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Child Slavery

I absolutely agree, and I have mentioned the abhorrence, pain and anguish. I am sure that all hon. Members will have seen the recent news about a woman from New York who was abducted when she was very young and found out about it when she was an adult. There was a reunion, but it was miraculous that that happened, because so many times it does not, and people are left wondering how their children have turned out. It would be very difficult to live with the fact that a family member had been taken and used in such a way. When it comes to the economic exploitation of children, including child labour, very often the United Kingdom is further downstream from the event, but the situation is no less real and no less dreadful for those caught up in the middle. Commodities—finished products that we buy—can have been produced, in part, by the efforts of forced child labour or slavery. In more than 50 African, Asian and South American countries, 1 million children are put into mines and quarries. That is a fact. About 40,000 children work in mining in the Congo. In west Africa it has been estimated that 200,000 children work in small-scale gold and mineral mines and quarries, and almost 18,000 children work in gold, silver and copper mines in the Philippines. Mining shifts worked by children can last up to 24 hours. Children work unprotected in mineral extraction, crushing ore using toxins such as mercury, at the risk of contamination. Children break and sort out rocks, water supplies are often contaminated, and there is the risk of underground explosions. On top of those figures, we can add the number of children exploited as a result of bonded labour, in which a child is forced into slavery to pay off their family's debt. It has been estimated that in India alone some 15 million children, most of them from low-caste families that have got into difficulties, could be working to pay off someone else's debt. Many children across the globe, including in the United Kingdom, are beaten frequently, and passed from one owner to another as little more than a possession, or a dog. Save the Children has estimated that in Nepal there are approximately 200,000 bonded labourers, many of them children. In one province of Pakistan alone, it is estimated that there are almost 7 million bonded labourers, including children, and that around 250,000 children work in Pakistani brick kilns, and live there. Almost 70% of all child labour is in agriculture, with more than 130 million children involved in agricultural work each day. Last year, the United States Department of Labour drew up a list of products produced by child or forced labour—slavery. The list goes from cocoa and cotton to rubber and coal; from gold and diamonds to emeralds and silver; from carpets and clothing to leather and silk; from garlic and grapes to bananas and rice; from salt and sugar to tobacco and tea; and from footballs and fireworks to fashion and furniture. All those products are made around the globe through the exploitation of children and the use of child slavery. When it comes to both the sexual exploitation of children internationally and the kind of child labour that I have just mentioned, there are real issues for the United Kingdom Government. I am sure that all hon. Members will be able to identify numerous areas in which these issues cut across a number of Departments, but I draw specific attention to the Department for International Development. I emphasise that we are grateful for the assistance given by the UK Government to other countries, and that we are even more grateful to the many millions of people across the United Kingdom who donate money to special causes and needs, but surely pressure needs to be applied and greater emphasis placed on using our influence to end these practices. I think that all hon. Members will agree that the facts of life for millions of children across the globe, right now as we participate in this debate, are shocking and shameful. As I said at the beginning of my contribution, I am certain that whatever minor differences hon. Members might have about individual incidents and the particular responses required, we all share a conviction that child slavery is wrong, unjust and unacceptable in this modern world. I have no doubt that that is the case. That fact draws out before each of us a question that might at first glance seem unusual, even unnecessary. Whatever our political background and personal experiences, why do we share an opposition to child slavery and a conviction that this evil should end? It makes no sense in evolutionary terms. Are we not told that evolution is about survival of the fittest and competition within species? So what if the poor, the weak and the helpless are exploited by the strong and the ruthless? But buried in the depths of every man and woman is a conviction that there is something better. Every springtime—we are coming into spring now—nature stretches out and reaches up to bring forth new life and vigour, leaving behind the deadness of winter. Every year it is doomed to fall back in winter, but every spring it stirs and rises once more. Likewise, every human being stretches out and reaches up for something better and higher. It is inborn and embedded within us to be like that. What do we stretch out towards and reach up to lay hold of? In my opinion, it is the God who reaches down to us and who himself came down to us. It is the original created image in us—yes, it is tainted, marred and clouded, but it is still that part of man, made originally for God and in the likeness of God—that stretches out and reaches up for something better and higher. That is what tells every man that the wicked enslavement of children is wrong. Just as one came down to earth to open the soul's prison, break its fetters, snap its chains and set it free, so we feel the urge and impulse to set at liberty children who are enslaved. I do not intend to offend any right hon. or hon. Member by saying that I do not believe that there are many Wilberforces around today. However, I believe that in the breast of every hon. Member from every political party already beats something to which Wilberforce gave voice. Wilberforce said on one occasion:"““If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.””" It is my wish by this debate to make such fanatics of us all.