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Human Trafficking

Indeed, they are victims. When I first got to know about this issue, I talked to Northamptonshire police, which confirmed that it was a real problem in our area, just as it is throughout the country. The Northamptonshire police quite often found that when it raided a brothel, the victims it discovered there would not co-operate. The force was pretty smart about that; it got the gangs who run the brothels on immigration laws, and got them expelled from the country, but that is not really a satisfactory way of dealing with the issue. I decided to try to get to grips with the subject by producing a pamphlet called ““Slavery in the 21st century—the trade of human beings for sexual exploitation””. The problem is that I have never been able to finish it. Every time I think I have finished it, I find out that the problem is greater and that there is more depth to it. I am grateful to Richard Britton and Miss Leigh Hooker for the research they have done on it. I had thought that the problem was simply one of bringing in people from abroad and putting them into prostitution. However, now we learn that people are trafficked within the United Kingdom, perhaps from Manchester to Cornwall. I hope that I will finish the pamphlet one day. I want to give a couple of examples of the way in which people are trafficked into this country. The all-party group met some child victims, who had been brought into the country and forced into prostitution. One young lady was very black and had been brought here when she was 14 by a middle-aged white man on a passport that did not include her name or picture. She was taken to Liverpool and forced into prostitution. She escaped, made her way back to London, found somebody who spoke her language and who took her to the authorities. Thankfully, the NSPCC intervened to look after her. I asked her whether she was shocked at being forced into the evil trade and repeatedly raped. She said, straight faced, ““Well, of course, I was being forced to do it in Kenya before I came to this country.”” The hon. Member for Glasgow, North alluded to such matters earlier. The grinding poverty and the sort of activities that happen in the countries from where the victims come are also great problems. We are considering modern-day slavery. The victims have no rights and they are often locked up, but they are sometimes taken to what one might call public brothels. One might ask why they do not run away. The answer is that they are worried that their families might be intimidated. They are terrified of the traffickers and frightened that the most appalling things will happen to them. One might ask why they do not go to the police. The simple answer is that, in their country, the police are as corrupt as the traffickers. One does not have to go far to find an example. A reliable source attested that, at St. Thomas' hospital, a young lady ran out of the sexual diseases clinic along the corridor as fast as she could. She was pursued by an Albanian, who claimed that she was his property. That happened across the road from Parliament. I want to deal briefly with prostitution. I understand where many hon. Members come from on the subject, and I am interested in the outcome of the debate. There appears to be no difference in the number of trafficked victims into the Netherlands, Sweden and this country, yet we all have different rules on prostitution.