Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chairman of the human trafficking parliamentary group and as a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation. This is a very specific and limited amendment, which seeks to help the victims of human trafficking who have escaped. We have two groups in mind. The first is those who manage to get away from domestic slavery. Quite often somebody from the Indian sub-continent, further east or the Middle East comes to this country thinking that they are going to work in an ordinary way. However, they find that they become a slave, working seven days a week for no pay and sleeping on the floor, and they are unable to leave the house. When they eventually escape—a certain number of these cases come up from time to time but not very many—some of them manage with the help of a law centre to get to an employment tribunal, where there are pro bono lawyers who sometimes achieve quite large sums for them by way of compensation. If the legal aid sought here, which is for legal advice and assistance to reach the door of the court, is taken away from the law centre on behalf of the individual who is exploited for domestic or labour reasons, then that individual will not get that advice. They will be foreigners, they will have no idea how to get to the employment tribunal and, quite simply, their rights will have been totally overlooked. The second group, where cases arise perhaps less often, concerns those who are exploited for sexual reasons—generally prostitution—and who are generally but not always women. They escape and sometimes manage to find the person who has trafficked them for sexual exploitation. They manage to get to the county court or occasionally the High Court—again, with the help of a law centre, which puts the case together—and at court they will find a pro bono lawyer. Therefore, it is advice and assistance that the amendment specifically seeks. I recognise that there is a difficulty in how best to identify a victim of human trafficking or a, "““victim of trafficking of people for exploitation””," the phrase used in the amendment. I had originally thought of referring to someone who had been identified by the national referral mechanism, but I was then warned that that mechanism was not an identifiable entity from the point of view of legislation. That is why I have used the wording as it appears in the amendment. I am extremely grateful to the Minister and particularly to those behind him, who have indicated to me that the Government are sympathetic to this issue, but the question remains—and I understand it entirely—of how best to identify victims. However, I understand that what I am asking for is, at the moment at least, being sympathetically considered by the Government.