My Lords, I join other noble Lords in supporting the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol in moving Amendment 70A. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I had the opportunity of meeting some of the people from Kalayaan in Palace Yard earlier today. It reminded me of the meeting I had with the group in 2015 when we were discussing the modern slavery legislation and the immigration Bill. With my noble friend Lord Hylton,
whom my noble friend Lord Sandwich referred to earlier, we moved amendments at this time. I went back and took the trouble to have a look at what was said during the course of that debate. Indeed, everything that the right reverend Prelate said in her prescient and eloquent remarks was contained both in the amendment before the House tonight and in the amendments that were moved in the legislation that we divided the House on back in 2015 and 2016.
My noble friend Lord Kerr got it absolutely right, as often he does, when he said that this is about bringing the position back to the pre-2012 status. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the request of Kalayaan that that should be one of issues on the table during the discussions that will be held, I presume with the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, when they meet tomorrow at the Home Office. Like the noble Baroness, I would be grateful if we could have a bit more elucidation about what is going to be on the agenda for that discussion. Given that there is going to be new legislation not that far up the track, it would be wonderful if we could be assured that this will be on the agenda for proper consideration then and that what the right reverend Prelate has said to us tonight will be one of the things that will be considered.
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Kalayaan says:
“Ultimately, Kalayaan, workers themselves and the anti-trafficking sector remain firm that the restoration of the terms of the original overseas domestic workers visa is the best way to protect workers.”
I entirely agree. I look back at those debates we had in 2015 and 2016—even, indeed, as far back as 2009, when the Home Affairs Select Committee, quoting Kalayaan, said in its inquiry into trafficking that the visa issue was
“the single most important issue in preventing the forced labour and trafficking of such workers.”
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to what Mr Ewins said, and we spent a lot of time talking about Mr Ewins’s report in those earlier debates. I will not the repeat the quotation that the noble Baroness gave, other than to add a sentence from Ewins’s review, which was to recommend that
“all overseas domestic workers be granted the right to change employer … and apply for annual extensions, provided they are in work as domestic workers in a private home.”
I hope that the right reverend Prelate’s amendment is accepted by the Government tonight, but if they are unable to do that they should at least give the right reverend Prelate the assurance that this will be considered in whatever pre-legislative scrutiny takes place of proposals to go into the new legislation. I cannot help thinking—it is a thought that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and other noble Lords, expressed earlier today—that the cart has gone before the horse; how much better it would have been if Part 5 was not in this Bill at all but we had dealt with this when that new legislation came forward.