Contribution
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing that to my attention; I am very interested to hear about it. I am pleased to report that the overwhelming majority of takeaways in my constituency remain physical premises that also operate as restaurants, but I am aware that that is not necessarily the case in the whole of my local authority area, and certainly not across the whole country.
I was shocked when I found out about the large number of children, especially boys, who are being referred, and about what is happening. Often, older gang members find vulnerable young boys, some as young as 10 or 11, and ask them to “look after” some drugs for them for a little bit—“Could you just hold them for me, very briefly?” Those gang members will then arrange for those boys to be viciously beaten up. Those boys will then be told that they have lost the drugs and now owe the gang members a whole load of money, and they will be put to work as county lines drug dealers from an incredibly young age. It is an absolutely horrific means of exploiting young boys, particularly vulnerable children, and we need to be as aware of it as we are of the way in which grooming gangs operate around girls.
I will move on to how this issue particularly affects women and girls. I will say one thing: I really, really wish that men—it is predominantly men—would stop using prostitutes. Could they just stop? The number of women being brought to the UK under false pretences and believing that they will do a different form of work, then being put to sex work against their will, kept in physically confined situations that they are not allowed to leave and having their passport taken away from them is really significant. The other thing that happens is that some women come here knowing that that might be an element of their work. If they then complain about it or want to stop, they are told that their children back home will be harmed if they do, so they are unable to go to the police when they are being systematically raped. I say to men: please, please stop using prostitutes.
I know that Cheshire police are taking all these issues very seriously and doing their best, but the best way to stop us having a market for criminal activity is for people to stop buying criminally traded goods, whether that is vapes, tobacco, drugs or women.
The final element of human trafficking I will talk about is in the care sector. Many people in the Chamber have heard me talk about this topic before, so I do not want to labour it, but the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority licensing scheme does not extend to the care sector, so agencies and sponsors are seizing opportunities to exploit other people for their own financial gain. A lot of people in my community receive care paid for either by the local authority, and therefore by the taxpayer ultimately, or with people’s life savings. They would be absolutely horrified if they realised the number of people doing that work who had been trafficked here in the first place.
Other hon. Members have mentioned the various organisations working in this area, one of which is Unseen, which talks about regularly speaking on its helpline to members of the care profession who have paid somewhere between £11,000 and £30,000 to get here, when they should not be paying anything other than their own travel expenses. Some 4% of victims have been threatened with either direct personal harm or harm to their family members. Actual, physical harm was reported in 2% of the cases that came to that helpline. Nearly half of victims described confinement or restricted movement.
The list of things that have gone on is genuinely, absolutely horrendous. I suggest that when the Fair Work Agency takes over the GLAA’s responsibilities, we ensure that licensing is brought into this sector or otherwise look at how the visa regime can be changed, so that people can transfer between employers, and how we can generally stamp out the level of exploitation in the care sector.
I thank everyone who has participated in this debate. I know there is a lot of strong feeling across the House that we can and should do a lot better for vulnerable people in this country.