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Human Trafficking

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I may claim some credit for initiating a campaign, by raising the matter two or three times in Prime Minister's questions, about the Council of Europe's convention on action against trafficking in human beings. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is about trafficking in general and not only the trafficking of women. I support stronger trade union rights, workplace inspections, rights for agency workers and others, but that is not quite where the Conservative party wants to be on protecting workers from any sort of exploitation. I return to the question of statistics and finding hard information. When my hon. Friend the Member for Slough and others raised the issue, we were criticised for using figures that were said to be unrealistic. I cited the figure of 25,000 trafficked people, which was given in the Daily Mirror and came from a Home Office estimate three or four years ago. Julia O'Connell Davidson, a professor—there is always a professor involved—from the university of Nottingham, wrote to The Guardian on 28 December criticising me and claiming that I had made a ““startling assertion””. She said that that number was"““more than the entire work force of Debenhams. How is it that this vast number of women and girls are so readily available to male clients and yet simultaneously so difficult for the police to detect?””" Of Operation Pentameter in 2006, she said that"““only 84 women and girls…conformed to police and immigration officers' understanding of the term 'victim of trafficking'." Again, I cite newspaper figures, but I understand that, as a result of Pentameter 2, the figure given everywhere is 18,000, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Totnes and my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm it. It is worrying when we have top professors rubbishing the statistics and the facts. In 2005, the same professor wrote:"““There are places in the world where it is estimated that between 15 and 30 per cent of those working in prostitution are under the age of 18 and that up to 75 per cent of the male population engage or have engaged in prostitution use. In such places, proposals to penalise anyone who buys sex from a minor could translate into proposals to incarcerate half the male population.””" That is an extraordinary argument. The professor seems to be giving the green light to our tourist paedophiles.