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Human Trafficking

I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing the debate. He has raised the issue in other forums and will continue to do so. We have heard a number of different takes on it from right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken, some of which I will mention. Let me say at the beginning that the Government deserve praise for the action that they have taken and for the direction in which they are going. However slow and hesitant they have been in taking action in the past few years, they have done more than any other Government on the issue. We know that they are planning to take further steps, and we hope that that will happen sooner rather than later. However, there is more to be done. There have been roughly only 70 convictions for trafficking under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, despite the two Pentameter operations. There are no simple answers, as I am sure the Minister will say when he responds. We need to look carefully at experience in the UK and in other countries, and hon. Members have touched on the conflict over the lessons that we should learn. If we are to tackle trafficking and the downside of prostitution, should we legalise prostitution, as has been done in the Netherlands, New Zealand and some US states? Would that bring prostitution into the open, making it much easier to control the worst aspects and help those involved? Alternatively, do we take the Swedish route and criminalise at least the purchase of sex, although the distinction between purchasing and selling is a little like splitting hairs or counting angels on a pinhead? Which example should we learn from? Passionate arguments are made by people on both sides. If we look at other countries, we can also learn how to deal with the freed victims of trafficking, although, again, the messages are perhaps conflicting. The Government are criticised for their predilection for deporting victims and treating them as criminals. For example, they prosecuted an under-age Vietnamese boy found cultivating the crop in a cannabis factory who had been trafficked into this country as slave labour. They have also been criticised for deporting women and children who have been trafficked into the sex industry. Alternatively, should we give those people special immigration status? The Government have argued over the past year or two that such a solution would not be simple, because it could create a pull factor that draws people into the country and a loophole that they can use to gain legitimate status. We can learn from what other countries have done in that respect. In his opening comments, the hon. Member for Totnes said that the issue had dominated debate in this country for only about three years and that it was quite a recent phenomenon. Back in 2002, as a new Member of Parliament, however, I went with UNICEF to Thailand and the Republic of Laos to look at the trafficking of children for forced labour in factories and domestic work and for the sex trade. Thailand is significant in that it was one of the top five countries of origin among those who were referred to the POPPY scheme following Operation Pentameter, and we can learn from what the Thai Government and UNICEF did in this case. The children came predominantly from the Republic of Laos, which is a very poor country; indeed, it is very similar, although even worse in terms of poverty, to the eastern European countries that are a source of trafficking, as hon. Members have mentioned. The Thai Government, under pressure from UNICEF, realised that if they simply deported back to Laos everybody they freed from brothels and factories in Thailand, they would soon come back over the border, either willingly or unwillingly. We looked at cases in which the Thai Government had educated and retrained children who had been freed in police raids for up to a year before taking them back to Laos. The idea was that those children would return to Laos with skills so that they could set up small businesses and have a different lifestyle. However, when we went to the village where one of these girls came from in Laos, which is the poorest country in the world, we saw that her family lived in a breeze-block shanty. There was nothing in the door or the windows, which were just holes in a breeze-block wall. There was one electric light bulb on the end of a long cable, which the family moved from room to room to use. The lesson was that whatever education and retraining these girls were given, many would quickly find their way back across the border because of the attraction of Thailand. Some would then move on to Europe and perhaps England, just as girls who ““escape”” the absolute poverty of some eastern European countries do. We can therefore learn a lot from the experience of other countries, but we can also learn a lot about how difficult it is to come up with answers. There are no simple answers, and I am sure that the Minister will refer to that, as I said. Pentameter 2, and Pentameter 1 before it, have shown that successful action can be taken if it is a police priority. Of course, the police have lots of competing priorities. Terrorism has emerged as a major priority, just as knife crime has in the past few weeks and months—there is a constant cycle of such issues. However, something like trafficking is below the radar and below most people's perception of what is going on, so there needs to be a strong lead from the Government—as Operation Pentameter showed—if the issue is to become a police priority. We have seen in this country and in other countries what a push we need from Governments to tackle this issue. One of the great factors in Sweden's success—in so far as what they are doing in Sweden is a success—is that they have not only made purchasing sex a crime, but given the police a lot of extra resources and told them that they must make enforcing the law on this issue a top priority. Laws can be passed, but whether they are enforced is another matter. Sweden also puts a lot of resources into social services and into providing back-up for women who were involved in prostitution to help them take up alternative lifestyles. Something similar is being done on a small scale in Ipswich, following the terrible murders of five prostitutes there. The local police and social services have run a major programme to get women off the streets by providing housing and drug rehabilitation and by helping women into jobs and education so that they can take up alternative lifestyles. A whole package of measures is needed. I hope that the Minister will tell us what the detailed lessons of Operation Pentameter and the visits to countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden are and what package the Government will introduce in this country. We are 10 months—nearly a year—on from the end of the operation, but what lessons have the Government learned? When will they publish their findings? What do they plan to roll out across the UK based on that experience? What will the Government do about victims who can currently stay four weeks, or 16 weeks if they co-operate with the authorities? In 2006, a Home Office Minister responded to a question by saying that there were no plans to give victims special immigrant status. However, if the Government are to ratify the Council of Europe convention by the end of the year, as they have said they will, they will have to create some form of special immigration status for victims of trafficking who are freed as a result of police action. The POPPY scheme is very good, but it can take only 25 people at a time. Will the scheme be rolled out across the country? If it is, will it be adequately resourced or will it just be left to existing local police and social services budgets to pay for the implementation of Pentameter and the POPPY system? Will any such scheme be based on the Dutch example of the four safe houses in Amsterdam? Such safe houses have personal guardians, 24-hour on-duty care, chaperones to take children out so that they cannot be picked up by traffickers on the streets and 24-hour CCTV monitoring of the surroundings. In the Netherlands, only 8 per cent. of freed children subsequently go missing, which is much better than the record in this country. A UNICEF report noted that 183 of the 330 child victims of trafficking whom the police found in this country later went missing. Where do these children go? What research are the Government doing through local authorities into where these children go and how we can combat the problem? What are the lessons for sentencing policy from Pentameter and the surrounding research? Respondents to Government consultations have said that there should be a heavy minimum sentence as well as a maximum sentence and that it should be linked to deportation and a ban on re-entry following completion of the sentence. Is that the way that the Government plan to go? What are the lessons for the provision of legal assistance and immigration advice to the women and children who are caught up in trafficking and whose identities are revealed as a result of operations by police and social services? What lessons from Pentameter do the Government therefore intend to implement? When will they implement them? Will they implement in full UNICEF's recommendations from March 2008 and the recommendations in the October 2007 report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights?