Clause 4 - Trafficking people for exploitation
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow, Labour)
The amendment is designed to deal with a possible loophole in clause 4. The clause, which deals with trafficking, has been widely welcomed. Some members of the Standing Committee on what is now the Sexual Offences Act 2003 may remember debating its clauses on trafficking related to prostitution. Clause 4 of this Bill plugs a gap by dealing with the other part of the problem, which is trafficking for labour.
Subsection (4) defines exploitation, but in a way that I believe leaves a possible loophole. Subsection (4)(c) refers to someone being exploited if they are
''subjected to force, threats or deception . . . to provide services . . . to provide another person with benefits . . . or to enable another person to acquire benefits''.
However, there is a possible problem, because children who have been trafficked to the UK, perhaps for benefits fraud or domestic work, might not have been subjected to ''force, threats or deception''. The same might apply to adults who are vulnerable and emotionally dependent on the person who traffics them, as they might co-operate with the trafficker.
In the previous Standing Committee, we discussed the possibility of a child who was subject to abuse not being aware that they were being abused but instead regarding the behaviour as normal. One could imagine a child not realising that they were being exploited. They might not be subjected to force or deception, but instead happily go along with what is asked of them so that someone else can obtain benefits.
I suspect that the wording of the amendment is not perfect, but the phrases ''an abuse of power'' and ''a position of vulnerability'' are in the UN protocol's definition of trafficking, so they have been used in international definitions of trafficking to cover the
type of possibility that I am discussing. I hope, therefore, that the Government will give the amendment some consideration. Perhaps it could be argued that some aspect of the clause already deals with it, but the first line of subsection (4) contains the phrase
''a person is exploited if (and only if)''.
That is an unusual phrase to appear in a clause of this nature, so it seems that subsection (4) may be a little too tightly written and may leave some odd loopholes. We want to avoid the possibility of someone involved in trafficking escaping prosecution. That is the purpose of the amendment.