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Anti-Slavery Day Bill

I shall not detain the Committee long, and I hope the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) will accept the amendments. As he knows from the Second Reading debate and private discussions, one of my concerns about the Bill is about the references to "modern-day" in the context of slavery and to the transatlantic slave trade. People from the African continent find references to "modern-day" slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in this context somewhat offensive. I know this, as does the hon. Gentleman, I hope, from work that I have done in the Inter-Parliamentary Union. At the IPU Assembly several years ago, I spoke on trafficking and proposed a draft resolution. The representatives of African countries were insistent that such references be removed because they do not consider it appropriate to compare what is happening now to what happened to people from Africa who were enslaved and taken to the American continent in the 18th and 19th centuries. They do not feel it is appropriate to compare the suffering of their ancestors with the modern position. It would therefore be more inclusive if the amendments were made to tidy up the wording.