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Convention on Domestic Workers

That organisation should be better at dealing with the issue, but I am not sure that it is easy to do so properly at borders. That is one of the challenges. There needs to be an in-country resource to which vulnerable trafficked people know they can turn for help. Their fear is that if they turn to the authorities for help, they will be outed. Unfortunately, that happens too often as those concerned are classed as illegal. For many people, that is through no fault of their own. They are here without status and they are illegal because their owner—we must not forget that we are talking about a kind of ownership and slavery—has retained their passport unlawfully and has said, ““Don't worry, I'll sort this out,”” and so on. There needs to be an effective in-country recourse to which people in these circumstances can turn. Unfortunately, the national referral mechanism frequently fails to provide that because it does not consider its first priority to be protecting the individual. There is a laborious tick-box process and, because there is no real prospect of prosecuting someone for trafficking and getting a conviction, often the national referral mechanism will suggest that a person is not really trafficked. That is really sad.