Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I, too, have put my name to this amendment. I declare an interest as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation. I am also extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for this amendment and for the dedication with which he has pursued both through his own Bill and during the passage of this Bill what is so needed for these children. The amendment looks to one element of the needs of the most disadvantaged group of children in the world: those who have been trafficked, removed from their families, however inadequate the family situation may have been, and brought here, to a foreign country, where they probably do not speak the language, to become sex slaves, domestic slaves, thieves or minders of cannabis farms. As the noble Lord has told us, they have no family life, no chance to go to school or to lead the life of an ordinary child. This is modern child slavery, and how do we treat those who escape? The signing of the EU directive and the excellent strategy against human trafficking have put the Government on the right track. The issue is the extent to which the good intentions are actually carried out. I suggest that the United Kingdom is only semi-compliant with the directive, but we are all on the same side in trying to achieve the best possible outcomes for these children. I was delighted to hear the preliminary and most helpful comments from the Minister, but none the less I would like to continue to make the speech I have prepared. Article 14 of the directive was set out by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, but how do we deal with it in England and Wales? As the noble Lord said, the care and protection of these children is covered by the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004. Local authorities have a statutory duty of care, protection and accommodation to children at risk. However, I agree with the noble Lord that the present set-up within social work care does not meet the needs of the trafficked child. At present, no one in this country has parental responsibility for such a child. Mothers and fathers have parental responsibility, and local authorities share parental responsibility if they have a care order, but under Part III of the Children Act 1989, not Part IV, parental responsibility remains with the parents, who may be anywhere in the world and may themselves have been the traffickers; so the child is in a sort of administrative limbo. We know, as the noble Lord pointed out so graphically, that traffickers get in touch with children who go missing—and no one actually knows how many children do go missing. The figures on missing children generally, those within the UK as well as trafficked children, are seriously inaccurate. There is no effective trafficking database, but the figures given today, although I would be surprised if they are the total, are indeed shocking. Those children who remain with a local authority have no consistent person to whom to turn. They are exposed and subjected to a bewildering variety of processes over which they have no control with no consistent individual to help them surmount the hurdles set before them. I also remind noble Lords that these are foreign children who do not necessarily speak English and have no one in this country with parental responsibility or who they know. One only has to contrast such a child with a child living in this country who comes to the threshold of care proceedings as being ““at serious risk of harm””. That child is always allocated a guardian for care proceedings, usually from CAFCASS. The amendment seeks to ameliorate this sad and most unsatisfactory situation. I have to say, however, that the wording of the amendment is not perfect. The phrase ““legal advocate””, which I am afraid I suggested, may not be the best phrase. It is difficult to work out the best description of a person who should carry out the tasks, but the tasks themselves are much clearer. The person needs to be a mentor, a next friend and adviser to the child, and we have to find the best title for the individual carrying out this role. What we need for the trafficked child is someone who will be around at the end of the phone, will meet the child, will know when the child goes missing and will alert the agencies to find them. The person would help to arrange all the services needed by the child—medical, psychological, educational and interpretation into the child’s own language—and assist in the child’s access to legal and other representation. The person would advise the child and help to promote their best interests, and make long-term plans for their future. Ideally, the person identified should have parental responsibility for the child or at least some statutory authority, so that the agencies with which that person will deal would be obliged to pay attention to his or her intervention. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, quite rightly said, some training will be necessary. The untrained amateur is not the person for this job. An unsatisfactory alternative is to continue to use social workers to carry out this role. It is not often that there will be one social worker with the time, or even possibly the commitment, to give this child what is needed. I know from personal experience what social workers cannot do for children living in this country, so how will they be able to do it for trafficked children coming in? Ideally, the resources should be given to free up individual social workers to look after the relatively small number of identified trafficked children, but this is pie in the sky. The Salvation Army has a contract to provide help and accommodation for adults, but not, of course, for children. A real possibility would be for the Government to look to the voluntary sector and find a children’s NGO to provide this service for these children. As an example, Barnardo’s already offers legal advocates for trafficked children in certain circumstances and gives other help. I believe that CARE is about to offer something similar, and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, spoke of a number of NGOs which had been in touch with him. I would like the Government to look to the NGOs to see what could be offered, to which I hope the Government would make a modest contribution to help the relevant NGO carry out the task. I hope that the Children’s Commissioner for England will look at that, and I am delighted that the Minister has accepted this proposal from the noble Lord, Lord McColl. I very much hope, therefore—and I feel it is true—that the Government accept the underlying principle of this important amendment.