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Human Trafficking

I make no apology for focusing on prostitution in this debate. Let me quote Sigma Huda, who is the UN special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children. She said:"““For the most part, prostitution as actually practised in the world usually does satisfy the elements of trafficking…states parties with legalised prostitution industries have a heavy responsibility to ensure that their legalised prostitution regimes are not simply perpetuating widespread and systematic trafficking. As current conditions throughout the world attest, states parties that maintain legalised prostitution are far from satisfying their obligations””." It is critical that, through law enforcement measures such as Operation Pentameter, we prevent trafficking and protect the victims. To that end, I went last month to look at how the Swedish system operates. The reason why women are such a profitable market is that, frankly, unlike drugs, they can be reused and recycled by the exploiters, which is what happens, so that they make a bigger profit for the organised criminal networks than the drugs that such organisations used to trade. In Sweden, I spoke to criminal prosecutors, police officers and women in the women's movement. When speaking to the police, I was struck that those who originally felt that the law against the purchase of sexual services would be a problem had become enthusiastic advocates of it. One of the reasons was that the law helped in prosecutions. Because what the customers were doing was unlawful, they could be engaged as witnesses in successful prosecutions of the exploiters. That made a real difference in Sweden. There are fewer prosecutions in Sweden because, according to phone-tap evidence, there is less trafficking of women to Sweden. In turn, that is because, quite simply, the profits are lower. People cannot make the inflated profits that they can make in other countries because of the difficulties that they encounter and because the police have such effective tools to interrupt the purchase of sexual services. Sexual services are still marketed on the internet in Sweden, as they are around the world, but the law means that traffickers must move women from flat to flat, that they cannot use the same premises frequently, and so on, so their profits are reduced. There has been a substantial interruption to their activities. I praise the Minister for the publicity that he has put out recently, which is going in a similar direction—I am referring to the posters that address men and say, ““Walk in as a punter, come out as a rapist.”” That points out to men that if they pay for sex with a trafficked woman, they are raping her. The risk of that approach, however, is to go down the Finnish route. They have specifically criminalised the purchase of sexual services with trafficked women, but no prosecutions have been brought as a result which, frankly, is a warning that, on its own, such a measure is insufficient, and that there must be a wider law. [Mr. Greg Pope in the Chair.] I want to address protection. The POPPY project, the Medaille Trust and other bodies that provide protection for women are essential. However, it is also essential that policing is undertaken with a welfare consciousness. The police should ensure that they protect the women involved. I must say that they do that more with their mouths than with their actions. It is important for both women and children who are trafficked that we see a better effort on that. I am probably the only Member in the Chamber who has had a major raid—allegedly—focusing on trafficked children in their constituency. I have not yet been able to assure myself that that raid was part of Operation Pentameter—I do not believe that it was. It was in any case profoundly unsatisfactory. Some hundreds of police officers raided 17 addresses in Slough. They claimed to the media that it was an operation to protect victims of child trafficking, and I think there was a substantial element of that, but it seemed to me that the main aim was to impress the media that something was being done. Nine of the 10 children who were taken into care were returned to the care of their families within 24 hours and the briefing of the media was so inappropriate that photographs in which the children were easily identifiable were published by the newspapers. I took the issue up with the Press Complaints Commission and discovered that, effectively, the media were not reminded of their obligations to protect those children and were not advised that they should hide their identity. There is no mechanism by which each of the children can be given a guardian, which ECPAT rightly argued for. Even if the case is interesting and shows a blurring of lines between exploitation within and without a family, which I suspect is what happened to a large extent, we share responsibility for child welfare. If each of those children had been given a right to a publicly appointed guardian, they could have been protected much more effectively than otherwise. Despite the concerns of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen), there is profound evidence that the Swedish approach has reduced the extent of people trafficking into that country. If we take an approach that goes for prevention and protection, and that specifically protects children, we would make more of a difference than we have been able to make so far.