Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

I will obviously follow your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. However, I hope that you will not think it disrespectful of me to say that I am straying no further than either of the Front-Bench speakers. In fact, at least 50 per cent. of hon. Members’ speeches have concentrated on human trafficking and the new forms of slavery. I hope that I will not do anything other than they did. However, I am grateful for your guidance. I want to talk for a moment about what would happen if the police were able to dig out the traffickers—this is about trafficking and slavery. It is worth mentioning that the real problem is getting enough evidence to pin a conviction on a trafficker. If traffickers were convicted, would they serve their sentence in their country of origin or at a cost to the British taxpayer—would we be expected to foot the bill? What about the victims of traffickers? Every time that I ask a question about the new forms of human slavery, the anticipated answer is that the POPPY project is dealing with the matter. Let us consider the reality of the POPPY project. It is rightly given tremendous and continuous publicity. Every time a Minister answers a question about this issue from the Dispatch Box, POPPY pops up. I do not want to trivialise POPPY’s achievements, but the project must be viewed in perspective. POPPY has only 25 beds, which are in London alone, and a further 10 emergency beds, if required. I am told that when Operation Pentameter was in force, POPPY’s places were nearly full. However, once Pentameter ceased, the number of referrals fell. When I made an inquiry about four months ago, the number of women in the care of POPPY was down to 16 out of a possible 35. There are a number of reasons for that. First, one has to be over 18 to go to POPPY; under-18s are turned away. Secondly, under-18s go into local authority care. POPPY deals only with trafficking or slavery for sexual exploitation. Victims of forced labour or domestic servitude or forced marriage are turned away. POPPY provides unconditional support only for a so-called reflection period of four weeks. It works only in London, so there is no equivalent POPPY project for people in Manchester, Birmingham or Sheffield. If I am wrong about that, perhaps the Minister can put me right. It works for a short period of four weeks and if support is to last any longer, the victim has to offer information about their traffickers; otherwise, they are asked to leave. I do not believe that that has been a very successful approach. Up to 4,000 women a year are trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation. The POPPY project mapping report, ““Sex in the City””, shows evidence of off-street prostitution in 22 London boroughs. An estimated 80 per cent. of people working in brothels, saunas and massage parlours are non-British nationals—80 per cent. of prostitutes come from abroad. It is rather like restaurants; people seem to want a choice, whether it be Indian or Chinese. They go for a range of people who have been trafficked into this country. What happened to the women in the POPPY project? Nobody knows. Have they been sent back home or integrated into this country; and what has happened to the 277 referrals? Nobody knows. I must say that I am increasingly concerned about where all the women have gone to. What about the 3,800 whom POPPY did not deal with? What has happened to them? POPPY says that it is looking after as many people as it possibly can, but the attitude in Britain towards trafficked people is very different from that in Holland or Italy. As Britain is about to sign the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, should we not be planning a slightly more constructive approach? The Minister boasts that the POPPY project provides protection and assistance to adult victims, safe accommodation and a range of support services, but I wonder whether the House knows that women in the POPPY project who have entered the UK illegally do not have access to medical care. They are not entitled to any medical care whatever if they are illegal entrants. Many face multiple problems, including physical ones, and sexually transmitted diseases, yet they are not entitled to medical facilities. Does the Minister know that; will she deal with it in her winding-up speech? Finally, I want to look into child slavery. What did the Minister for Women and Equality have in mind when she said that we were leading Europe in providing victims of human trafficking with protection, particularly under-aged victims? When she said that, was she aware that 4,885 girls aged between 15 and 19, and 6,170 boys sought asylum in the UK in 2005—about 11,000 children? According to the Home Office website, in 2005, out of 2,835 decisions, 700 were refused. I am not sure what has happened to the other 7,000. The numbers do not add up. No one is sure whether victims of trafficking who are under 18 have right to remain in the UK, or whether some of the thousands of children missing are just shipped out of Britain again. Who is responsible for those children? Who looks after them and who cares for them? Do they have a guardian ad litem? Are they fostered to families who will care for them? Do they go to school? On 20 December last year, I asked the Home Secretary how many children had been trafficked into the UK, and the answer was that he had no idea. When I asked how many unaccompanied children had come into Britain, he had no idea of that either, so I asked how many had been returned to their country of origin as a result of failed asylum. The answer was again that there was no information, so no one knows what happens when the children reach 18 if they are still in this country. Will failed asylum seekers be sent back to their country of origin?