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Child Migration

I welcome the Statement very warmly indeed. Speaking as the treasurer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Trafficking of Women and Children, I thank the noble Baroness for drawing this House’s attention to the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall and confirm the importance to Members of both Houses of seeing that exhibition. We should recall that at the time the children were sent to Australia, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child did not exist. A simple statement—a 10-point plan—was brought up in 1927 by the League of Nations and repeated in the United Nations but the full United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was not begun until 1979, not put in place until 1988, and not implemented until 1993. Therefore, the child’s rights were not at the centre, as they are today. Given that child migration, or transportation, is now the fastest growing sector of organised crime, and given the horrifying statistics of the thousands of children that are now travelling unaccompanied, unknown, unidentified, and for malign purposes, across the globe, including to and from European Union member states, are the Government prepared to put their hand to the plough today and not just look to the past and apologise for something which was undertaken in a different legislative framework and which, although abhorrent, was acceptable according to norms then? Are they going to work today to stop the trafficking that is going on at present? In central and eastern Europe, particularly on the perimeters of the EU member states, the Government have withdrawn funding from the Foreign Office and not invested in assistance on the ground. The main sources of trafficking now are Transnistria, Ukraine and Moldova. Children are pouring through and I urge the Government to act.