Coroners and Justice Bill

As always, the noble Lord has come up with a good suggestion. This opinion, which has yesterday’s date on it, was kindly sent to my officials and I shall say something about it. Of course, it deserves a longer consideration and a response and I shall do my best to make sure that that happens. It will obviously be an important part of the debate from now on. I do not need to go through the maximum sentences for assaults and other criminal offences, but we know that offences of false imprisonment can carry a maximum penalty of life and often attract sentences of eight years or more. I remind the Committee that trafficking for exploitation carries a maximum penalty of 14 years. I come now to one of the main parts of this problem. Whether to prosecute in each case, and what charges are most appropriate, are rightly matters for the police and the CPS. We have taken informal soundings from the Association of Chief Police Officers to see if it is aware of any difficulties in charging individuals who are involved in exploiting the vulnerable in this way. We understand that the North Yorkshire Police has commissioned Project Acumen, overseen by its chief constable, which will review and analyse the victims of sexual and labour exploitation. It will also analyse the scope and nature of offenders and criminal groups involved in organised immigration crime and trafficking in human beings. This will include, first, identification of the main market sectors affected; secondly, an initial appraisal of the likely significance of the main ethnicities and nationalities involved as victims and offenders; and, thirdly, the identification of any key regional variances in either markets, victims or offenders. The final report is due to be published by the end of February next year and we believe the findings will be helpful. We shall continue, of course, a dialogue with the police to explore what measures might be useful in tackling this problem. I venture to think that one of the issues behind the amendment is a concern that in practice, even though offences may have been committed, the police, for whatever reason—and there may be good reasons as well as bad reasons—do not feel able always to bring a prosecution. We certainly need to look at that more closely during the summer. I now say a word about our obligations under Article 4, which provides that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude or be required to perform forced or compulsory labour. It is implicit from the case law that if existing criminal laws provide practical and effective protection for the rights set out in Article 4, then the state concerned will have discharged its obligations. As a Government, we would of course have serious concerns if we thought that we were not discharging our obligations under an instrument as important as the ECHR. We enacted the Human Rights Act to give further effect to convention rights in the UK and to ensure that those rights could be enforced in our domestic courts. I hope the Committee will accept that we take our international obligations seriously. We feel that we have discharged our obligations under the ECHR Let me offer an initial thought on the important opinion of the two counsel referred to. It has been suggested that a new offence is necessary in order to satisfy our Article 4 obligations but, at present and on first reading, we do not agree. Neither the ECHR, nor the ILO conventions, nor case law interpreting the ECHR, to which the two distinguished barristers referred in their advice, requires a specific forced labour or servitude offence. Rather, what is required is for the state to provide "practical and effective protection" of a claimant’s rights by ensuring, for example, that there is effective deterrence by way of criminal law. As I have already argued, we think that there is effective deterrence through a range of existing criminal offences. Deterrence may also, of course, be in the form of successful prosecutions, which we have, with sufficient penalties, which there are. If we were to enact a bespoke offence as the amendment seeks, it does not follow that any prosecution for such an offence would be successful. Alternatively, of course, a prosecution might not be brought, in which case claimants’ rights are still not protected. That is all that I want to say today on this subject. I make it clear that I cannot make any promise, or even a hint of one, that if the matter is withdrawn today, which I invite the noble Baroness to do, I will be able to say anything very different if it is raised again on Report.