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Human Trafficking

ECPAT, also, as my hon. Friend correctly tells me, has done good work. To persuade you, Mr. Bercow, that I have done some preparation, ECPAT stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes, and the organisation’s full name is ECPAT UK. I mentioned several non-state organisations that any worthwhile Government should enable to do more. As I said, the problem does not require us parliamentarians to reserve action, common sense and implementation for the state. We want to expand the number of safe houses, and support them. At the moment, remarkably few trafficked people who have been rescued are in safe houses, and the people who are trafficked, particularly for exploitation in the sex trade, can be numbered in their thousands. I understand from the Eaves housing charity that, now, almost 10,000 victims of trafficking are working in prostitution in London and the west midlands alone. Ten years ago, 85 per cent. of women working in brothels were UK citizens; now it is the other way around: 85 per cent. of women working in brothels are from outside the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting that all that 85 per cent. represents trafficked people, but I do not need to push those figures far for hon. Members to get the message. We need to ensure that we start properly to police our United Kingdom borders. Sixty per cent. of illegal immigrants resident in the UK arrive in the back of a lorry. Of course, there are X-ray machines, sniffer dogs and all sorts of other non-human, human and animal ways in which one can try to do one’s best to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. It is bad enough that there are illegal immigrants, but it is worse—I hope that hon. Members will agree—when those people are brought here illegally for an improper purpose and to their own detriment, without us being able to do more of a practical nature about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes and others mentioned that there have been incredibly few convictions for offences relating to trafficking: only 30 convictions for trafficking offences were secured between 2004 and 2006. In 2004, only 11 employers were prosecuted under the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, and only eight of those were found guilty. There have so far been no convictions for the offence of trafficking for labour exploitation. I believe that the hon. Member for Hendon, the Chairman of the Joint Committee, mentioned the question of the confiscation of the assets of those who are guilty—[Interruption.] Actually, it was my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes who mentioned the confiscation of money from those who are responsible for the employment of trafficked people. We know about the failings of the Assets Recovery Agency: is this another example? I urge the Minister to do his best to apply the vim and vigour for which he is renowned throughout the east midlands as a constituency Member to that aspect of Government policy. Enough has been said, certainly by me, on the subject. I congratulate all who have spoken in this debate on their contributions, common sense and the way in which they have focused their attention on the good things that the Government do and have done, and the good things that the Government need to finish and to do to ensure that that evil trade is stamped out.