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Mrs. Butler: I entirely agree.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): This has been an interesting and important debate. The Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) gives us the opportunity to debate the issues of child labour, which were discussed in the previous Parliament only in Adjournment debates; I presented a private Member's Bill, but it was not debated. I should declare an interest: I am chair of the Stop Child Labour campaign in Britain, and my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Audrey Wise) is its vice-chair. The purpose of the campaign is to ensure that International Labour Organisation convention 138 is enacted into British law: we have made that clear in an amendment to early-day motion 712, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham.
Child labour is an appalling problem world wide. Millions of children throughout the world are denied any education because they are forced to work in rice fields or in factories that make training shoes or toys. Many children in Pakistan are slaves. We use the euphemism "bonded labour"; it is, in effect, child slavery. Child slavery and child sex slavery exist in many parts of the world.
The whole purpose of the international conventions is to protect children in the most dangerous and vulnerable situations. If we insist as a country, as we rightly do, that United Nations, International Labour Organisation, World Health Organisation and other conventions should be agreed or imposed world wide, the least we can do is ensure that all those conventions apply within the terms of British law. We should not ask for exemptions for ourselves when we condemn other countries that seek exemptions which mean that children are grossly exploited.
Once a huge number of children are employed in a disgraceful and dangerous situation, as they are in many parts of the world, the interests of the employers are not to ensure that those children are well paid, well regulated and protected, but to oppose education authorities and others who try to get those children to leave work and go to school. The struggle against child labour in the 19th century was often with neanderthal factory owners who opposed compulsory state education. One of the great events in labour movement history, the Burston school strike, was in part about the power of the farming community to drag children out of the classroom to take stones off fields.
It is horrible to say this, but there is still much exploitation of children in our society. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham pointed out that probably 2 million children work in this country. It is difficult to know exactly how many children are in work. Most are unregistered, unregulated or unvisited by social services, by education welfare officers or by anyone else. The danger and possibilities of serious child exploitation is ever present in our society.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) made a perfectly fair point about local authorities. They do not necessarily want a lot of child labour, but, if we ask an inner-London, inner-Birmingham or any other local authority to regulate and look into child labour, they say, "No chance." Social workers can barely keep pace with the number of statutory referrals that they have. Education welfare officers cannot deal even with the number of statemented pupils in our schools. It is not possible for those local authorities to go round to clothing factories in Hackney, Islington, Lambeth or Lewisham to find out whether children are working.
There is another side to it, which I suspect is the reason why some of the figures look progressively and refreshingly low in other European countries. They probably hide the problem. Throughout this continent, refugee and migrant children live twilight existences illegally. Often, they are the most grossly exploited people on earth because their parents have no redress in law or anything else; they lack any legal status.
Rightly, we all sign petitions demanding the end of child labour in other parts of the world. We recognise that the problem is far worse and the exploitation far greater in other parts of the world, but we should also be prepared to look behind factory doors here and consider the danger that many children in our society face.
The idea that child labour is necessarily safe is not something one should take lightly. Appalling accidents still happen on farms, with children working near or around farm machinery. Youngsters doing newspaper rounds are exposed to traffic dangers or worse. Carl Bridgewater was murdered while delivering newspapers to a farm, which shows the danger of children being out on their own. Unfortunately, we do not live in a particularly safe society.
There is an international campaign to protect children and to ensure that they go into education rather than to work at too young an age.
There have been worldwide campaigns against child labour, and an important tribunal in Mexico in 1996 drew attention to the problems of child labour and bonded labour. I should like to quote from ILO convention 138, which was framed in 1973--interestingly enough, the year in which the House last debated legislation on this subject. It builds on many of the conventions about the minimum age for employment in agriculture, clothing and other industries. Part of the convention states:
In July, my hon Friend the Member for Preston and I had a useful meeting with the Minister who will reply to the debate. We had a long discussion about the problems of child labour. The Minister was extremely helpful and we left that meeting in a positive frame of mind. We said that the exploitation of children is detrimental to their education. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Preston that a child who works for 12 hours a week is carrying a big burden on top of his normal schoolwork and homework.
High unemployment means that many children are able to get jobs because they are not covered by minimum wage legislation, which in any case applies only to agriculture. Many adults could be out of work, but children can be in work for up to 12 hours a week to supplement the family income. The pattern of child employment shows that children from poorer families tend to work more hours than those from wealthier families who can afford to pay for the things that children want and need.
I hope that the Minister understands and accepts the concerns about child labour that many of us have been expressing for a long time. We should ratify ILO convention 138 and frame legislation accordingly, to ensure that we are in line with international conventions.
The Bill contains serious problems, the first of which relates to the large number of hours that children are allowed to work. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston spoke about that. Secondly, the Bill does not state, presumably because the Government would not allow it to state, how its regulatory regime would be funded. I have tabled parliamentary questions on that subject, and have been told that there is no standard spending assessment specific budget heading for the monitoring of child employment by local authorities. Presumably, that is one of the reasons for local authorities not carrying out serious monitoring. That has been left to universities and to the organisers of campaigns.
I hope that, in the review, the Minister will recognise that although it is not necessarily wrong for a local authority to carry out any regulatory regime, it must be adequately funded to do so. The point made by my
hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) is crucial--Britain needs a children's commissioner. He or she could examine the dangers of exploitation of children, the problems of child employment and what goes with that, and the anomalies in existing legislation. We need someone who can speak up and influence Departments, legislation and public opinion on the question of the treatment of our children.
Children must have the opportunity to grow up happily, to learn safely, and to develop into society. When I go into cafes, restaurants, pizza bars or whatever--being a vegetarian, I do not go to burger bars--it saddens me to see young people looking rather tired at the end of work on a Saturday. We see youngsters going into school looking tired because they have already spent an hour or two delivering newspapers on the streets. It is not glamorous; indeed, much of it is dangerous. It is certainly detrimental to the children's education.
"Considering that the time has come to establish a general instrument on the subject, which would gradually reduce the existing ones applicable to limited economic sectors, with a view to achieving the total abolition of child labour, and
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Having determined that this instrument shall take the form of an international Convention, and adopted in 1973."
Article 1 of the convention is brief. It states:
Article 2.1 is also brief. It states:
"Each Member for which this Convention is in force undertakes to pursue a national policy designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour and to raise progressively the minimum age for admission to employment or work to a level consistent with the fullest physical and mental development of young persons."
"Each Member which ratifies this Convention shall specify, in a declaration appended to its ratification, a minimum age for admission to employment or work within its territory".
It is stated that that must be deposited with the ILO director-general. Article 2.3 states:
"The minimum age specified in . . . paragraph 1 of this Article shall be not less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and, in any case, shall be not less than 15 years."
If we have signed up to that international convention, we should ratify it and carry it into law. I was sorry to hear that the legal advice that was given to my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham shows that his Bill would prevent ratification of that ILO convention. I may be wrong about that, but it is important to look to the Government for legislation to ensure that the ILO convention is ratified.
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