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Anti-Slavery Day Bill

I start by thanking all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. This Bill has come here due to the efforts of the honourable Member for Totnes, Mr Anthony Steen, and my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss. I have merely been a vehicle to put the Bill forward today. I shall not try to summarise everything that everyone has said, but I should like to draw attention to a number of points. Several noble Lords made the link between the historic and the contemporary, which is very important, although it can cause controversy in some areas. It is not a matter of saying that one is worse or better than the other. As came out of the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, there are issues around the lack of humanity and the erasing of someone’s human identity, which also diminishes the person who is doing it, although of course they do not see it that way. This utter dehumanisation is a common thread that unfortunately runs through history, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, pointed out. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, also pointed very effectively to the link between the historical and the contemporary, highlighting the strenuous efforts that the Government have made, which the Minister elaborated on. However, in spite of all the measures that have been taken, the situation is getting much worse. We must do a lot more to raise people’s consciousness and awareness of what is going on. It is good to have these initiatives and I would absolutely support any other initiatives, but I would also argue that, if the Bill is passed, it will enhance those initiatives and give them a higher profile. I doubt at the moment that they have the kind of profile that we would want them to have. I do not know, for example, how many people are aware of the Blue Blindfold initiative. My noble friend Lord Alton helped to contextualise this issue in a wider human rights context, which is not to denigrate the issue of caste. There was a lot that I had not heard about before which drew those parallels. Again, this is a question of enhancing and elaborating on some of these points so that the general public are much more aware, can press harder for things to be done and be aware of when these things are happening around them. One of the markers in the research that I found both interesting and disturbing was how you can pass a row of houses in your street and not know that these things are going on unless you are alert to the signs. This is an important move in that respect. I am conscious of the time, so I will finish now. But I have to say that I was slightly surprised and a little disappointed that the Government felt that they had to take a neutral stance on this. It fits so well with their initiatives and the other work that they are trying to do and what they want to achieve. I just wanted to say that for the record. I hope that the Bill will have an unopposed Second Reading. If there are amendments it will mean that the Bill will fail, so I hope that there will be none. I commend this Bill to the House. Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.