My Lords, this is another modest amendment to allow the Government to look at the Gangmasters Licensing Authority at an appropriate time to see whether the functions, powers and duties of the licensing authority should be extended to cover other areas, which are extremely obvious, where it is well known that there is quite a lot of slavery and trafficking.
Two particular areas that I have in mind are the construction industry and the hospitality industry. One area of the hospitality industry is the laundry. Almost every hotel uses outsourcing of its laundry. There are serious concerns as to what goes on in some of the laundries. There is no doubt at all that there are serious concerns about what goes on in the construction business, particularly with people working on sites.
A very obvious example of that was the Connors case in Bedfordshire, where a Gypsy family, the Connors, picked up out-of-work, homeless people from soup kitchens and homeless centres and took them, on the promise of £80 a day, to work on construction sites. These people were kept in appalling accommodation in caravans, first working on construction sites in England, and then a whole lot of them were taken across to Sweden where they were working in the northern part of the country. It was not until a young Swedish boy, who had also been caught like this, walked 500 miles to Stockholm and went to the police, who rushed to the area where these people were locked up—not being paid a single penny, in appalling conditions—that they were identified as slaves and victims, and they did not even know it. However, one of them gave evidence to the informal inquiry led by Frank Field MP, of which Sir John Randall MP and I were members at the request of the Home Secretary. This particular victim gave very clear evidence of what goes on in the construction industry.
I understand entirely the scarcity of resources, so I am not asking the Government to extend the powers of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Indeed, Paul Broadbent would be horrified unless he had proper resources to manage what would have to be a larger enterprise if these two areas were taken into account. What I do not want is there to be inability on the part of the Government, when they have the money to extend the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, not to find the proper legislative process to be able to do that. To put the matter in current usage, rather than faffing around looking for the right sort of place, if you have the power to do it, you do not have to do it until you can, but the power would be there so that you could do it in subsidiary legislation later. I hope that the Government will listen seriously to what I suggest. I beg to move.