Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the Minister may be relieved to hear that these are the last two amendments in my name. They refer specifically to human trafficking, a very special part of the Bill. I declare an interest as the joint chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking. In moving Amendment 61A, I must also refer to Amendment 90A, which I hope noble Lords will consider to be self-evident from the wording. The European Union directive, which the Government have signed up to, to everyone's delight, has in Article 12(2) and Article 15(2) the requirement for legal aid provision and legal assistance. If the Minister will forgive me, I want to quote the words of Article 12(2), which are very similar to the words in Article 15(2), which deals with adults. The directive states: "““Member States shall ensure that victims of trafficking in human beings have access without delay to legal counselling, and, in accordance with the role of victims in the relevant justice system, to legal representation, including for the purpose of claiming compensation. Legal counselling and legal representation shall be free of charge where the victim does not have sufficient financial resources””." There is very similar wording on children in Article 15(2). The Government also signed the European convention prior to the European directive. Article 12(1)(d) requires a party—that is, the United Kingdom—to provide, "““counselling and information, in particular as regards their legal rights … in a language that””," the victims of trafficking in persons can understand. That is the background to the four matters raised in the first of the two amendments, which aims to provide civil legal services to victims of trafficking in relation to rights to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, employment claims, claims for damages in the employment tribunal, damages in the county court or possibly the High Court, and compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The Immigration Minister in the other place, the right honourable Damian Green MP, suggested recently in answer to a question that victims of trafficking did not need legal aid. If he was including civil proceedings, then the Minister is mistaken. There are a number of situations in the civil and immigration areas of the law where legal aid and advice can continue to be vital for many victims, who will be disproportionately adversely affected by these cuts. They are, as noble Lords will know, a very special group of disadvantaged people. Amendment 61A would restore legal aid to victims of trafficking in the four specific areas that I have already mentioned. Between July and December of last year, something like 219 victims of trafficking were identified under the national referral mechanism. By no means would all of these require legal aid for the various areas that I am referring to. Some victims will require asylum while some will seek immigration status and not asylum; they will be trying to stay in the United Kingdom. However, there will be many others who wish to return home but want to make a claim against traffickers before they do so. The two main groups who will be affected by Amendment 61A are sex slaves—victims of sexual exploitation—and domestic slaves, who are caught in domestic labour situations. The group who have been sexually exploited would almost certainly be seeking damages in the county court if the traffickers have assets here, as some do. These traffickers are serious and well organised groups with a great deal of money available. The victims of labour exploitation are generally unpaid domestic servants who make their claims in the employment tribunal. The trafficker in those cases is very often an individual who has brought somebody in or employed somebody to whom he or she is not paying a single penny. They take their passport from them and make it impossible for them to leave the house. Those people are trafficked but in a different way. That sort of trafficker will have assets in this country and the employment tribunal can make orders in relation to them. I remind the Minister that it would be far preferable for victims to claim against traffickers than against the criminal injuries compensation scheme which relies, as everyone knows, on public money. How on earth are foreigners without legal advice and assistance, and with limited English, going to manage to get to the county court or the employment tribunal if these cuts take effect? At present, the effective system is that law centres with legal aid contracts take on an advisory role for these victims using legal aid. They get the case to the door of the county court or the employment tribunal. Marvellous pro bono lawyers, mainly barristers, then conduct the cases in the tribunal and sometimes in the county court. It is very interesting that employment tribunals are making large awards to victims of domestic exploitation—up to a quarter of a million pounds. These are far larger than those in the county court. I am told by the North Kensington Law Centre—which does the most excellent job—that if this legal aid is removed, the help will not be available and the traffickers will not be challenged by compensation claims. The only area that will retain legal aid will be claims for discrimination, which is not always the appropriate claim for a victim of human trafficking, whose main claim may be for five years of unpaid wages. I am told that a large number of these cases in the employment tribunal settle very early on for quite large sums and consequently cost very little money to the legal aid system. There is a further serious point. It is suggested that domestic visas may be withdrawn. The Government have said this, but I do not know whether they have yet made a decision. If they do withdraw domestic visas, women and children brought in to work in houses will be illegal immigrants. This area of trafficking will be uncontrolled and the employment tribunal will no longer be available. It will be most likely to affect children, because children can be brought into this country on education visas by fake parents or other relatives and then put to work, as they are already put to work as domestic slaves. It will be extremely difficult to stop this sort of slavery if the domestic visa is no longer available. Then, of course, these young people—or indeed adults—will be forced into the asylum system, which is already overloaded, rather than making claims and then returning home. A matter of particular concern is the proposed telephone gateway, which is the Government’s idea—I do not mean that impolitely—or plan for how people can obtain help. Not all victims necessarily get processed through the NRM and they need to be otherwise identified as victims. As I understand it, the telephone operators will not be specialists. One would not expect that. However, a foreign victim of trafficking with little or no English, having escaped from an appalling situation of slavery, is not likely to be coherent or explicit on the telephone. He or she may say his or her passport has been withheld, or that he or she has not been paid, and probably does not know what to ask for—for example a claim for compensation or the right to remain until the claim has been processed. He or she is very unlikely to say he or she is a victim of trafficking, and is very unlikely to be identified by the telephone operator as a victim or to be referred to the appropriate specialist adviser with expertise in this field of trafficking. These are very complex cases—how on earth will the telephone operator cope? Victims are likely to fall through the net. This will be discrimination against those victims; in which case the United Kingdom will be failing in its obligations under the directive. I hope the Minister accepts that the Government have overlooked the effects of cuts upon this relatively small, special group of people. The wording of Amendment 61A could undoubtedly be improved, particularly in terms of identifying who is actually a victim of trafficking, but to penalise this group of seriously disadvantaged people would be contrary to the EU directive, the European convention and, perhaps more importantly, the Government’s own excellent strategy document. I beg to move.