Chris Murray

I thank my hon. Friend for making that really important point. I remember reading about that case; it is one of the most horrific ones, but there are so many horrific cases of modern slavery. It is taking place on every high street in Britain, and we have to be completely vigilant about finding it everywhere. Today, I want to talk about the public policy response to this appalling crime. Obviously, it is a dramatic, wicked crime; we have the blandly named national referral mechanism as our tool, and to be honest, that tool is currently all but broken down. In the words of the Home Secretary when she came to the Home Affairs Committee before Christmas, the NRM “has become a bit stuck”. There are huge delays in victims getting a decision on the national referral mechanism. We heard evidence this week that the mean waiting time is 831 days. That is beyond unacceptable: it is systemic dysfunction. To be clear, that is not just a number; it has a real cost. The real-world implication of that number is re-trafficking. Women who are trafficked for sex and then come to the state for help end up back in the hands of their traffickers because of our delays. Children who are locked in houses and forced to farm cannabis in appalling conditions, who then manage to escape and come to us for help, end up back with their torturers because of our sheer incompetence. We should not be congratulating ourselves today on the passage of historic legislation; we should be hanging our heads in shame at what is happening on our watch. I hope that today, the Minister will set out a clear plan to clear the backlog, and will also recognise that doing so will not be some huge step of progress, but will just get us back to the baseline that we should be at. I draw the House’s attention to the child trafficking pilot that has been running for the past five years; I am so glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) referred to it. I should probably declare an interest, as I was involved in setting up its Scottish iteration, but it is worth our attention, because it has devolved decision making in the NRM to a panel of local stakeholders—people from social work and from education, the police, psychologists and others who know the child’s case—and empowers them to adjudicate whether that child is a victim of trafficking or not. It has been extremely successful, with decisions taken more quickly and with higher quality, because the people who know that child’s case are better placed to make a decision than an official in Whitehall. Before coming here, I worked on preventing human trafficking for five years. I know that the issue is complex and difficult, but I also encountered some of the most effective public servants I have ever seen in my time, such as the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance in Glasgow, led by Bronagh Andrew, which cares for women trafficked into Scotland for commercial sexual exploitation; and Joy Gillespie, who advocates for survivors of trafficking in Scotland. The most impressive programme I have seen in five years of anti-trafficking is this pilot in Glasgow. The Minister and I have corresponded on the pilot previously, and I strongly encourage the Government to look at rolling it out more broadly. I make two final points about the steps that the new Government are taking on modern slavery. First, on labour exploitation, the Employment Rights Bill—a landmark piece of legislation that I could not be prouder to support—scraps the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and establishes the Fair Work Agency, as many have said. That is all to the good, but the Fair Work Agency has a mammoth task enforcing the minimum wage and employment rights across the whole workforce. Are we sure it will have the focus and resource to tackle modern slavery, too? Will it have the right relationships with the police, because that will be critical to ensure enforcement? We must remember that this crime is everywhere and in every community. Moreover, when the FWA is up and running, the Home Office will lose sponsorship of the GLAA, and the responsibility will be subsumed into the Department for Business and Trade. Is that the right place for modern slavery responsibilities? From my experience, I remember the GLAA being significantly under-resourced. In order to inspect all of Scotland’s fisheries, agriculture and farming, it had only one inspector. That clearly was not enough. Will we have more now? What plans do the Government have in place to ensure that modern slavery is not deprioritised? Secondly, on the panoply of new developments that we have had as the new Government have hit the ground running, there have been some that I have been particularly pleased to see. Not only is there the new Fair Work Agency, but cuckooing will be made a specific offence; grooming will be an aggravating factor in child sex offender prosecutions; and a range of new measures will be introduced to halve violence against women and girls. I could not welcome those steps more, but is there a coherent strategy to ensure they are being fully deployed to tackle modern slavery? Are we marshalling the power of Government to target these new measures at the perpetrators of these crimes? When can we expect to see that robust modern slavery strategy? I ask that because this issue needs ministerial grip. Without clear ministerial direction, law enforcement cannot put resources into it. Without law enforcement prioritising the resources, there are no investigations. Without investigations, there is no justice. We should think of the woman who came to the British state and asked for help, only for our administrative incompetence to mean she is back in the hands of her traffickers, being pimped out to be raped multiple times every day. We have failed her once already. We need a strategy to ensure that we do not do so again. Will that modern slavery strategy take account of new developments in modern slavery in the last 10 years? I am pleased that the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and others mentioned the exploitation of visas in the care sector, but we are also seeing that with student visas, the EU settlement scheme and elsewhere. Will the new White Paper on legal migration be fully modern slavery-proofed so that we do not allow new routes to open up? I note that the Scottish Government have finally got around to refreshing their human trafficking strategy. I would argue that is a long overdue step, but it is also a good opportunity to ensure we get coherence across the whole UK. As we mark 10 years since the Modern Slavery Act was passed, it is clear we still have our work cut out for us. I, for one, am willing to work with anyone inside or outside this Chamber to get it done.