with. I do not want to avoid the subject, but I do not think repetition will assist, and I want briefly to give an outline of my party’s view of the matter. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon correctly pointed out that my party has been a front-runner in lobbying the Government to sign and ratify the convention that we have been talking about. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer to the reservation about the United Nations convention, not because I am hiding something, but because I genuinely do not know the answer. I understand that the Government’s position—the Minister will explain this better than I can—is that the United Nations convention, as distinct from the Council of Europe convention, contains provisions that are antipathetic to our domestic law on immigration. I fear that the Minister will have to resolve that in his own mind while he is in Government. It is fair to say that the Conservative party’s view—I say this without advice from my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford—that anything that interferes with the protection of trafficked people in this country who are genuine victims and not cheats should be removed. However, I have not studied the niceties or details of the two conventions, nor the current state of our immigration law. None the less, it is also fair to say that the Government have introduced a number of changes to the criminal law that add greater protection to those who are trafficked.