Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:30 pm on 18 May 2004.

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Photo of Lord Avebury Lord Avebury Shadow Minister, Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs 2:30, 18 May 2004

My Lords, I think that I am correct in saying that a previous study was conducted by the University of London, which was quoted by some of your Lordships in the proceedings on the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. So, the phenomenon of trafficking women is not new and we were already talking about the nature of providing them with assistance and rehabilitation at that time, when the only local authority that was taking any action at the time was, I think, West Sussex. There were some ball-park figures quoted at that time about the scale of trafficking, which were much larger than the number of people who have come to light.

The noble Lord referred to the Palermo Protocol and his wording is largely drawn from it, as he said. If we have signed that protocol, we should enact it in our own legislation, because it does not become part of our law—as I was reminding your Lordships in my references to the Pepushi case—until relevant legislation is passed by Parliament. If we do not take this opportunity there will be some aspects of the Palermo Protocol that are not implemented in our law, and on the last occasion that we discussed this matter, I quoted some sentences from the protocol about housing and so on, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, did not have time to reply fully. Unusually, she has not written to me on that subject, as she has done regarding so many of the other points that were raised in Committee.

I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that it is the intention of the Government to implement fully the obligation of the state under the Palermo Protocol and, if he does not believe that the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, are acceptable on this occasion, to say how he will fulfil those obligations.