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Child Slavery

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on a moving speech—perhaps the most moving that I have ever heard in this Chamber. I think we all share an abhorrence of child slavery. I, too, started by reading the Save the Children report ““The Small Hands of Slavery””—it is an emotive title—and came across the disturbing statistics involving such large numbers. That was back in 2007. What progress are we making? As the hon. Gentleman said, the report states that 8.4 million children are trapped in the worst forms of illegal, degrading and dangerous work. It also identified the eight most prevalent forms of child slavery: child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, bonded child labour, forced work in mines, forced agricultural labour, child soldiers and combatants, forced child marriage and domestic slavery. The hon. Gentleman provided many tragic examples from around the globe. It is, of course, a tragedy that there is such a variety. Our children are our most precious asset, and it brings tears to the eyes to think of children suffering in such ways. More recently, Save the Children published the report ““Children on the Move””. We must remember that in high-profile conflict situations, such as in the middle east, children are particularly vulnerable to certain practices. There is so much to be done. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must consider the problem from the UK's perspective, looking outwards as well as inwards and across Departments. Clearly, in order to tackle it, we need national, international and strong local action. We need to consider poverty reduction. This Government's commitment to increasing the proportion of GDP spent on aid must be welcome, as it is well targeted to reduce poverty. We need education, legislation—legislation must be appropriate, but it is also important that it is put into practice—and resources for prevention and rehabilitation. Those principles can easily be applied to tackling problems in the UK. In my brief contribution, I will concentrate on trafficking, but I recognise fully the scale of the issue. Research by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre discovered that at least 287 children in this country were identified as potential victims of trafficking between March 2009 and February 2010. More than one third were brought to Britain for the sex trade. Amazingly, 18% were made to cultivate cannabis. I must admit that I have learned a great deal from reading ECPAT UK's representations about the use of child labour in cannabis cultivation in this country. It makes us realise that we can tackle such issues. It must be possible to track them down and take suitable action.