Slavery

My Lords, as we have heard, nearly 200 years ago, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce and a few other committed individuals persuaded the Government to pass a law against the appalling trans-Atlantic slave trade. If any one of us has the courage to stand beside those names today, it must be my noble friend Lady Cox. As we shall learn from an exhibition in Westminster Hall opening in May, it was a popular campaign as well—one of the first examples of parliamentary democracy in action; a noble cause popularised through petitions, posters and public speaking that was finally given parliamentary expression through a Bill. Today, the campaign outside Parliament is spearheaded by Anti-Slavery International, of which I have been a council member for the past nine years. A few weeks ago, I had the honour of presenting the 2006 Anti-Slavery Award to James Aguer, whom my noble friend mentioned, from the Dinka Committee in Sudan, which has rescued thousands of women and children from traditional slavery. My noble friend Lord Alton will also speak about that. But there are many less visible, equally brutal forms of contemporary slavery, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, mentioned. According to the ILO, at least 12.3 million individuals are forced to work against their will, of whom as many as 9 million are in the Asia/Pacific region. Debt bondage occurs when workers offer their labour in exchange for a loan but then lose all control over their conditions of work and pay. Their debt is often inflated through excessive interest and can be passed on to other family members. That cruel practice affects millions of people in the Indian subcontinent, especially among the lowest castes in India and Nepal. Dalit NGOs that I have visited in southern India tell stories of appalling oppression, of children enslaved as bonded labourers, of families forced off their land simply because of their caste and of workers made to carry out humiliating tasks just to avoid poverty. In Latin America, workers are enslaved, receiving only basic food and shelter in return for their labour. In Brazil and Bolivia, for example, migrant workers and indigenous people are used as forced labour on the sugar cane plantations. The majority are forced by poverty to borrow. Their debt grows with accumulated interest and they have no choice but to buy food and goods on credit. When the work finishes, the worker has to return the following season to pay off what is still owed. If he dies, his debt may be inherited. Trafficking is another form of forced labour. The ILO estimates that about 2.5 million people have been trafficked into forced labour and draws attention to the fact that 32 per cent of those are exclusively for labour exploitation. That is a contemporary issue that directly concerns the UK today. Unpublished government research, which has been mentioned already, shows that there were an estimated 4,000 victims of trafficking for prostitution in the UK during 2003 at any one time—a huge increase from the previous estimate in 1998 of 1,420. As we know, people are also trafficked for labour exploitation here. In September, Anti-Slavery International published research that identified 27 individual cases, mainly through debt bondage, the removal of passports or the use of intimidation and threats. Those migrants have been trafficked into industries such as agriculture, construction, food processing and packaging, nursing, hospitality and the restaurant trade. The majority had entered the country legally. In many cases, the employers kept the migrants’ documents, claiming that they had sent them to the Home Office for official purposes until workers’ visas ran out and they became much easier to exploit. There is the story of two Vietnamese men in their twenties who were recruited in Vietnam to work in a hotel in the UK. They paid £18,000 to arrange the job, and came to the UK under the work permit scheme. On arrival, an agent met them at the airport and removed their passports. They worked in a major hotel chain for two months without any pay. All they were given was food. They attempted a strike, and their families in Vietnam then received threats. They were too frightened to approach their embassy or the police, but eventually approached a citizens advice bureau via someone whom they met on the street who happened to speak Vietnamese. There is no information about what happens to most of these trafficked people. Surely this reflects a lack of awareness about trafficking in the relevant agencies and a lack of support services for the people affected. In 2004, the UK introduced a law that makes trafficking for all forms of labour exploitation a criminal offence. In 2006, it established the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre. Despite these positive initiatives, no single successful prosecution has been brought against trafficking for labour exploitation. Perhaps the Minister will put me right on that if I am wrong. Nor is any specialised assistance available to people who are trafficked for forced labour. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, the UK has still not signed the Council of Europe convention, which would ensure that people trafficked into forced labour are at least provided with the minimum standards of protection and support. More than30 other European countries, including France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, have signed the convention and, anticipating what the Minister may say, there is absolutely no evidence from the countries operating the measures in the convention that those measures undermine border controls or put more vulnerable people at risk, as the Government fear. Will the Government follow the JCHR’s recent recommendation and sign the Council of Europe convention, which provides the minimum standards of protection? Will the UK also provide additional funding to the ILO for its special action programme against forced labour? Will it also make a commitment to retain the 1998 rule on migrant domestic workers, which gives them one-year renewable visas and the right to change their employer? This rule has helped to protect migrant workers from being reduced to conditions of servitude, and removing that right would lead to an increase in trafficking and forced labour. Finally, will the Government establish an independent national rapporteur on trafficking in human beings in the UK, with a similar role to that of the Dutch national rapporteur, as part of the UK’s action plan, to which we all look forward?