My Lords, human trafficking is a brutal and shocking business. Trafficked people are modern-day slaves and are among the most vulnerable people in our society. They are deprived of their liberty and brought to a foreign country where they do not speak the language. They have no friends or family, and they do not know whom they can trust or where they can go for help. They have their passports taken away and are then imprisoned, sometimes behind locked doors but more effectively through physical and psychological threats, often to the safety of their families at home, even abroad. This desperate vulnerability is massively compounded when we are dealing with children, for obvious reasons.
It is with these children in view that I move Amendment 42, which recalls our deliberations on a similar amendment, Amendment 57A, which I moved during our debate on the Protection of Freedoms Bill in February 2012. In discussing that amendment on 15 February 2012, a number of noble Lords spoke passionately about the plight of trafficked children and the care they receive after they have been rescued. They emphasised the large number of trafficked children who had been lost from local authority care. The figures may have improved a little since 2010, when, over the preceding five years, 301 of the 942 trafficked children who were rescued then went missing from care. However, the Centre for Social Justice report in March of this year reported that many children are still going missing, with one local authority recording 25 trafficked children going missing in just five months in 2011.
Why am I revisiting this issue today? On the occasion of moving Amendment 57A at the Report stage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, I was supported by three eminent co-signatories: the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the shadow Leader of the House in the Labour Party; the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, from the Liberal Democrats; and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, from the Cross Benches. There was considerable momentum behind the amendment but I was pressed by the Government not to divide and, instead, to allow the commissioning of research into the arrangements for the care of trafficked children, and on that basis I agreed not to divide.
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I return to the subject today because, on 12 September this year, the report that the Home Office commissioned further to that debate was published and had its parliamentary launch yesterday, which some of your Lordships were able to attend. Produced by the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council, the report, entitled
Still at Risk, clearly supports what I said on 15 February 2012 and calls, as I did then and do again today, for the provision of child trafficking guardians. I shall return to the report shortly but, in introducing Amendment 42, I must remind noble Lords what it is that child trafficking guardians actually do and explain why the current structures of care do not amount to the same thing.
First, what do they do? The role of a child trafficking guardian has been developed by UNICEF, and my amendment is based on its model as set out in its important 2006 publication guidelines on the protection of child victims of trafficking. Child trafficking guardians have two main functions. First, they provide a constant point of reference. Child victims of trafficking are, for the reasons I have explained, especially vulnerable. When they are rescued they find themselves in a situation where they have to engage with multiple state agencies—the police, the courts, local authorities, social workers, education and so on. That is a daunting prospect for an adult in a foreign country—how much more so for a child.
When engaging with each agency, they have to deal with a different person and go through the process of telling their painful story again and again. In this context a child trafficking guardian provides an absolutely crucial role. It is not about creating an additional layer of bureaucracy as some people have alleged: the whole point is that the child trafficking guardian places no additional burden on the child but helps them to navigate their way through the existing bureaucracy. They are appointed as a constant in a bewildering sea of different agencies to help the child negotiate that sea.
The second main function of a child trafficking guardian is that they have a legal recognition to advocate on the child’s behalf and in the child’s best interests in all the negotiations with different state agencies. If the child does not want the burden of having to repeat their story again and again, they can ask the child trafficking guardian to speak for them.
Having reminded noble Lords of the remit of child trafficking guardians, I now turn to the arguments that the Government have previously advanced to suggest that the law already effectively makes provision for child trafficking guardians. In the first instance, the Government pointed out that the Children Act places on local authorities a general obligation to protect the welfare of all children within their boundaries. The Government have further pointed to three specific roles in the Children Act that assist the local authority in this task—namely, Section 26 advocates, independent visitors and independent reviewing officers. After close examination, as I explained in February 2012, I and other noble Lords have concluded that none of these meets the requirements of a child trafficking guardian, either according to the UNICEF definition or our obligations under the EU anti-trafficking directive.
Let me deal first with the advocates. Advocates appointed under Section 26A of the Children Act act 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. They
become involved in supporting a child only if the child chooses to take advantage of the service. As one solicitor pointed out to me, this assumes the child in question is mature enough to make this decision. The solicitor wanted to know how this would help the very young trafficked children with whom they had worked, some of whom were under two years old.
Secondly, independent visitors can be appointed under Section 23ZB if a local authority considers it is in a child’s best interest. However, we should remember they provide only a befriending or visiting role and do not have the right to advocate on a child’s behalf. Section 25A requires the appointment of an independent reviewing officer for every looked-after child, with a specific function in relation to reviews of a child’s care. These officers are not required to have regular contact with a child between the review meetings and do not accompany or support the child in other contexts.
Having considered what child trafficking guardians do and the reasons why current legislation does not provide an equivalent, I now come to the research findings of the Still at Risk report, commissioned by the Government in preference to accepting my child trafficking guardian amendment of February 2012. I have to tell noble Lords that when I read the report, I felt that we had been absolutely correct to move Amendment 57A to the Protection of Freedoms Bill in 2012, and was convinced of the need to find the first available opportunity to retable my amendment. I must admit to great sorrow and a little frustration that we have been unable to move forward on this issue for 18 months. It pains me greatly to think of children who have not received the help they deserve in that intervening period.
The need for someone who can accompany a child through the complexities of the care system, the immigration system and the court process was articulated clearly by a girl called Precious, who was interviewed for the review. She said, “If you come newly, you can’t even understand because you have never been in a place like this before, somebody like me, I don’t know my way out. I can’t even speak. I don’t know how to talk to anyone. I wish I knew my rights. I wish I knew what to do”. How pathetic. Another girl, Josephine, said, “When I went to social services I didn’t have a social worker and my case was from one person to another person so I didn’t really know who I’m gonna go talk to because I didn’t have no one who really knew my case … And another thing, because of my language it was so difficult for me to try to express my feelings … emotionally, I was broken, I didn’t have no feelings at all, I didn’t know how my life would end up, I didn’t know what I’m gonna do, I didn’t know who; I didn’t know what I was any more”. How sad.
The report found great variation in the quality of care provided to trafficked children, as we heard yesterday from the researchers. The report states that,
“only a minority of the children were happy with the care and support they had received from their social workers. Although some individual social workers were identified as having been supportive, practice varied widely. Children often had multiple social workers or key workers, resulting in little continuity of care and children having to frequently repeat their stories of the traumatic abuse and exploitation they had experienced. Local authorities reported that they sometimes experience barriers to
providing an allocated permanent social worker, and stakeholders emphasised that whoever supports the child needs the skills to manage complex situations”.
I now make some detailed comments about Amendment 42, which, although largely identical in effect to Amendment 57A, is different in structure. Amendment 42 requires each trafficked child to be allocated a child trafficking guardian as soon as possible after the child is identified as a potential victim of trafficking—a key requirement of the EU anti-trafficking directive. The particular responsibilities in proposed new subsection (2) have been based on UNICEF guidelines and are focused on providing that independent and continuous support in relation to all agencies; and that is what is currently lacking.
One key element of a child trafficking guardian’s responsibility is their role as an advocate on behalf of the child, which can include, where appropriate, instructing the child’s solicitor. This role and the need for its recognition by all relevant agencies are set out in proposed new subsection (6). This is vital if the advocacy function is to be effective and would enable the guardian to speak up for the child’s best interests to all those involved in the case.
As the Still at Risk report highlights, some voluntary organisations currently provide excellent advocacy and support services for children who are trafficked and, indeed, the report quotes some children as saying that this was the most helpful of all the support that they had received. However, these organisations have no recognition in law in relation to the child and are therefore able to assist only where the agencies and professionals handling the child’s case are open to their involvement. The amendment would provide a mechanism to give these organisations that legal recognition.
This brings me to another noteworthy aspect of the amendment. Proposed new subsection (4) allows for child trafficking guardians to be public sector employees, or staff or volunteers in a voluntary organisation. This allows the Government flexibility in determining how these services should be provided and rises to the challenge of managing costs for the good of our public finances—something that this Government have rightly prioritised. It could be expensive to appoint salaried staff and create a public sector agency to fulfil this role, whereas equipping charities or volunteers to do the work could be extremely cost-effective, which noble Lords will know appeals to the thrifty Scotsman in me.
In September 2012, in its report on the UK’s compliance with the Council of Europe’s anti-trafficking convention, the treaty-monitoring body known as GRETA said:
“A system of guardianship is essential to ensure the children’s protection and rehabilitation, assist in severing links with traffickers and minimise the risk of children going missing”.
The report recommends that the Government,
“ensure that all unaccompanied minors who are potential victims of trafficking are assigned a legal guardian”.
In June 2013, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report recommended that the UK,
“establish a system of guardianship for unaccompanied foreign children”.
In June 2013, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“We are persuaded that providing children with a guardian could support children more effectively in navigating asylum, immigration and support structures and help them to have their voices heard”.
It is clear to me that child trafficking guardians are an idea whose time has come. The case for their provision is very clear, both from the research and through subsequent international developments. I firmly believe that the time for talking is over and the time for action is here. I very much hope that the Government will accept the amendment and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I beg to move.
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