Clause 113 - traffic in prostitution
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
5:45 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wallasey, Labour)
The Committee owes you a collective apology, Mr. Illsley. I understand that you dashed from another engagement to chair the last two hours of the sitting on Tuesday, only to discover that we had completed the business ahead of time and nobody had thought to tell you. We all owe you a collective apology for that wasted journey. We are glad to see you in the Chair again. [Hon Members: Hear, hear.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow is right to emphasise how seriously the Government take the issue of trafficking for prostitution. He is also right to remind the Committee what a vile but lucrative trade it can be. It is exploitative, and evidence points to the existence of trafficking routes from west Africa through the UK to Italy that may involve women and children. The police, working with immigration officials, have been able to disrupt those routes to some extent.
My hon. Friend is also right to want to make it easier to prosecute and I am pleased that he welcomed the clause. It is indeed an interim measure. The Bill has limited scope, so we cannot introduce a comprehensive measure against facilitating prostitution, trafficking for prostitution or labour exploitation. This is as wide as we can make the stop-gap protections by introducing this offence, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment.
We want to demonstrate first that we are determined to crack down on the growth of this evil trade, but secondly that we believe that it is worth starting to do so now. We can finish the job by having a much more comprehensive and wide-ranging offence that will be in either the sexual offences reform legislation, which we hope to introduce in due course, or the criminal justice legislation. Both offer us opportunities to put a more comprehensive offence on the statute book. That sends a clear message to those who arrange and profit from this activity that they are engaged in a serious evil and face severe consequences.
My hon. Friend is also right to work towards making this offence easier to prosecute. The victims often do not feel much like giving evidence. They are extremely vulnerable and frightened. Often they have been exploited so badly that they find it almost impossible to approach the authorities in a way that enables them to appear before a court so that we can get the perpetrators and put them where they belong, which is behind bars. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend's wording would make it harder to prosecute traffickers. The words
''force, coercion, or deception, or abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability'',
introduce additional evidential requirements. The words
''control, direction or influence over the prostitute's movements in a way which shows that he is aiding, abetting or compelling the prostitution''
are more general and require a lower level of coercive behaviour to be proved.
We have looked at this carefully and we think that the words in the clause make it easier for us to prove the offence than those in the UN protocol. The other advantage of using those words is that they are well known from existing law on sexual offences and courts are used to dealing with them. They are not a completely new formulation and are therefore more likely to be understood and successful before the courts. I hope that my hon. Friend will realise that we are very sympathetic to his amendment, but we think our original wording is more effective for the purposes that we all share.