It is a pleasure to be responding for Labour to this second group of Lords amendment to the Bill, and I want to start by joining others in paying tribute to those who lost their lives or were injured in, and all those who responded to, the attack on Westminster five years ago today. I pay particular tribute to PC Keith Palmer and thank all those who work so hard to keep us safe every day.
I intend to keep my remarks tightly to the amendments before us, particularly Lords amendments 24 to 27, but I want to start by again expressing regret that modern slavery provisions have been included in a Bill on immigration. Members might remember that on Report I was intervened on only by Conservative MPs seeking to agree with me—which is certainly unusual—that the provisions in the Bill on modern slavery will only take us backwards. If this Bill passes unamended we will identify and protect fewer victims of modern slavery and identify and prosecute fewer perpetrators. That is not only our view: the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner has been fierce in her opposition to a number of the changes, and Caroline Haughey QC, one of the leading legal experts in this area, has said this Bill will
“catastrophically undo all that has been achieved in the 10 years since the first modern slavery prosecution.”
Lords amendment 27 seeks to exempt child victims from the most damaging of the Bill’s provisions and ensure that all decisions are made in their best interests. Throughout the passage of the Bill we have voiced our concerns that the Government fail to recognise that identifying victims of modern slavery or human trafficking is a safeguarding, not an immigration, matter. Last year, 43% of victims referred to the national referral mechanism were children, with 31% of them being British, and the rise in county lines gangs is believed to be one of the biggest drivers of the rise in child referrals.
This amendment must also be considered in light of what is currently happening in Ukraine and the reports by charity and aid agencies on the ground of the heightened risks of children being exploited and trafficked along the Ukrainian border and in neighbouring countries, such is the flow of people away from the Russian bombardment. If the Minister is not minded to strike part 5 from the Bill and work with the sector and us on genuine alternatives, he must protect children from the worst of the changes, which only put barriers between victims and the support and justice they need and deserve.
If the Government are to deliver on their own promise of smashing county lines, they must accept Lords amendment 27. The Government’s own existing statutory guidance states:
“Whatever form it takes, modern slavery and child trafficking is child abuse and relevant child protection procedures…must be followed if modern slavery or trafficking is suspected.”
Under the changes introduced in the Bill a child can access protection only if they disclose details of their trauma against a Home Office-mandated timeline, and can access NRM support only if they have no public order offences in their background. The Government’s own guidance rightly says that a child who has been trafficked must be protected, no ifs, no buts—which means no clause 63, no clause 66 and no clause 67 as a condition of support on recognition as being a victim. As a minimum, in order for the Government just to adhere to their own guidance and protect child victims of trafficking, they must adopt Lords amendment 27 to prevent changes that would leave children more vulnerable to criminals and traffickers.
In Committee, at the 12th sitting, the Minister stressed that the Government’s view was that it would somehow be unfair to establish a system that distinguishes between a child and an adult, and he has repeated that sentiment today. He said in Committee:
“To create a carve-out for one group of individuals would create a two-tiered system based on the age at which exploitation may have taken place”,
and went on to say that it
“would not be appropriate or fair to all victims.”––[Official Report, Nationality and Borders Public Bill Committee, 28 October 2021; c. 484.]
I am afraid that is just absurd: we differentiate between children and adults throughout domestic legislation, recognising the age-related vulnerability of children, and it is the very basis of the Government’s own age assessment proposals in the Bill. Child victims have rights to protection under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, and it is there in the Government’s own guidance. If the Minister is really trying to tell us that the Government do not like creating two-tier systems given what else the Bill does, we are simply not having it. I urge the Government to follow their own guidance, recognise that child victims of trafficking are victims of abuse and adopt Lords amendment 27.
6.30 pm
Let me turn to amendment 24, which would remove clause 58 from the Bill. The clause would damage the credibility of victims of modern slavery if they failed to
disclose their trafficking experience within a set timeframe determined by the Home Office. It relies entirely on a misconstruction of what we consider to be a perfect victim: an individual who self-identifies as such and can fully disclose their experience in one setting. That has been widely discredited by the evidence presented at every stage and by victims’ own testimonies. There are many reasons why a victim might be unable to disclose evidence immediately, including the impact of trauma and fear of reprisals against them or their family by their traffickers.
I pay tribute to the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton, for all she has achieved in her time in office. She recently said:
“Traumatised victims cannot disclose their suffering to order—it takes time to build trust and confidence. I cannot imagine that we would contemplate asking victims of sexual assault or child abuse to respond within a set period.”
It is often those who are most in need of support and justice who find it the hardest to disclose their experiences. Indeed, the Government’s own statutory guidance under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 identifies a list of barriers to disclosure, stating:
“Victims’ early accounts may be affected by the impact of trauma. This can result in delayed disclosure”.
The failure to adopt amendment 24 will increase not only the risk of re-trafficking and abuse but the length of the decision-making process. The Minister has tried to reassure us that further detail will be supplied in the statutory guidance, with cases being resolved on an individual basis and good reasons for delayed disclosure being clarified further. In fact, in Committee during our discussions on part 5 alone the Minister referred to the statutory guidance a staggering 51 times when it is still to be published, which I must say made a mockery of parliamentary scrutiny. It took five years for the guidance on the Modern Slavery Act to be published, so I ask the Minister once again, given how much he has referred to the guidance for the Bill, when we can expect it to be published and whether the Government will accept the invitations from the sector to work with them on drafting it. In its absence, simply to adhere to their own guidance on disclosure for traumatised victims, the Government must adopt Lords amendment 24.
On Lords amendment 25, once again the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton, has been explicit in her criticism of clause 62. She has written:
“The bar for disqualification has been set very low”,
which
“will undermine our ability to bring perpetrators to justice.”
She has said:
“There might be exceptional circumstances in which it is right to withhold support when there is a genuine, current and serious threat to public order, but the present bill goes far beyond this.”
The Lords amendment would reflect on those genuine threats while preventing the Bill from undermining our ability to bring traffickers to justice as is her and our fear.
The Minister will be aware that many in his own party have voiced serious concerns about the original public order disqualification threshold introduced by the Government. Given that 48% of victims of modern slavery in the UK last year were criminally exploited, that suggests that clause 62 has the potential to exclude almost half of all victims from support.