30^th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities – 22 to 24 March 2016

Debate on “Fighting human trafficking: the role of local authorities”

Speech by Anthony Steen, Chairman of the “Human Trafficking Foundation”,

Check against delivery

1. Human trafficking or modern day slavery, as it should be known, ought to be an issue recognised by us all. It isn’t. We consume products and services but never question their provenance or the human cost of production. That is why people like Michael and John end up so easily as slaves.

2. Their route into slavery was the same. Both vulnerable, both lured by false promises. Michael a Polish migrant trafficked to the UK by a British employment agency. His entry was totally legal. While John was born a UK citizen, becoming homeless through poverty and alcohol.

Both were tricked into accepting appalling work conditions and held by coercion and violence. Michael worked at a bakery in Luton, supplying local businesses including the airport. John ended up in a meat processing plant which through a web of companies supplied a leading supermarket. They both slept on filthy bare floors, had insufficient food and both their passports were confiscated. 

3. John never received wages. Michael’s were illegally docked on the pretext that these would cover his food, transport and accommodation but which resulted in increasing his bondage to his trafficker. Similar stories are replicated all over the world. Not just vulnerable men, but vulnerable women as well, tricked into believing they were being recruited for a job working in a hotel but ending up in a brothel. A child sold by parents, tricked into believing he would be educated rather than learning the tricks of the trade as a pick-pocketer, shoplifter or an ATM thief. 

4. The recruitment process can take place anywhere. EU nationals and others from around the world may enter Britain legally, but are controlled and exploited after they are through passport control. Others come by tortuous routes, often via diaspora communities in third countries. Increasingly the internet is used to promote what appear attractive job opportunities.

So why is slavery thriving? Why are there twice as many people in bondage today as were taken in chains in the entire 200 years of the African slave trade? Two reasons: 1) there’s a massive pull factor for the thousands of vulnerable, deprived and poorly educated people desperate for a better life, and 2) growing demand from the inhabitants of well-healed countries for more services and a cheaper workforce. The catalysts are sophisticated people traffickers who trade in human beings as commodities. Traffickers gain huge rewards for a minimal risk of detection. Trafficking is now the second largest criminal activity in the world, netting an estimated $180 billion per annum.

5. Slavery is on the increase. The UK government estimates the figure in Britain is up between 10,000 to 13,000 people per annum, 1,000 of whom are children. The European Commission estimating 150,000 victims a year throughout the EU. The UN estimates 25 million slaves worldwide, a global problem now made larger the result of instability in the Middle East and North African countries.

6. There are certain industrial hotspots. In the UK slaves can be found in agriculture primarily in the fields of eastern England, in manufacturing industry like chicken processing plants or cheap bed manufacturers, and the most menial jobs in the catering and hospitality industry. Some countries, like Sweden, tried to intervene for example by criminalising the purchase of sex. However, you need a well-resourced and motivated police force to do this effectively as victims are driven further underground. When I represented a rural constituency in Parliament heat detection resulted in a large number of cannabis farms being found in houses in terraced streets these were cultivated by trafficked Vietnamese boys imprisoned inside.  Around 7,00 cannabis farms were found in UK last year.

7. What can be done? Well thanks initially to the Council of Europe in its 2008 Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings we saw the first prism of light at the end of a very long dark tunnel. A few years earlier, I established the APPG in the Houses of Parliament and through a Private Members Bill in 2010 introduced an Act of Parliament now on the statute book marking 18^th October each year as Anti-Slavery Day which has helped raise awareness. Then the European Union published its own Directive on human trafficking in 2011.

Unfortunately unlike the Council of Europe, the European Commission has no equivalent to GRETA, which provides essential follow-up ensuring that countries within the Council implement provisions of the Convention. Their work has proved invaluable. The Commission works in different ways, concentrating on awareness raising through conferences, seminars, discussions, meetings, and roundtables. Since these events often involve the same people meeting each other the results are difficult to evaluate. Nor should the public sector feel that they can solve the problem on their own, they can’t, but they can take a lead.

8. Traffickers and victims don’t attract much attention from local or national politicians, there are few votes to be had and victims don’t vote anyway. Even when trafficking is part of an online training module, as it is for UK police or health service workers, few necessarily recognise the signs of exploitation when they see it in the streets or in health centres perhaps due to a common but erroneous belief that slavery and immigration are one in the same things. Our Modern Slavery Act puts responsibility on local authorities to notify the Home Office of the existence of victims but owing to the difficulties in identifying them the provision may have little impact. As for prosecuting traffickers, that is viewed as the remit of the police. Convicting traffickers is extremely difficult owing to the highly sophisticated nature of many trafficking gangs which are often well-resourced. Many victims remain fearful of their traffickers and are reluctant to appear as a witness against them in court, fearful of what might become of their families back home. Furthermore, police forces tend to see their priorities in tackling terrorism rather than trafficking, although Israel puts them as equal priorities with interesting results.

The Italian police have been pretty good at impounding traffickers’ yachts, private aircraft, and finding cash in Swiss bank accounts. Matters are made considerably more difficult by the absence of reliable data throughout Europe with the possible exception of Portugal whose Observatory produces relevant data maps highlighting all the local authority regions where victims and traffickers have been found in their country.

Our UK Government has done more than previous administrations and ae are fortunate to have a Home Secretary, T May, dedicated to driving slavery out of Britain. 

9. This is a ten minute snapshot. To augment this, I’m leaving behind 20 copies of the exhibition booklet we mounted in the House of Commons 5 years ago, opened by the Prime Minister. It is still as relevant as it was then. It focuses on the hidden nature of modern day slavery. I’m also leaving you 100 of my foundation’s business cards.

The Foundation would like to exchange experience and information with individual authorities in the Council of Europe, exploring ways we might effectively work together. The Parliamentary group of Members of Parliament at Westminster has done just that by establishing a network of Parliamentarians in a number of EU member state parliaments. I’m therefore delighted to see Mr Robert Biedron from Poland who is part of the Polish Parliamentary network with the former Homeland Minister Robert Kalish. There are parliamentary groups in Portugal, Spain, Romania, Finland, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Lithuania, just to mention a few. We would be delighted to establish links with other public authorities, not just in parliament. None of us can tackle these problems on our own and traffickers aren’t too concerned about borders.

Remember this is not solely a problem of our cities, but is found in the countryside and in seaside towns. It is in fact everywhere.