My Lords, we have Amendments 24 and 26 in this group, which have a very similar theme to that of the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey.
The recent report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham shocked a great many people, not least due to the extent of the abuse that had taken place. Approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period from 1997 through to 2013. Victims were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated. This was against a background in May this year of the case load of the specialist child sexual exploitation team being 51.
Many victims were unable to recognise that they had been groomed and exploited, and some blamed themselves for not just their own abuse but for what happened to other victims. Although there have been a small number of prosecutions for offences against individual children, many children refused to give
evidence or withdrew statements as a direct result of threats, intimidation and assaults against them or their families. We have had similar cases in Oxford and Rochdale that the authorities concerned did not appear to pick up, perhaps because of a lack of awareness of the offence of child exploitation. That is a reason for wanting to see the specific offence of child exploitation as well as the offence of child trafficking included in the Bill.
Around a third of all known victims of modern slavery in the United Kingdom are children and the number is growing, not least because they are being specifically targeted due to their age and vulnerability. Yet according to Crown Prosecution data, there have been no cases where the victim was a child at the time of the prosecution since the introduction of Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 on slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. The significance of this point is that the Section 71 offence appears to have been transposed into Clause 1 of the Modern Slavery Bill.
The Joint Committee on the Modern Slavery Bill recommended that an offence of child exploitation should be included in the Bill to make clear that child exploitation is even more serious than that of an adult and that consent elements can never be an issue for children. The Sexual Offences Act, for example, already accepts the principle of separate and more serious offences against those under 18. This Bill as it stands does not contain any explicit criminal offence of child exploitation. Our amendments make clear that children do not have the legal capacity to consent to any form of exploitation as recognised in international law and would increase the likelihood that many more of those who traffic, exploit and abuse children would be brought before the courts.
As has been said, children are also at a disadvantage when it comes to providing evidence since they do not usually understand that they have been trafficked or even understand what it means, let alone be aware of what kind of evidence is needed to pursue a prosecution in relation to being trafficked to a location or situation of exploitation. That will be particularly likely if parents or others close to the children concerned have been involved in the trafficking, with the result that while a child may be able to say what happened when they were exploited—through, for example, domestic servitude or prostitution—they are much less likely to be able to help in terms of the perpetrators of a trafficking offence.
It has already been said that since movement or travel is a key component of exploitation, the reality that children are often unable to explain who brought them to a particular house or location where they have been exploited—our amendments include examples of the many different forms of child exploitation—means that no prosecution happens.
Creating separate offences of child exploitation and child trafficking will help to overcome the significant and crucial problem in respect of children and help to achieve the objectives of the Bill, which are to reduce the incidence of modern slavery in its different forms and bring more perpetrators to justice. The separate offence of child trafficking will ensure that those involved in this equally awful activity can be brought to justice for this offence as well as for exploitation.
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