My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 93, in my name, which adopts an approach similar to that of my noble friend’s Amendment 86P. I agree with what he said. We both agree that we should put the national referral mechanism on a statutory basis, as the Joint Committee recommended. I need to go over some of the same ground as he did, but there are also some other issues that I want to put into play in trying to convince the Government that a statutory basis is the right basis for the NRM.
Before I make my case, I should briefly explain why I am taking an approach different from that of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, in his Amendment 86M, which we discussed on Monday. I agree with him that Clause 48 is totally unsatisfactory, but I am not sure that it is right to put on the face of the Bill as much detail as there was in his amendment. That is why, in my amendment, I have gone for a set of regulation-making powers on given subjects.
My amendment is intended to give effect to the recommendation in the report by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill that the Bill should be amended,
“to give statutory authority for the NRM to ensure greater consistency in its operation, decision-making and provision of victim support services”.
Those are the critical reasons why this mechanism should be not an internal administrative system but one that has clearly been endorsed by Parliament. Our recommendation is clearly stated and set out in paragraph 82 of the Joint Committee’s report. My amendment would not hamstring the Home Office too much—I shall come back to that later.
Instead of laying out a lot of detail in the Bill, my amendment would enable the Home Secretary to make regulations in six key areas, and includes a provision for the inclusion of,
“such other matters as the Secretary of State considers appropriate to the new body”.
This approach to regulation making gives the Home Office plenty of discretion for adapting the scheme as circumstances require. It does not fix for all time the role or the precise remit of the NRM. If we put a clause of this nature into the Bill, there will be plenty of flexibility in the regulation-making approach,
The six key areas in my amendment are the very ones identified by the Home Secretary as the subject of the Review of the National Referral Mechanism for Victims of Human Trafficking, as summarised in paragraph 2.1.3 of the report. I have not gone for widening the NRM’s role in any way; my amendment covers the topics that the Home Secretary said the
review of the NRM had to cover. When Ministers set up that review, they knew that the Joint Committee would be recommending an NRM with a statutory basis. We came to that conclusion before we drafted the report and we informed the Home Office, so it did know that that was the road that we would traverse. There was plenty of opportunity for the Home Secretary to consider that issue in the context of the review. It is striking that, if we read the review fully, we find that it very much makes the case for putting the NRM on a statutory basis.
One point that I would draw attention to is in subsection (3) of my amendment, which gives effect to another Joint Committee recommendation, in paragraph 91 of its report, that,
“competent authority status be removed from UK Visas and Immigration”.
We saw a conflict of interest between determining immigration and asylum status and determining whether someone was a victim of trafficking. I will not detain the House with the evidence for that recommendation, but it is set out very clearly in paragraphs 84 to 90 of the Joint Committee report. The evidence and this amendment are absolutely consistent with the recommendations of the NRM review report at paragraphs 7.4.1 and 7.4.5. The amendment is drafted to be consistent with the findings of that review.
The Joint Committee heard a huge variety of evidence and arguments in favour of making the NRM a statutory-based mechanism, which were very much the same sets of arguments and evidence that was put before the review. We were told by Anti-Slavery International that the current arrangements,
“led to arbitrariness of application and access for victims”.
Others said that giving victims statutory rights would make claiming and enforcing those rights more straightforward and transparent. We were told that a statutory NRM was necessary for the UK to fulfil its international obligations as well as securing the most effective victim identification process.
Let me briefly illustrate the many concerns about a non-statutory NRM with the case of Ms O, who was a victim of trafficking, covered and cited in detail on page 61 of the Joint Committee report. Ms O was effectively kept in custody for nearly a year, despite the fact that people knew that she was a victim of trafficking. That is an appalling outcome for a person who was identified as a victim of trafficking, and that is what took place under a non-statutory-based NRM. All those issues are very clearly set out in the NRM review, which effectively makes the case, as I said earlier, for a statutory-based NRM.
I have spent much of the time in this Committee arguing for the Home Office Ministers and officials to get off the back of the anti-slavery commissioner and widen his remit. The NRM is a subject where the Home Secretary and her officials need to get more involved and design a statutory-based system that provides much more consistency and better identification and support for victims, has more credibility and speed of independent decision-making and is more fit to work alongside an Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. I want the Home Office to get more
involved, and I hope that in responding to the NRM review it will have a change of heart and commit to putting the NRM on a statutory basis.
I do not expect every “i” to be dotted and “t” to be crossed on this new system before Royal Assent but, before the Bill leaves this House, I hope that we can agree with the Minister the terms of a new clause that gives the Home Secretary regulation-making powers subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.
Finally, I have deliberately described in my new clause a “National Referral Mechanism replacement”. I do not regard the name, “national referral mechanism”, as particularly clear or helpful, and I would hope that we could find a better title, embracing words such as “slavery”, “victims” and “safeguarding”. How about the “Slavery Victims Safeguarding Authority”? Something along those lines would give a true indication of what this mechanism is actually all about. I support the amendment.