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Human Trafficking

When my hon. Friend made that point about 10 minutes ago, I was amazed. I remain amazed. It is a good point and no doubt the Minister will wish to reflect on it, although there are issues about taking records at the point of departure. A useful point to return to is the findings from Operation Paladin, run by the Metropolitan police in 2004. It involved the immigration service, Hillingdon social services and secondees from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The operation risk assessed children arriving at Heathrow airport over three months without their parents or legal guardians, and social services followed up those considered at risk. In total, 1,738 unaccompanied minors passed through immigration services in that period. Not all of them were trafficked, but it shows the number of children who travel unaccompanied. That did not include EU nationals or British children. The Paladin team risk-assessed 551 children, or 30 per cent., based on a list of indicators considered by police to indicate that something was not quite right. The largest risk group were African teenage girls. UNICEF showed that, in an 18-month period, 330 children were believed to have been trafficked into the UK. Of that total—we have heard a lot about this—183 went missing from the care of social services. Most appallingly, there is evidence that many children may still be under the control of traffickers while they are in local authority care, let alone those who went missing from it. There is currently no safe accommodation providing 24-hour care for trafficked children, and as a result many of them end up in foster care, hostels or even bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I hope that the Minister will extend funding to the POPPY project to look after such vulnerable children and provide professional support and, critically, counselling where appropriate. Many young victims of trafficking are awaiting asylum determinations whose age is disputed by local authority social services and the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency. If their age is assessed as 18 or over, they are placed in the adult system, which does not provide for safe accommodation and support services for age-disputed victims, unless, of course, they get access to the POPPY project. ECPAT UK found child-trafficked victim identification"““to be ad hoc, unsystematic and sometimes accidental; information is not always recorded or passed on to relevant agencies; and children might be in the looked-after system for some time before they are identified as a victim of trafficking.””" How will the Government ensure that both the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency and social services comply with the 2005 Council of Europe convention against trafficking in human beings on the provision of accommodation and support to age-disputed young victims of trafficking? Like all Members, I welcomed the decision to ratify the convention, but the Government need not wait until the end of the year to instigate these recommendations, and I hope that they do not prevaricate any further. In order to combat the sexual exploitation of children, there must be a comprehensive, co-ordinated partnership between many groups—not only the police and the Home Office, but prosecutors, lawyers, embassies, non-governmental organisations, the travel industry and the media. Trafficking in children is an escalating problem, although how big it is is debatable, so I hope that the Minister will commission authoritative research to provide hard facts and evidence to inform the debate. As yet, there is no system of best practice in the travel industry, no consistent multi-agency approach at borders, no systematic tracking or spot checks and a weak support structure. I await the Minister's recommendations with hope that he will grasp this nettle. In 21st century Britain, it is frankly an outrage that child trafficking can exist. The Government must now act with greater speed and clarity, and provide the requisite resources to stamp out this unacceptable practice.