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Human Trafficking

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I meant the summer recess. I turn to a couple of other points. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli was gracious enough to point to some of the progress that has been made. She also talked about some aspects of the action plan, such as prevention. We are doing a lot of work with NGOs and other Governments to highlight the danger in some of the things that are advertised and some of the stories that are told in other countries. We need to understand that so much of trafficking involves deception and people not understanding the reality of the situation. I want to share with hon. Members my experience of visiting Operation Paladin Child at Heathrow airport, which is a police operation to prevent child trafficking. The courage and professionalism of the police officers working there is second to none. It is heartbreaking to hear from them that, sometimes, when they try to stop a child about whom they have suspicions, to prevent them from coming into the country, the child kicks, screams, bites and fights. The officer has their best interests at heart, but the child believes that the officer has bad intent, although they are trying to help. That shows the difficulty of dealing with such situations. Deception is a real problem. We are working hard to prevent it in other countries, and we are doing what we can to reduce demand. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli made a point about core police business. We will have another domestic campaign with Operation Pentameter 2, which I hope will help in that respect. The UK HTC is working hard to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service, HM Courts Service and police forces throughout the country understand the importance of that work. The UK HTC recently sent a DVD to every police officer to inform them about that area of work and to encourage them to think of it as a toolkit to help. We are involved in international talks: we were instrumental in creating an EU action plan, which we have monitored and tried to put forward, and we are working with the UN. The international focus of the work is crucial; we have talked about the UK action plan, but if we are to make a real difference, we must consider working together internationally to tackle the problems that we face. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon pointed out some of the good practice that he had seen in Italy and the need for us to learn from good practice throughout the continent and indeed the world. We shall do that. We are considering what legislation or other actions are required to move towards ratification. We are considering what we need to do with respect to a helpline. I point out to the hon. Gentleman that a child trafficking information line will be set up with the co-operation of Comic Relief, ECPAT UK and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I understand that it will set up some time in the summer, although I do not think that we have a date yet. That will help to deal with particular aspects of child trafficking. Hon. Members have asked a huge range of questions. At the core of the report was a belief that the Government’s focus was on law enforcement at the expense of a victim-centred human rights approach. In the action plan, we have tried to rebalance what we have done and to say that law enforcement is crucial. As the hon. Member for Totnes said, there have been 33 prosecutions and that is right. Many of those prosecutions have led to long jail sentences, which we would all applaud. We want to see the number of prosecutions go up, we want more people to be brought to justice and we want more done to ensure that people cannot do such things with impunity. We also recognise that there is a balance to be struck between proper immigration control and recognising that many of the people who the police come across are not immigration offenders but the victims of a crime. We took on board what the Committee said and we have tried to rebalance what we have done towards a victim-centred human rights approach that also recognises what we need to do with respect to law enforcement.