Featherstone on 'enforced child criminality'

6.47.00pm GMT Thu 7th Feb 2008

Enforced Criminal Activity (Children) [Feb 6]: Anthony Steen (Totnes, Conservative): I am delighted that the Speaker has given me the opportunity to raise this matter at an opportune time.

. . . Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green, Liberal Democrat): Liberal Democrat Members are grateful for the opportunity to discuss this important issue, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing the debate.

There are two types of enforced child criminality. One involves the rare but incredibly shocking cases of children who are used by their parents or relatives to commit crimes. Such cases have been reported in the press recently. Clearly, they need to be dealt with completely differently from those of the thousands of children and young people who are trafficked into this country as part of what has rightly been termed modern-day slavery.

On the first issue, there are laws to deal with the despicable practice of parents exploiting their children and forcing them to commit crimes. Child protection procedures exist to ensure that children can be taken into care where such wilful neglect and abuse take place, and I would welcome the Minister's comments and assurances on that.

More pressing, perhaps, is the horrendous issue of massive child trafficking and the criminal activities that children are forced into. That is the issue at the heart of this debate, and I hope to press the Government on what they are doing to place the interests of trafficked children-the victims-first.

The Liberal Democrats have long pressed the Government to ratify the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, because we believe that we must stop the barbaric practice of child trafficking. As the hon. Member for Totnes so eloquently said, such action is fundamental to preventing enforced child criminality. The Home Secretary has announced that the Government will ratify the convention next January, but it will have therefore taken three and a half years to implement a framework that we urgently need to address trafficking.

We must also act to secure the legal status of trafficked children. Children who are rescued from the clutches of enforced criminality should not face legal battles about their status while their future is secured, whether they are looked after in this country while they wait to give evidence or returned to their home country.

Prevention and detection on entry are vital, but if they are the main focus of our approach, we might neglect another important focus-identifying the victims who are already in this country and working out what care and support they should receive after they have been rescued.

My constituency receives a considerable number of people seeking asylum, and I am in regular contact with the Home Office, making direct representations on behalf of constituents who are trapped at the mercy of the Border and Immigration Agency. Incompetence and delay mean that such people's lives are held in suspension as they wait for decisions, but those decisions are not being made-and that is just what happens in ordinary asylum cases. Regardless of the special training that is available, I shudder to think how this bureaucratic leviathan will deal with child victims of trafficking. Will it deal sensitively and appropriately with them? What is important is the victim-centred approach at the heart of the convention, and that is what must drive our response to enforced criminality among trafficked children.

The United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre co-ordinates the Government's law enforcement response to this serious issue, and the Liberal Democrats wholeheartedly support many of its objectives. Indeed, there is little doubt that we will need a multi-agency approach if we are to break the back of the trade in people. Such an approach must bring together the energies of the various organisations-not only state organisations-that can have an impact on the issue. However, I have found little evidence of a similar or equivalent co-ordinated effort to bring together non-law enforcement agencies that focus on victims' needs; indeed, that appears to be the missing link in the current strategy.

Law enforcement is the key part of our approach. In no way do I want to play down the necessity for appropriate law enforcement, but trafficked children are at the very edges of society and often far removed from the reach of the state. If the Government want to effect a positive change in a certain sector of society to tackle an issue, they normally have in place well established public servants, such as teachers, district nurses and social workers, to deliver that change. However, child victims of trafficking go out of their way to avoid contact with the agents of the state, whom they perceive as the enemy. A teenage prostitute is unlikely to go out of her way to reveal the full extent of her plight to a police officer, and such people will often disappear straight back to the trafficker, as has been said. They will have lived with the constant threat of violence and the repeated message that revealing details of their situation will lead to more violence, to retribution for themselves or their families and to certain repatriation.

If we are to reach victims, we must do more to spread the net wider and enlist the help and expertise of third-party organisations, such as non-governmental organisations, victim support groups and community-specific groups. They are the experts on the front line, and they are best placed to reach out to and engage with the victims of trafficking in a way that Government agencies simply cannot. I would welcome the Minister's comments on that and an assurance that everything is being done to engage with the wider community to deal with child trafficking.

I was shocked to hear that one study, which has been mentioned, has shown that 183 out of 330 trafficked children went missing from local authority care. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Totnes explaining why that had happened, but I am concerned to know what efforts the Government are making to find out from local authorities what actually went wrong.

Anthony Steen (Totnes, Conservative): They cannot do anything.

Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green, Liberal Democrat): The hon. Gentleman may say that, but that must be a defeatist attitude. Why did authorities find it so difficult to respond to the needs of such victims? When the hon. Gentleman pressed the Minister on the issue previously, the Government cited confidentiality as a reason why no further investigations were undertaken. Surely, however, nothing should prevent the Government from approaching local authorities and questioning them more generally about the problems of effectively helping the young victims of trafficking.

The borough of Haringey has been mentioned, and I was a councillor there for eight years. I was there at the time of Victoria Climbié's murder, and I am all too familiar with the series of mistakes, omissions and failings on the part of the local authority. There were about 17 such mistakes, and if someone had intervened just once, that terrible, tragic outcome would have been prevented. If we are to avoid such tragedies, it is vital that we learn from local authorities' failings, and I hope that the Government are willing to learn from the experience local authorities, which deal with the issue at the coal face How can victim support models be developed without close engagement with local authorities, thus enabling us to learn from front-line services?

I have only two minutes left, so I turn now to the crucial issue of funding, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Totnes. Projects that are funded specifically to help victims are few and far between, and funding is often guaranteed only for a short period where it does exist. That shows a lack of commitment to the important and ongoing work that such projects do, and I urge the Government to take a longer, strategic view of funding, not a piecemeal approach. In their marathon deliberations on the implementation of the convention, I hope that officials will get around to securing medium to long-term funding structures for such specialised organisations, because the problem cannot be solved with short-term funding that lasts only a couple of years. To build up the expertise and allow best practice to spread, projects of that kind must be given better financial security.

We can have as many action plans, cross-Government official project boards and ministerial groups as we like, but with each day of delay in implementing the key aspects of the convention, children continue to suffer. If the Government can move swiftly to get the Lisbon treaty into domestic law, they can shift a bit on the convention. [http://tinyurl.com/yskn2y]