Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

The number is five now—I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. There are thus another five to go, and we are signing the convention only this weekend. However, I am glad that we are signing it because it is a good step in the right direction. I do not know whether the House knows that no prosecutions under the trafficking legislation have taken place for cases involving African women or girls. I pay tribute to the all-party group on trafficking of women and children, which I have the honour of chairing. It has a distinguished group of officers and members, including the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) and my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara). It is served by the well-known organisation ECPAT UK—End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes—which has done a great service to this country. The most important point arising from the intervention of the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) is that we must not only sign the convention, but practise and ratify it. I thought that it might be useful to the House if I were to say something about victim support. If the police are able to dig out the traffickers and get enough evidence—