Coroners and Justice Bill

I add my two minutes’ worth of support for my noble friend’s amendment as a former council member of Anti-Slavery International and having seen the legal opinion of Matrix Chambers. I thank my noble friend Lord Alton—who, coming from Liverpool, always sets the debate in a historical context—for setting out the case so clearly and powerfully. That saves me from having to speak for very long. We are discussing the domestic migrant worker whose passport is taken, who is certainly under financial pressure, who is kept for long hours indoors and who may be subjected to considerable violence. We know from the expert voluntary organisations that there is substantial evidence that these practices are still going on in the UK, and may even be condoned by the vagueness of our present law. It seems astonishing that, according to the opinion we have had, the present law is insufficiently robust to protect the victims of the crime. The widespread public condemnation of trafficking following the mass arrest of young women and children from eastern Europe and the terrible Morecambe Bay disaster led to a spate of legislation in which many of us played a part, and the Government have responded. Some of the cases that we hear of forced labour and debt-bonded labour in this country remind me of conditions in north-east Brazil and come very close to modern slavery. We have to thank the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for making two recommendations on domestic slavery that have already been mentioned. In a case that was brought to the European Court, France was held to be in breach of Article 4 in failing to provide specific protection to a young Togolese girl. This leaves the UK very exposed. It seems clear that, in the terms of the ECHR and the rulings of the European Court, there is no specific legislation here to look after these people. I draw only one example from the opinion of Matrix Chambers, which my noble friend has mentioned. Section 4 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 makes trafficking unlawful, but the Act merely establishes the facts; it does not enable the prosecution to prove the elements of the offence to be beyond reasonable doubt. I hope the Minister will address this point, because the complexities of trafficking make the offence almost impossible to prove. I know that the Minister, with his experience, has had time to study this opinion, and I recognise that the Bill may not be the best vehicle for these amendments, but will the Government at least accept that there is a weakness in the present law that will have to be addressed if these criminals are to be caught?