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Anti-Slavery Day Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on introducing his Bill. As he knows, I am one of its supporters. I also congratulate him on his speech. For a moment, I thought he was going after my record for the time taken in setting out one's arguments, but I am pleased to be able to say that he did not break it—he was quite a long way short. I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman's all-party group on the work that it is doing and has done. It works in parallel with my Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has taken a particular interest in the issue of trafficking. Only last week, we had an evidence session with the Minister to follow up on our previous reports on the issue. A number of points arose from that, but I shall not go into them today because that would involve straying from the text of the Bill. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned William Wilberforce, I should say that he lived in what is now my constituency and founded my local church, so I have a particular constituency interest in seeing how this all progresses. I have a problem with part of the text of the Bill, specifically the references to "modern-day slavery" and""taking the place of the trans-Atlantic slave trade"." The hon. Gentleman will know that, like him, I have attended IPU events to discuss trafficking. The phrase "modern-day slavery" is not really accepted by a number of the countries in Africa, which find it an offensive comparison with the old slave trade. Assuming that the Bill goes into Committee—I hope that it will—I urge him to consider whether he could remove that phrase because it is not needed to make the point about trafficking. If he were to do so, we would be left with a much more consensual Bill, particularly given how many people from Africa live in our country and who might otherwise feel offended. On the other reference, the hon. Gentleman has explained at length that his Bill deals with the modern problem of trafficking, which, as he said, is a worldwide one. He has mentioned the trafficking of children from Vietnam in order to grow cannabis in factories and the problem of young women who are trafficked from eastern Europe to work in the sex trade. None of those things relates in any way, shape or form to the transatlantic slave trade. Equally, he knows as well as I do that people are trafficked not only into the UK, the US or even Europe, but throughout the world. As he said, trafficking is the second biggest criminal activity after the drugs trade. Thus, not only might people with an African heritage find the comparison in the simple reference to the transatlantic slave trade a little insulting, because they are very sensitive about that issue, but the reference does not get across what the Bill is actually about, which is to highlight the worldwide nature of the problem. The comparison between what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries with what is happening now is not really one we should have in this Bill.