UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 51: 51: Clause 30, page 16, line 8, at end insert— ““(5) Where there are reasonable grounds for believing that a person is a victim of trafficking, that person shall not be removed from the United Kingdom until the process for determining whether they are such a victim is complete. (6) A period of three months shall be granted to a person who has been identified as being a victim of trafficking for recovery and reflection, during which time no immigration enforcement measures shall be taken against that person. (7) Renewable residence permits of up to six months’ duration may be granted to victims of trafficking.”” The noble Lord said: I have already said on a previous amendment that there are things in the Bill that the Joint Committee on Human Rights positively welcomed. We certainly welcomed the Bill’s extension of the scope of the existing trafficking offences, which implements one of the proposals in the Government’s UK action plan on tackling human trafficking. However, we were disappointed that the opportunity had not been taken to introduce more effective protection for the victims of trafficking. In our recent report on trafficking, we concluded that the current level of protection provided to victims is far from adequate from a human rights perspective. The committee expressed its appreciation to the Government for their positive response to the committee’s recommendation to sign the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking and publication of the UK plan on trafficking. However, we remain deeply concerned at the delay in ratification and had a rather intense discussion on this matter with Mr Vernon Coaker only last week. We thought it important that our recommendations should be considered as a whole and not cherry-picked. We made a number of recommendations about improving the legislative framework for protection and I should like to indicate some of them. In particular we recommended that the Bill should be amended to improve protection by providing that, where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a person is a victim of trafficking, that person shall not be removed from the United Kingdom until the process for identifying whether he or she is such a victim is complete. That seems only reasonable. Why undertake the process if there are doubts? Obviously doubts should be resolved before action is taken. A recovery and reflection period of three months should be granted to a person who has been identified as a victim during which time no immigration enforcement measures should be taken against them. It is difficult to imagine the trauma that victims of trafficking may have been through. In taking evidence and considering these matters we were repeatedly struck that too often the assumption was to treat them as part of the immigration problem and only subsequently as victims. After the psychological damage that may have been done to them, it is important that they should have a period in which they can come to a sensible and rational decision about what they want to do. Another proposal was that renewable residence permits of up to six months’ duration should be granted to victims of trafficking. As the Committee knows, I am a very committed member of that Joint Committee. I do not much see the point of us acquiring the sort of role of a Greek chorus, wringing our hands and wishing things were otherwise and describing the horrible things that are happening off stage. If we feel these things, those of us who find ourselves with an opportunity like this should pursue them, which is why I beg to move.