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Migrant Domestic Workers (Visas)

May I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) on securing this debate and on raising this topic, not least because although we are talking about one small corner of the wider area of trafficking and modern-day slavery, it is, as other hon. Members have said, often hidden and paid insufficient attention? The Minister and I are both veterans of various debates in this place on human trafficking. I frequently observe that the debate is in danger of sliding into one about prostitution and sexual slavery, which is clearly a hugely serious issue facing us, but not the whole story. This is another part of the story. Those of us who have been talking about trafficking and modern-day slavery for many years are always grateful for the opportunity to expose other parts of the wider issue. In his absence, I should like to pay tribute yet again to the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) does on the all-party group on the trafficking of women and children. That is a model of how to use an all-party group. Those bodies are often rightly excoriated for not contributing much to the enlightenment of humanity, but my hon. Friend's group has not only exposed problems, but has shifted public policy, and one can pay no higher tribute. I sometimes think I have been paying tribute to him for so long in these debates that even when he has gone I will continue to do so from force of habit. We often discuss trafficking for sexual exploitation, and that is important, but it is important to consider whether the same solution could apply to the problems in both the diplomatic and non-diplomatic spheres—an issue that has been raised significantly during the debate. There is a huge overlap, but there are clearly different solutions. My first thought on listening to the debate was about something that we could do across the board about domestic exploitation of migrant domestic workers. This country may have been insufficiently clear in sending out a message to those who want to come here from the rest of the world, whether to do a normal job or as diplomats, that it is entirely and completely unacceptable to treat domestic staff in the way illustrated in the examples produced by the hon. Member for Reading, West. I agree with him that the issue is not what is appropriate behaviour for a diplomat—or for anyone—elsewhere in the world, but how people behave in this country. We all—the Minister representing the Government and all of us as parliamentarians—have a right to say that we in this country represent certain values, including decent behaviour, and abusing domestic staff in the way that Kalayaan exposed is unacceptable. I echo the tributes paid by many hon. Members on both sides of the House to its work. We can all do something to make it clear that people must assume British behaviour if they come here to live and work, whether as diplomats, lawyers or anything else.