(Glasgow South West) (SNP):
...Is the Salvation
Army correct when it points out that detaining
trafficking victims as they arrive and then removing them will
simply deliver vulnerable people back into the hands of the
criminal gangs that exploited them in the first place, and that
that does nothing to break the cycle of exploitation but only
further fuels the profits of these criminal gangs?
The Minister for Immigration (): No, the hon.
Gentleman is wrong. The Illegal Migration Bill makes it clear
that we want to break the cycle of the human traffickers. We will
do that by carefully considering cases and returning those people
who can be returned to their home country, where it is safe to do
so. In cases such as Albania, we have worked closely with the
Government to put in place the procedures necessary to ensure
that those people are carefully looked after and not at risk of
re-trafficking. If that is not the case, they will be taken to a
safe third country such as Rwanda where, once again, their needs
will be looked after.
Mr Speaker: I call the shadow Minister.
(Birmingham, Yardley)
(Lab): Just to correct the Minister, it was not the hon.
Member for Glasgow South West () who made that criticism,
but the Salvation
Army which the Home Office employs as its main
contractor on trafficking.
I asked the Prime Minister this, and I got no answer, so I am
trying again. When I worked on a Home Office contract, I met many
women and children who had been brought here illegally to be
repeatedly raped as sex slaves. The Prime Minister tweeted that
such victims would be denied access to support from our modern
slavery system—a tweet that will be an absolute delight to
traffickers. How will we help to prevent a woman who is brought
here illegally from being repeatedly raped if she is denied
access to our modern slavery system?
: The hon. Lady and I
agree that we want to do everything we can to support the victims
of human trafficking, but we disagree on how we do that. She is
content for people to be brought across the channel in small
boats at the behest of human traffickers. We want to break that
cycle once and for all, and we believe that that is the fair and
the moral thing to do. Today, a majority of the cases being
considered for modern slavery are people who are coming into the
country—for example, on small boats. We are seeing flagrant
abuse, which is making it impossible for us to deal appropriately
with the genuine victims, to the point that 71% of foreign
national offenders in the detained estate, whom we are trying to
remove from the country, are claiming to be modern slaves. That
is wrong, and we are going to stop it.
