The answer to the hon. Lady’s second question is that I do not know. I pick up on what she says as something new, and I am not aware of any specific action we have taken on it; I am confirmed in that view by a brief glance at my officials. However, it is a really interesting point. I am also not aware of what is being done internationally. As we have all discussed, this is not a problem that the UK can deal with on its own, and no one is asking us to. The point about the process of persuading people and contacting social media is very interesting; social media are capable of so much good, but can cause so much ill when used carelessly. I will look into that matter specifically and ensure that the hon. Lady and other hon. Members are aware of what action we might take.
As the Prime Minister made clear last year, we stand ready to support the UN further. I have no new figures, but a £150 million programme was recently announced and additional money is going through. Part of that goes to UN agencies that we work with on enforcement issues and humanitarian support.
Hon. Members also mentioned Libya’s stability. Ensuring Libya’s stability and helping the Libyan Government of national accord to restore unity, take control of their southern and coastal borders, and rebuild the economy is the best way to tackle the organised criminal groups that are making Libya a transit route for illegal migration. Let me update the House on the present state of affairs in Libya with respect to the Government and reconstruction.
I was pleased that the hon. Member for Leeds North East referred to Peter Millett, who will indeed retire quite soon and who has had the most difficult time in recent years, having been unable to work in Libya. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have visited him, both in the compound in Libya and in Tunisia.
The Government of national accord are supported by a UN resolution. We are working with them and with UN Special Representative Ghassan Salamé on the negotiations to move the governmental process forward, which have reached a critical stage. The Libyan political agreement is being adapted and extended. Ghassan Salamé is spending his time trying to bring the various parties together to put the right names into the presidential council and work through a political process that is exceptionally difficult because of huge vested interests and a degree of distrust between the parties. The UN special representative and our own ambassador have worked so hard to address those difficulties. The ambassador was recently in Benghazi; he was able to get into eastern Libya for the first time in some years and talk to people there.
Libya is still a divided country in many ways, and the political process is absorbing a huge amount of time. Of course, that means that law enforcement agencies on a national scale are very difficult to drive and control, because on the ground both money and guns talk louder than a national Government. We would be foolish to think anything else. We therefore have to continue to
strengthen that national Government, so that they have both the authority and the physical ability to enforce what needs to be done about these gangs.
The Libyan Government have indeed been strengthened. I saw Libya’s Deputy Prime Minister recently to express our concern about what the television coverage has shown of the auctions. The Libyan Government had committed to establishing a commission to look further into the issue and see what they could do, and the United Kingdom and other countries need to be clear that we will support the enforcement efforts they need to take. Commissions are one thing, but everybody in this Chamber wants to see some action, which can only be carried out with international support for those who are driving it forward.
To achieve further and long-term sustainable progress, we also need to invest upstream in countries of origin and transit. Africa continues to account for the largest percentage share of UK bilateral official development assistance expenditure allocated to a specific country or region. It received approximately £2.9 billion in 2016, or 51% of our bilateral ODA spend, and much of that money is designed to take away the root drivers of migration. I have no doubt that the determination to do that is strongly shared by every Member of the House, including all those who are here today.
The African Union can indeed play its part. The recent summit agreed to establish a joint European Union-African Union-United Nations migration taskforce aiming to accelerate assisted voluntary returns, to bring sub-Saharan nationals back to their own countries from Libya and to provide resettlement for the most vulnerable, including those we saw in the cages and at the auctions. Again, that can be done only by combined work, and we are engaged in that work. The first meeting of the taskforce took place in Brussels just at the end of last week, and the UK strongly endorses ongoing efforts by the EU, the AU and the UN to address the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable people upstream in Africa, including the declaration on assisted voluntary returns at the recent EU-Africa summit. We also look forward to receiving further information on the new joint migration taskforce, following the agreement reached at that summit.
Colleagues have mentioned support for Nigeria. So far, the UK has committed £2 million to establish a joint border taskforce in Lagos by partnering with the Nigerian Government. That taskforce is designed to identify and protect potential victims of trafficking, and to arrest and prosecute traffickers in line with international compliance standards. The taskforce’s centre will support and expand on the 335 prosecutions that have already been made by Nigeria’s national agency for the prohibition of trafficking in people, and it is linked to efforts to combat illicit financial crime, including through asset seizures.
We have also announced a further £12 million to tackle modern slavery in Nigeria. That funding will help to support victims, build criminal justice capacity and promote alternative livelihoods. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) was right to say that commercial practices can play a part. Just as companies have been concerned in the past to make sure that fair trade was part of their ethos as they worked to provide commodities, so they must be absolutely and completely vigilant about slavery and illegal trafficking, and there must be the harshest sanctions against those that breach those rules; there is no doubt about that.
I will just deal with a couple of further issues. First, I will make clear it again that we do engage the Government of Libya and the Libyan authorities on the issue of migration and modern slavery. In August, the Foreign Secretary urged Prime Minister Sarraj to respect the human rights of migrants, and as I have said, I raised the human rights situation with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq just a few days ago. Again, however, we do not underestimate the difficulties that the Libyan authorities face, which can be resolved only when the political situation in Libya is itself resolved.
Humanitarian support is also vital, because we must also deal with that strand of the issue. Since October 2015, we have allocated more than £175 million in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis, including substantial support for Libya. I mentioned earlier that migrants who find themselves in slavery in Libya come from many hundreds of miles away. That is why we have to take a comprehensive approach to migration, addressing the root causes as well as working to alleviate the conditions that migrants face.
We have a flagship programme to address some of the drivers of modern slavery in Nigeria’s Edo state, which is the country’s trafficking hub. As I said earlier, our work with the joint border force in Lagos and the work that I announced earlier also make a difference. We have a new £75 million programme, as I mentioned earlier, focusing on the route from west Africa through the Sahel to Libya. That includes a new £5 million allocation of support in Libya, which was announced today by the Secretary of State for International Development. That is designed to provide humanitarian aid and protection to migrants and refugees, some of whom are in detention, as part of the work we announced at the June European Council.
Also this year, our aid and development programmes have supported more than 20,000 emergency interventions for migrants and refugees in Libya, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam mentioned in his opening remarks, providing everything from food to healthcare, from hygiene kits to emotional support and safe shelter. We have also provided tailored services for women and girls, to protect them from the heightened risks that they face of trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence.
At the December European Council, the Prime Minister also announced a further €3 million for the EU trust fund for the north of Africa window, which includes countries such as Libya. The funding will be used to protect vulnerable migrants in north Africa, to tackle the root causes of irregular migration and to create opportunities for people to find jobs.
We are committed to ending modern slavery wherever we find it, in this country or abroad. In Libya, that is a complex task. It requires us to convince migrants to build a bright future for themselves at home, which we will do only by helping to strengthen economies right across the continent of Africa. It also requires a Libyan Government to emerge who control all of Libya in the interests of all Libyans, as well as a concerted international effort to put the traffickers behind bars. We are working to accomplish those goals, so that these shocking slave markets can finally be consigned to the past. It also requires the human heart to be changed, so that people are no longer treated as “the other” and no longer can the wickedness of slavery live.
I remember speaking just a few years ago in the Wilberforce debates, as we discussed the passage of our anti-slavery legislation, and I realised even then, as we spoke to different audiences, that slavery was still going on. Indeed, it was reckoned at the time that there were more slaves in the world then than there had been in Wilberforce’s time. To be dealing with this issue today is especially distressing. African lives matter; all lives matter; and this House says so.
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