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Anti-Slavery Day Bill

My Lords, I support the Bill, which would introduce a national day to raise awareness of the need to eradicate all forms of slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, most warmly for her cogent and highly important introduction to our debate. There are many reasons to support the Bill, but I first pay tribute to the vision, diligence and strong political will of the Bill’s originator, the honourable Member for Totnes. We were political neighbours in Devon for 10 years, we have been friends for 25 years, and he is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Trafficking of Women and Children. He gives the leadership and vision that is required to the committee on which I have the honour to serve as treasurer. The honourable Member for Totnes has many and high achievements to his credit, but they have always sprung from his deep social conscience and his special awareness of and talent for communication with young people in difficulty. We are indeed fortunate that his future career will focus most especially on anti-trafficking initiatives. Slavery, for which trafficking is a major mechanism, is a peculiarly repugnant form of human exploitation. It runs directly in opposition to the values of democracy that we uphold. I see it on the same ugly level as racism. Why so? Because, like racism, it rests on the destruction of the identity, on the annihilation of all human rights and the unchangeability of the situation by the victim. I will focus my remarks today on Clause 1(3)(b), which covers child trafficking. Child trafficking is the fastest-growing sector of organised crime. I have had the good fortune of working lately with Europol and Interpol, and I question whether the European Union can be seen as the best tool for our national anti-trafficking initiatives for children. We have national strengths and absolute national responsibility for the children who cross our borders, but also for the children who come from different countries of the European Union and from the wider Europe. Child trafficking is indeed a modern slavery. I recall well many hundreds of children, perhaps nearly 1,000, who went to Bolivia, supposedly for holidays with supposed parents—different adults each time took three, four, five or six children supposedly from an eastern European country to Bolivia. Of course, they did not come back and were never seen again. I have visited countless institutions that hothouse their unsuspecting victims. These children, the victims, have been taken from their own families. They are mistakenly labelled as orphans, whereas in fact, across the whole of Europe, only 3 to 4 per cent have lost their parents. Those unsuspecting victims range from babies—I recall countless institutions with babies due to be trafficked out—to small children and many, many children aged seven, eight, nine or 10. The internet is now a key purchase mechanism. I remember a girl of 15 saying to me, "Isn’t it wonderful? I have now found a family". I said, "How did you found the family?". She said, "They saw me on the internet. I know they are going to love me very much". I do not recall ever hearing from her again. I remember a lovingly fostered boy of three, a lovely child. The authorities photographed him every few months until he reached the required age of four and a half, when he was ripped from the foster family, the only family that he had ever known, and has disappeared in another EU member state. I know where he went to, but he did not stay there long. Another girl of 11, a most beautiful child, a lovely child, was sold to three different purchasers in three different countries. I do not know who got her in the end; I lost the trail. Those children have no names. They have no case files. They are just numbers on a computer list and supplied with fake birth certificates on point of departure. I have seen institutions in central and eastern Europe that are wholly dedicated to the acquisition, the purchase by outsiders and the dispatch to them of "suitable children". "If you want a Russian girl under 12 and guaranteed a virgin, it is easy; just come to me". It is as easy as anything. No identification of the purchaser is needed; a credit card is all that is required, and the deed is done. I am not talking about isolated cases, either. In one eastern European country that I know very well indeed, some 30,000 children at least have disappeared over several years. These are the government figures—the real figures are significantly higher—and this is a Government who can now keep track of what has happened. What about the purchasers? Criminal fraternities in EU member states and North America, for example, feature heavily among those who deal in children. How should we stop it? The UK is a major magnate, as well as a key route, for onward trafficking. I can think of one poor boy who came through Britain, where his passport was changed to something else. Of course, his original passport was not really his at all; it was in another name. His name was changed here, as were his passport and identification details, and he went off to the USA. Despite the combined efforts of the FBI, Scotland Yard, the police force and ministries of the inadvertently supplying country, none of us could find that boy again. All that was found was a major international paedophile ring; he had disappeared into that vortex. There are certain hotspots on which we can focus; I am thinking particularly of eastern and central Europe. I recently visited the perimeters of Transnistria. There are no children’s rights in Transnistria at all, as you can imagine. That is a place through which many hundreds of thousands of women and children have flowed in recent years. It is not enough to impose sanctions on Transnistria, as the European Union Council of Ministers declared some 10 days ago. Sanctions will not bite unless we can support and help the Moldovan Government, who are now democratically elected, in practical ways. Major new European Union member states also supply the trade. What are the problems? They are weak laws, corrupt judiciaries, and complicit or even originating state authorities. How can we help? I recommend that specialist UK police on the ground will make all the difference. It is such a modest investment, yet it works. I have watched it work. It pays multiple dividends. Customs training can also help dramatically, as can judicial training, which Britain has supplied for different countries over the years. We have the experience, and we can offer help and support to the Governments in question. It is essential to reform the law, as it affects both the rights of the child and the trafficking of human beings. It is extraordinary to recall that Bulgaria, a new member state of the European Union, outlawed trafficking only a few months before it joined the European Union. Even Russia, with whose Duma I discussed the matter, outlawed it a year earlier. Most seriously, we should strengthen British embassies. The extremely modest funds of our embassy in Moldova, for example, have been cut again. Is this a wise decision? Sanctions on Transnistria can only be effective with the newly elected democratic Government, and the British embassy can give tremendous support. We should also work within the European Union to combat other states’ predatory behaviour and make the European Union a bloc of member states that most firmly uphold the rights of the child. Not every member state does, whether it is old or new. Of course, Britain cannot do everything. But I stress again that we are a key target of traffickers. We have a high national conscience and a tremendous potential to influence. The security and stability of our own society is greatly aided by the stability in the wider Europe and the target countries that we could identify. I therefore support this Bill wholeheartedly and profoundly, and with deep and bitter personal experience of the source countries from which these children come. We need an annual reminder, a jolt to our consciences, of trafficking, slavery and human exploitation. We need an anti-slavery day.