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Human Trafficking

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I welcome this timely debate. It is right that we collectively, as parliamentarians, demonstrate our shared commitment today to tackling this evil activity, at a time when other countries are trying to demonstrate that they are doing their bit. For example, last Friday the United States held a national day of human trafficking awareness. It had been initiated by the US Congress to try to raise the American public's consciousness of this issue. Many hon. Members have referred to similar sets of data on the scale of the problem, which have come from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Labour Organisation and the US State Department. There is common agreement on the size and scope of the international problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) was right to identify just how thin the data are on victims of human trafficking in the UK. That will be a real barrier to effective Government action to tackle the problem. Unless there is more serious research and a much better understanding of the nature of the problem within our own borders, we will come up against that barrier, which will be difficult to overcome in terms of securing effective action. I spent the earlier part of today looking through the national action plan that the Home Office produced last year. It attempts to set out some specific objectives for tackling the problem. However, that was a year ago and there was a push to produce the document to coincide with the bicentennial of the abolition of slavery. A year later, more information has come to light and progress has been made on the ratification of the convention, so it is time for a revamped and updated national action plan. It is right that we should review the situation each year and assess how well we are meeting the objectives. We should also question whether the objectives are the right ones and will be effective in tackling the problem. Most of the debate this afternoon has focused on the problem of trafficking within our borders. Actually, most of the victims of trafficking globally are outside Britain, in the developing world. This afternoon and this evening, thousands of women from eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc will be working on the streets and in thousands of brothels in communities up and down this country, but we should not forget the faces of the other victims of trafficking internationally. Young Burmese boys continue to be plucked from street corners and bus stations in Burma and forcibly conscripted into the army. The gangster regime in Burma has created the army with the largest proportion of child soldiers in the world, and most of them have been forcibly conscripted and many trafficked. I also think of some of the children whom I met near Hyderabad in India last year. They were from the Dalit community—the untouchable caste—and victims of trafficking, working in a bonded labour scenario. Trafficking has multiple facets and many faces, and we should not forget that most of its victims are outside this country. It is vital that we have a new, integrated border security force and I strongly the support the commitment by my party to instigate such a force, especially if resources can be found to restore some of the border security at Welsh ports. I represent a seat in west Wales that has two ferry ports with connections to Ireland, and there is a growing concern in Wales that the four ports that link to Ireland are being used as a back-door alternative trafficking route from the continent, through Ireland and into the UK. That issue has been raised with me by police officers confidentially back home in Pembrokeshire. It was also identified in a report last year by the Welsh Assembly Government. I therefore urge the Minister to take that into consideration as he and his colleagues assess the issue of border security and what can be done to choke off the supply of trafficked people through UK borders. In recent years, there have been many cuts to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, so we no longer have any permanent customs cover at the two ferry ports of Pembroke Dock and Fishguard in my constituency. On the issue of convictions for trafficking offences, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes hit the nail on the head when he highlighted the disparity between the number of prosecutions and the number of convictions. What work has been done to identify the barriers to achieving successful convictions of those who are charged with trafficking offences? If we understood what those barriers are, it could lead to more effective police training and, I hope, to more convictions.