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Anti-Slavery Day Bill

It is, indeed, a pleasure to rise in support of the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen). I congratulate him not only on his powerful and compelling speech, but on his exemplary use of an all-party group to pursue an important campaign. I wish the Bill well. I found it unique and slightly surreal that the only objection to the Bill so far has come from one of its sponsors. That is made more surreal by the fact that I might have thought that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) was doing what he often does on a Friday morning, and extending the debate in a creative way, but I looked at the Order Paper and discovered that the next Bill for consideration is from the hon. Gentleman. I am not entirely sure what his contribution was designed to achieve. I want to make it clear that the Opposition support my hon. Friend's Bill. It is an important initiative that is aimed at raising public awareness. As has been said by several hon. Members so far, this is not a problem of inner cities and of big cities. It is now a problem that unexpectedly affects every community—or many communities—in this country. I know that it is a problem in my constituency, which is not the sort of area where one would expect to find this sort of problem. I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill, which takes a significant step with no apparent public spending commitment, which is not only admirable but extremely sensible.