Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, Amendment 57A is in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. These names demonstrate the widespread support across the House for what I believe is a very important amendment. On 25 November last year, during a debate on my trafficking Bill, one subject came up again and again: the plight of rescued trafficked children in the United Kingdom. Although my Bill is wide-ranging and touches on many different aspects of tackling trafficking, it was to this subject that speaker after speaker chose to return. At the very heart of the concern is the fact that the reports of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre demonstrate that between 2007 and February 2010, out of 942 trafficked children who were rescued in the United Kingdom, a staggering 301—one-third of the children—were lost. I understand and warmly welcome the fact that in the past year the loss rate fell to 18 per cent, but this is still a completely unacceptable situation. It brings to mind the small boy called Bao, who comes from Vietnam. When Bao’s mother fell ill, the family needed to take a loan out to cover the cost of her healthcare. In return, Bao was told that he needed to come to the United Kingdom to work off the loan. Your Lordships can predict what happened on his arrival. Bao was initially forced to work as a domestic servant but later was moved to a cannabis factory, where he cultivated plants throughout the day and night. After a police raid, Bao was arrested and prosecuted for the offences that he had committed while under coercion from his traffickers. Although he was eventually identified as a victim of trafficking, he remained very fearful of those who had exploited him. Desperate to return to his family, Bao was devastated to learn about the threats his family were receiving in his home country shortly after his rescue. As a result, he became very frightened for their safety and disappeared from local authority care. Bao remains missing and is presumed to be back in the hands of his traffickers. This is the precise situation that Amendment 57A seeks to address. The reality of trafficked children is that they are extremely vulnerable and need appropriate and specialist support once rescued from their situation of exploitation. It is an incredibly sad reflection on our priorities as a nation that we should take such poor care of these extremely vulnerable children. First, they are kidnapped or lured under false pretences and trafficked to the United Kingdom, a foreign country with a foreign language, usually far away from their families. Then they are rescued and all too often while in local authority care they are lost, probably retrafficked. I find it hard to conceive that we are not doing more to help these children. It is important to be clear that Amendment 57A is not just about trying not to lose rescued trafficked children but about ensuring that they receive proper levels of care when they are not lost. In providing a constant reference point, the provision of a legal advocate will help address the distressing experience of these rescued children, who are passed from official to official, denied any sense of continuity and required to go back to the beginning and recount their painful story again and again. There are also accounts of children turning up to court and discovering that their social worker is not present. The provision of a legal advocate will mean that even if a social worker is not able to attend court, the child need not be alone. Of course, I am aware that the Government are concerned about this issue. However, they contend that the Children Act 1989 provides all the legal powers that are necessary to address this problem adequately. In the first instance, they point out that the Children Act places on local authorities a general obligation to protect the welfare of all children within their boundaries. The Act then makes provision for three relevant roles that can be called upon to assist a local authority as it seeks to rise to this challenge. First, Section 26 of the Children Act makes provision for assistance in the form of advocacy services for a child who makes or intends to make representations to a local authority either under their case review or on any issue in relation to their care by a local authority. Secondly, Section 23ZB requires local authorities to appoint ““an independent person”” who should, "““visit, befriend and advise the child””" if they think it is in the child’s best interests. Thirdly, Section 25A requires local authorities to appoint an ““independent reviewing officer”” for each child in their care. These responsibilities are defined by Section 25B as providing independent oversight, including monitoring the performance of the local authority in respect of each child’s case. However, there are at least two problems with the Government’s suggestion that the provisions of the Children Act will suffice. First, the loss of 32 per cent of trafficked children occurring in the context of the Children Act and its provisions hardly suggests that the Act is fit for the purpose of protecting trafficked children. We would all recognise that their needs were not at the front of our minds in 1989 when the Act became law. Most of us had either never heard of the term ““human trafficking”” or were not aware of exactly what it meant. Secondly, while the provisions of the 1989 Act are very welcome, they fall a long way short of the definition of the recommended best practice in the care of rescued child trafficking victims; namely, the provision of a child trafficking guardian. A trafficking guardian is someone who is appointed as soon as the child is identified as a victim of trafficking with the intention that they should remain in place during the child’s case and until a long-term solution is found that is in the child’s best interests. The guardian would accompany the child to all meetings with officials, be they in law courts, regarding education or with social services, where crucially they would be recognised and would have the right to advocate on the child’s behalf. There has been considerable confusion about the term guardian in the UK, partly because in our law the word ““guardian”” is generally used in the parental sense of parent or guardian, who is someone quite different. For that reason, I have given the role a different name in my amendment—namely, ““legal advocate””. However, to make what we are talking about really clear, the UNICEF guidelines on a child trafficking guardian are the basis of subsection (2) of the new clause proposed under Amendment 57A. There could then be no confusion about what is proposed. When we look at the internationally accepted definition of a guardian for a trafficked child, the shortcomings of the current Children Act provision become all too obvious. I will set them out briefly. First, Section 26 advocates do not comply with the definition of a trafficking guardian because they advocate on the child’s behalf only in relation to local authority case reviews and are not appointed from the moment a child is identified as a victim of trafficking but only if the child determines that they would like to avail themselves of their services, which raises an interesting question. Last week, I spoke to a solicitor who pointed out that in making provisions for a Section 26 advocate, who crucially can be commissioned only if the child requests it, the Children Act assumes that the child in question is mature enough—probably 10 years old or more. The solicitor wanted to know how this would help the young trafficked children who had recently come to their attention: one was aged four months; one was one year old; and another was two years old. There are also ““independent visitors”” but they are not given the right to advocate on behalf of a child in all their engagement with the state. Instead, their role seems to be more of a befriending and advice service to the child in question. Finally, there is the independent reviewing officer but they do not appear to accompany the children anywhere and are not required to have direct contact with the child between their reviews. I do not believe that these positions adequately rise to the contemporary challenge of human trafficking. It is very clear to me that, even viewed collectively, these roles do not provide anything comparable to what is understood today as a child trafficking guardian. I am delighted that the Children Act has been amended over the past 20 years to make provision for the advocate, the independent visitor and the independent reviewing officer. But that fact shows that the law changes and adapts to new best practice, as I am advocating that it should today. Over the past several years, trafficking has become a lucrative business in the United Kingdom. Traffickers are clever and opportunistic, and stop at nothing when there is profit to be made. I think of a two year-old called Karolek who along with her mother was brought to the United Kingdom from eastern Europe and used as a means through which fraudulent benefits could be claimed. Both Karolek and her mother were rescued but her mother is now being groomed for sexual exploitation and is in no place to provide the best care for her child, leaving Karolek in a very vulnerable position. Had Karolek been given a legal advocate, the vulnerability of her situation would have been identified by someone with appropriate authority and action taken. In short, I must tell the House that I am not persuaded, on the basis of the 32 per cent loss rate, the levels of care or the careful scrutiny of current provisions in the Children Act, that our current arrangements are satisfactory. It is for that purpose that I am today moving Amendment 57A. It has been designed with two main considerations in mind. First, it addresses the shortcomings of our current legal provision by requiring the provision of a legal advocate from the moment a child victim of trafficking is identified. The legal advocate role is defined using the UNICEF framework for what guardians should do for the victims of child trafficking under subsection (2)(a) to (2)(j) of the proposed new clause. With these provisions in place, it is very much less likely that rescued trafficked children will be lost. Once rescued, they will have one consistent person advocating for their best interests and working to ensure a plan for their long-term welfare. While the child may have to deal with numerous officials, he or she will have the benefit of a focused and present point of contact and support who can advocate for the services that they need. Secondly, Amendment 57A rises to the key challenge very mindful of cost, which appeals to me as a Scot. If child trafficking guardians were required and the state was to pay for them, the total cost would be considerable. As a good Scotsman, I am very committed to the policies that seek to place our public finances on a firmer foundation than they have been in recent years. As a good Conservative, I am also very committed to the idea of the big society and the concept of the big society legal advocate, which has been advanced by various parliamentarians in another place. The truth is that charities and voluntary bodies are queuing up to make provision of the legal advocate role. They have been writing to me during the past week. Their frustration is that currently the law does not recognise them or enable them to play a proper child trafficking guardian role in the internationally recognised sense of the term and as reflected in the wording of my amendment. Mindful of this fact, my amendment, which is supported by eminent Peers from all sides of the House, deliberately states: "““In subsection (1), a legal advocate may be— (a) an employee of a statutory body; (b) an employee of a recognised charitable organisation; or (c) a volunteer for a recognised charitable organisation””." On the use of volunteers, I particularly underline the fact that, regardless of how one is appointed, this is no job for do-gooders with compassion but without proper training. Anyone serving as a legal advocate must be properly trained, be they paid or a volunteer. This is not incompatible with our traditions and is eloquently demonstrated not least by our volunteer magistrates system. I am not suggesting that this will have no cost implications, but they will be limited compared with an alternative that is funded completely from the public purse. Furthermore, when one has regard to the cost to the state resulting from children going missing and the potential for ensuring that a child has good support through any criminal cases brought against traffickers, one can see that it constitutes an extremely good investment and excellent value for money. Amendment 57A presents a win-win opportunity. I beg to move.