Human Trafficking
Home Department
Written answers and statements, 5 December 2006
Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow Central, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent estimate he has made of the numbers of women and children being trafficked into the UK; and if he will make a statement.
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
It remains difficult to make an accurate assessment of the extent of the trafficking problem. There are no statistics that clearly indicate the precise number of women or children trafficked to the UK, although intelligence suggests there has been an increase over the last two or three years. The emerging findings from a Home Office research paper due to be published in 2007 suggests that at any one time in 2003 there were in the region of 4,000 victims of trafficking for prostitution in the UK.
The analysis of information obtained from Operation Pentameter will assist in further developing our understanding of the scale of the problem in this area. In relation to the subject of child trafficking into the UK, we have commissioned the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to scope both its scale and nature.