Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

That is very reassuring, but it cannot be reassuring to the boys who were watering the cannabis plants, because they were illegal immigrants. They were failed asylum seekers and they were not going to be looked after. The problem is that we are talking about 10,000 children who applied for asylum, but the figures do not square up. I am delighted to hear what the hon. Lady says, but the figures do not square with what the Government are producing in relation to where these young people are. The truth is that nobody cares about them because they have no family or friends here. They are victims and it is up to us to ensure that they are protected. The outcome of the recent ECPAT UK report on missing children worried me. The report highlighted the 80 children known or suspected of being trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and forced marriages, but 48 of them have gone missing. This is a highly recognised and responsible organisation and its report appeared in all the national newspapers for one day, but where have those 48 children gone? We need to do some detective work. I am delighted that some are being looked after, but an awful lot of them are not, and when they go missing they get re-trafficked. I do not believe that we can be recognised as a leader in Europe in this respect. The Government state that they will do anything to tackle the problem and to prosecute the traffickers, but the public authorities are already failing to protect minors when no one knows where they are. Few traffickers have been apprehended in spite of sensational stories about sex trafficking, and comparatively few women have come forward. The problem is that the full picture is obscured. We do not have a clue what is going on, which is why I have spent the past year trying to find out. I have visited a safe house outside Rome where I met and talked with girls trafficked into Italy from Romania and Bulgaria, some as young as 10; I have met traffickers in a high-security prison in Bucharest; I have been to Europol and hostels in Holland; and I have spent time in the most deprived cities in Romania. I met some of the top professionals—from police chiefs to mayors—trying to get to grips with the problem, which remains intangible. What could the Government do? For starters, they could withdraw their reservation in respect of immigration and nationality on the 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child. In an answer to my parliamentary question of 26 February 2007, the Home Secretary stated that the Government believed that without the reservation on the UN protocol, the interpretation of the convention might come into conflict with domestic legislation on migration—but that does not square with signing up to the European convention, whose purpose is to protect children. What this debate should achieve is the highlighting of the extent of the problem in Britain. What we know about trafficking leads me to believe that we have seen a tip of an iceberg. Although we should certainly congratulate the Government and the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety—unfortunately, he has just left the Chamber and did not hear my compliment—who is responsible for trafficking, my conclusion is that there still an immense amount of talk and a large number of meetings, but little to be seen on the ground. The fact that up to 800.000 people each year are trafficked in one way or another; the fact that Lithuania says that Britain is a No. 1 destination for sex trafficking; the fact that 48 children can go missing in the care of local authorities; the fact that Operation Pentameter found 84 women in three months; the fact that 15-year-olds from Vietnam, who got into Britain illegally, are growing cannabis in the suburbs of our towns; and, finally, the fact that Britain has been unable to mount very many successful prosecutions all highlight the fact that human trafficking is still way ahead of the Government. The traffickers must be splitting their sides with mirth at the pedestrian, clumsy, inflexible and bureaucratic way in which the Government, the police and immigration officers are proceeding. When the Minister publishes his action plan, can we be sure that he will make life as difficult as possible for traffickers and better for victims, and that he will decide how we should respond to the trafficking of children into Britain? Where are we, 200 years after abolition? We have got rid of the old form of slavery—lifelong deprivation of rights and freedoms—but today we have a new form of slavery that is growing fast. It is related to ever increasing demand from an affluent society that is prepared to buy children for sex, domestic slavery, begging and the growing of cannabis. While society may have outlawed traditional slavery, the new forms of exploitation prey on the most vulnerable, the poorest and the least educated. All the evidence suggests that trafficking in human beings is now more profitable than arms dealing or drug trafficking. It is a criminal abuse by human beings of other human beings. It is an assault, both physical and mental, on those who are least able to care for themselves. If ours is a country that believes in human rights, we should be at the forefront of tackling this issue rather than just talking about it.