Clause 58 - Trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation
Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
I accept the points made at the beginning of the debate. The hon. Member for Romsey talked about humanitarian protection but did not define that. However, she says she wants to stimulate wider debate on the issue and find out what is being done, and I fully accept that.
I also fully agree that victims of trafficking should be protected and treated appropriately, particularly
while their cases are going through court—they can feel very vulnerable then—when we are determining their future with them, and when we are considering the provision of services to support them. Hon. Members will know as a result of the correspondence to which they referred that a great deal is going on; it was all set out in the White Paper in February last year.
Our objective was to take a four-pronged approach, covering: the creation of appropriate offences in legislation; enforcement; victim protection; and international co-operation to enable us to get back down the chain and disrupt the organised criminals trafficking people into the country. Obviously, only the first of those requires legislation, which is why we acted as quickly as we could to get offences covering trafficking on to the statute book, first in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, and then in this Bill. The other provisions, including those for victim protection and enforcement, do not need legislative provision, and much has already happened.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) mentioned the provision of an automatic reflection period for victims of trafficking, and arrangements for returning people to their countries. I have been to the project and talked to some of the women supported by the Home Office-funded scheme, and it is an erroneous assumption that everybody who has been trafficked in and subjected to sexual exploitation wants to stay here. Many of them have children back in their own country, and many say that, as a result of their experiences, this is the last place that they want to stay. It depends very much on individual circumstances and what individuals—mainly women—say.
The pilot project provides a period of time to enable women, in the first phase of our contact with them, to make an informed decision on whether to co-operate with the police. There are different considerations in relation to children, who will not be returned to their country of origin unless robust arrangements are in place for their safety.
We have consistently rejected the idea of a statutory reflection period for victims, partly because that would be inflexible and not necessarily based on the details of the case, which can vary. We must balance the issues presented by victims with some of the wider issues about successfully detecting and prosecuting people who are plying this terrible trade. That is the only sustainable way to prevent other people from being trafficked in future. A statutory reflection period risks becoming a perverse incentive for people to come in via people smugglers and claim to be the victims of people traffickers—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) for making that distinction earlier. That makes it much more difficult to identify, help and protect those people who really are the victims of traffickers. We must ensure that we do not build in an incentive for people to use that route, which gives protection to people who come in illegally and who might stay here.
In addition to the physical protection and support going on under the pilot project, we have produced
what is referred to as a toolkit for practitioners, although that term does not do it justice. It is a comprehensive attempt to bring together the best practice that is continually evolving, and to disseminate it to immigration officers, the police and other agencies to help them to identify and to work with victims in an appropriate and sensitive way. Such awareness-raising is important.
Early on in the pilot, we discovered that it is difficult getting enough referrals, even for places that we have provided, partly because women find it difficult to disclose. There were stories from women about being taken to sexual health clinics by their controllers, who would sit outside the consulting room door until the woman came out. Some women were able to disclose in the end, but only after a great deal of work and courage on their part. The ability of victims to feel safe in disclosing, so that referrals can be made is therefore important. It is also important that practitioners are available in all those places—or outlets, if you like—where victims might be allowed to go, so that they can pick up when something is wrong and provide the opportunity for disclosure. Raising awareness is critical to helping people to identify issues.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow mentioned Project Paladin. Immigration and Metropolitan police work jointly at key principal entry points to identify children at risk. Unfortunately, relatively significant numbers of children come into this country unaccompanied. That is a serious worry. The child protection pilot project was launched in March at Heathrow and involves one child protection officer working closely with immigration officers to disseminate child protection expertise in all kinds of ways, and not just in dealing with a child effectively once there is serious cause for concern. For instance, the ordinary immigration interview with a child is conducted in a way that is sensitive to the age-related needs of the child and to lines of inquiry that might be pursued to examine the possibility of there being a child protection issue.