[Mr Dai Havard in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 4:05 pm on 20 December 2012.

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Photo of Mark Harper Mark Harper The Minister for Immigration 4:05, 20 December 2012

I accept that, but I felt slightly beaten up about the question whether the interdepartmental ministerial group was effective. I was also worried by the almost unanimously positive comments from Opposition Members about me and my future career—it is never good when Opposition Members overly praise Ministers; I always think that does us great harm—but I will take them in the spirit in which I am sure they were intended.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead raised the question of data and of really understanding this issue, which is something I have raised internally. The cases referred through the national referral mechanism are only the tip of the iceberg. Globally, reports suggest that many millions of people are affected in the trade. One task that I have given my officials is to crunch those numbers and to understand the true picture, including how that plays out across the country.

As some Members have said—my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made the point powerfully—and as the NGOs that I have met have echoed, the problem is not just in inner cities or parts of the country where people think this sort of thing goes on. On anti-slavery day, I met several people from what some might call leafy parts of the country, such as Surrey, who had seen this activity happening. They felt that, as my hon. Friend said, it is important to get people to think about the issue, to understand that it might be going on in their street or round the corner, and to be alert to what they should look for.

On data and understanding the problem, it is important to get the public to understand that there is an issue—picking up the point made by Michael Connarty: telling a constituent why it matters to them, and making them understand that—and to focus on it. That, in turn, picks up the point made by Gavin Shuker about pressures on police forces and constabularies. People must understand that this is a big problem and that there are interconnections, in that people involved in trafficking are also involved in wider organised crime. This big economic problem generates lots of money that is then used for other criminal activities. It is not a small problem located in one place; it is very wide and police forces ought to take it seriously.

I will not go through this issue at length, but it worth saying on police and crime commissioners—I take the point made by Fiona Mactaggart that they have been in existence for not quite a month—that the Government are making sure they are aware of their national responsibilities as well as their purely local ones. In other words, they must be aware of the types of crime with a national or international dimension that will impact on them, so that, in setting priorities, they understand that their police forces must think about such matters.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough mentioned the National Crime Agency. It will have within it the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the Human Trafficking Centre and the Border Policing Command. It will be a repository of good intelligence gathering and an analysis operation. It will have its own operational police and law enforcement officers but, as my hon. Friend said, it will also have the ability, if necessary, to task police forces for particular operations. Clearly, it will be much better if it engages such police forces by debating and explaining the issue and getting them on board voluntarily, but it also has a tasking power that may ultimately be important, certainly in getting people to pay attention, as my hon. Friend rightly said.

My hon. Friend and other Members raised the issue of the protection of children, which the Government take very seriously. Kate Green spoke about training in the UK Border Force and the UK Border Agency. On meeting front-line Border Force officers who are at the primary checkpoints as people come into the country, and the staff of the UKBA, I have been struck by how aware they are of the child protection issue and the need to be alert to it, of all the signs of children travelling with people who are not their parents, and of what we need to put in place to protect those children. I am not saying we are perfect—we can always do better—but I have been pleasantly surprised by that. Before doing this job, I was not really aware of how much training and expertise is available at the border for those officers as people enter the country. As I have said, I am sure we can do more, but we are very focused on that area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough also raised the issue of how we look after adult victims of trafficking. We have the contract with the Salvation Army to look after adult victims because there was no existing process for looking after them. There is an established mechanism for child protection that, as my hon. Friend said, is delivered through local government. I absolutely heard what he said about its effectiveness. There have recently been several cases in which—if we are in any doubt—we can see that trafficked children are not always well looked after by local government. I listened carefully to the examples he gave of projects that are under way to find a better approach. I do not want to prejudge their outcomes, but I assure him that I and other members of the ministerial group will consider those results closely to see whether there is a better way. He specifically referred to the Barnado’s pilot project for safe homes for children, and that and various other pilots will provide us with evidence about what works best, and we will be guided by what the evidence shows is effective.

Another thing worth saying is that the failures there have been will drive change in how we deliver care for children generally. Not only have trafficked children not been as well protected in the care sector as they might have been; many UK-based children who have not been trafficked end up not being well looked after. We will need to see what various reports suggest the Government should do instead before we respond. The protection of children is one of the most important things—my hon. Friend said it was the single most important thing—and that feeling was generally shared by the Members who have spoken.

My hon. Friend also flagged up that the report did not specifically mention the all-party group on human trafficking or the Human Trafficking Foundation. I assure him that, if so, that very much falls into the cock-up and not the conspiracy camp. There was certainly no deliberate intention not to mention them, and he was right to put on the record what he said about the Human Trafficking Foundation, which I have already echoed. He was too modest to mention, although others did, the excellent work of the all-party parliamentary group—that is not a catchy description either. It is important and helpful to get together people from across Parliament not only to take evidence, but to visit other countries and see what goes on. In a previous debate, my hon. Friend invited me to attend a meeting of the all-party group and if he wishes me to do so at an appropriate time, I would be delighted to attend, both to listen and to talk.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk mentioned child guardians, which we have not introduced because there are existing mechanisms. However, I have signed off funding for the Refugee Council and the Children’s Society, which he mentioned, to undertake a joint independent scoping review of the practical care arrangements for trafficked children in care. That will look at the experience of trafficked children and practitioners to find examples of how people have been treated in the care system, and will report by the end of spring 2013. When we commissioned the report, we wanted something that told us about the experience of real children who have been through the system rather than a piece of desk research. We will look very carefully at the evidence to see whether it leads us to change policy in this area.

There are trafficked victims who end up undertaking criminal activity. We want to protect them and ensure that they are not turned into criminals. Let me be clear: if the circumstances of the arrest, or the evidence referred to by a prosecutor, suggest that someone may have been trafficked, the guidance is clear, as was I think acknowledged. In such a case, prosecutors should obtain further information, and work with the police to get more evidence. Where there is evidence that a suspect has been under duress, the prosecutor should not proceed. That is clear in theory, but I understand the concerns of Members about the extent to which that theoretical plan is carried through in practice.