Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I support Amendment No. 73 and I shall speak also to Amendment No. 74, with which it is grouped. In my remarks at Second Reading, I raised the whole issue of trafficking, particularly the trafficking of women for the purposes of the sex industry. I am aware, of course, that there are various schemes in operation to care for the victims of this appalling development. As the Minister said earlier, years ago we had never heard of trafficking. It has developed in recent years, particularly in eastern Europe, and criminal gangs have emerged that are making fortunes through trafficking mostly very young women for the purposes of the sex industry. As I said at Second Reading, from information supplied to me by the Refugee Children’s Consortium, these women are really children; they are below age for the industry in which they are trafficked. In one case, a girl was sold by her father to traffickers. She managed to escape when she got to this country, but she was captured again and eventually retrafficked to Italy. That kind of repulsive activity is now quite widespread. Every so often, we are told that a criminal gang has been arrested and its members imprisoned and we are all very glad about that. But I am very concerned about what happens to the people who have been trafficked. What happens to the victims? The amendments seek to deal with the issue. Clearly, the victims should not be deported back to the circumstances from which they came. They could be trafficked again, or they could be deported to a country where their community regards them as dishonoured and therefore they will not be looked after when they get back. They require rehabilitation, training and support in order to be able to rejoin a civilised society and to live reasonable lives. I hope these amendments can be written on to the face of the Bill to make the Government’s position quite clear. We want to ensure that these young women are treated as victims and are looked after rather than simply deported.