UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 318-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Tuesday 5 February 2008

MS KLARA SKRIVANKOVA

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 49

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 5 February 2008

Members present

Keith Vaz, in the Chair

Ms Karen Buck

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Ann Cryer

David T C Davies

Mrs Janet Dean

Patrick Mercer

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr Gary Streeter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Memorandum submitted by Anti-Slavery International

Witness: Ms Klara Skrivankova, Anti-Slavery International, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Can I formally begin our new inquiry into human trafficking and welcome Klara Skrivankova from the UK Human Trafficking Centre Prevention sub-Group. Thank you for giving evidence on this very first session of the Select Committee. We have obviously read a lot about human trafficking but one of the problems we have is to try and find out the sheer scale of it, the numbers involved both in terms of people coming here as forced labour and also within the sex industry as a whole. Are we getting any clearer picture as to the numbers of people involved in human trafficking?

Ms Skrivankova: The truth is, as you have already mentioned, nobody really knows the whole extent of trafficking, and there are several reasons why this is happening. One of the reasons of course is that trafficking happens underground and is an illicit crime, and the information that we have is only from those that come forward or from those cases that come to the attention of the authorities or of the NGOs. We suspect that it is not more than 10 to 15% of the cases of the whole scale, so that is quite a low number. What is important to mention is that the problem is connected to the lack of identification. There are very few people who are actually identified as being trafficked and Anti-Slavery International, the organisation I come from, has carried out a research recently into trafficking for forced labour and in the course of the research, which was focusing on the qualitative side, we have managed to discover over two dozen cases of people who were trafficked for forced labour in the UK. However, none of these cases were identified as a case of trafficking by the agencies that initially recorded them, and that is quite a significant issue. Already from the anecdotal evidence that we have and that some other organisations have we can conclude that we have a significant problem, but we have to focus on more identification and a proper identification mechanism to be able to assess the scale.

Q2 Chairman: Do we have numbers, for example, for the UK? Would you know how many people are currently in the UK who have been trafficked here?

Ms Skrivankova: There are some minimum estimates and they are very conservative estimates from the government. You will be aware of the number of 4000 women that are trafficked at any given time into the UK, which is the government estimate and is a very conservative estimate.

Q3 Chairman: When you say "at any given time" at the moment you estimate - and we know that these are going to be estimates - you estimate that it is about 4000?

Ms Skrivankova: That is the government estimate and that is only on women trafficked for sexual exploitation. So what is important to point out is that this number does not include people who are trafficked for labour exploitation.

Q4 Chairman: Do you have a rough figure as to how many those are?

Ms Skrivankova: The only number on people who are trafficked for labour exploitation that we currently have comes from the statistics of an organisation called Kalyaan, and they provide assistance to migrant domestics that were in forced labour or were trafficked. According to their data they have recorded within a year that over 300 people were trafficked in London - only in London - for the purposes of domestic work. So that is quite a high number over a short period of time.

Q5 Chairman: So roughly 300 for domestic workers and roughly 4000 - and you are saying it is a conservative estimate ---

Ms Skrivankova: That is a very conservative estimate.

Q6 Chairman: ... of women in the UK at the present time who are here in the sex industry?

Ms Skrivankova: The sex industry and domestic work; the number does not include any other forms of labour exploitation. We have discovered people who are trafficked into construction, processing, packaging and into agriculture and in the catering industry. We now have information about people who are trafficked for committing illicit activities and we do not know that number.

Q7 Chairman: But it is more than 5000?

Ms Skrivankova: I would say so, yes. We have enough information to conclude that it is a significant problem, that it is in thousands. If you look at the number of cases that were recovered in the recent police operation, Pentameter, that ran over a period of, I believe, four to six months, within that they have just in a small area recovered over 80 cases, and that was over a short period of time of a focused action.

Q8 Chairman: We will come on later specifically to employment of children but on statistics now - and just on statistics - do we have any statistics of the number of children who have been trafficked into this country?

Ms Skrivankova: According to the research of ECPAT - and that was confirmed by the government - the suspicion is that there are several hundred children that may have been trafficked into the UK. One of the numbers talk about 300; the more recent research suggests that at any given time there might be at minimum about 600 children within the asylum system or that have gone through the asylum system and have gone missing from care that may have been trafficked. So we are talking about hundreds of children. Just for your information, the research was carried out just in several regions of the UK; so we have rough information about several regions. So we are talking again about hundreds of children.

Chairman: We will come on to the regions now with Mr Patrick Mercer.

Q9 Patrick Mercer: Do you think that the victims of trafficking are spread evenly - if that is the right phrase - throughout the United Kingdom, or are there clear regional differences in as and where they might be?

Ms Skrivankova: What we can say for sure is that no region is immune against trafficking. There have been cases of trafficking recorded all through the UK. What we have to look into is what we can describe as the risk areas, at the industries that we know and where we have discovered cases of trafficking. Very often it will be industries where migrant workers are employed, where cheap labour is employed, where temporary labour is employed; so, for example, those regions where there is a high concentration of agriculture there have been cases recorded of people trafficked for the purpose of agriculture. Again, there are clear regions that focus on shellfish gathering, on fishing industries; there have been cases of those as well. There are of course areas where we know of sexual exploitation. There are regions and boroughs, for example in London, where we know that people employ migrant domestic workers and there are cases of abuses recorded. So what we know for sure is that all regions are affected; and importantly, if we are implementing some measures, we have to focus on measures that are implemented across the regions. For example, that all the police within all the constabularies are following the same guidance in terms of identification; that there is a clear system in place where a person who suspects somebody might have been trafficked refers them to a competent authority that is composed of a multi-agency group that can identify and refer the case to proper assistance and that protection can be afforded to the victims as well as the police being able to pursue a prosecution. So it is very important to focus on the issue in all the regions.

Q10 Chairman: You said to Mr Mercer "all the regions" - every town and city in Britain?

Ms Skrivankova: Of course we do not have research about that but the evidence we have suggests that there is not really immunity against trafficking. There might not be trafficking happening in every town and region but people might be trafficked through that town; people might be trafficked from one place to another and, as I said, if there is an indication of the industries then those regions where trafficking for labour exploitation as well as sexual exploitation was previously found then we have indicators of possible trafficking happening.

Q11 Martin Salter: Keeping along the lines of the current regional and national trends, do you have any information that you can share with us about whether or not traffickers from specific countries or specific areas of the world tend to specialise in specific criminal activity or specific purposes for trafficking people? We heard earlier from a Parliamentary expert in this that the Roma community in particular are desperately vulnerable to be trafficked into the sex trade. We all saw the horrible consequences of the Chinese cockle pickers being effectively trafficked for false labour. I have heard lots of stories myself about how many people are trafficked into Chinese restaurants, in particular in London and the south of England. Can you share any of your hard facts with us or your experiences with us in that regard?

Ms Skrivankova: You are absolutely correct in concluding that there are certain areas or industries that tend to have certain nationalities. From the research we have carried out we have found, for example, that the majority of people who are trafficked for agriculture come from Central and Eastern Europe. A lot of people who are trafficked in the catering industry would be coming from south Asia or south-east Asia. A lot of people that are trafficked for the purposes of cleaning would be coming from South America. Women that are trafficked for sexual exploitation, at the moment there is a mixture between women who are trafficked from the countries of Eastern Europe, women trafficked from particular countries in Africa and women trafficked from Asia, in particular China and Thailand. I think the information that we have about the profile of the nationalities shows us that actually there is not a typical victim of trafficking, that people are trafficked to the UK from all parts of the world and the trends are changing. That is something on which we need to focus in the measures that we are putting into place, to look at what is happening in the UK, why the people are so vulnerable to being trafficked and when they manage to escape from the situation of trafficking what needs to be done in order to protect them from being re-trafficked. It is to address the underlying factor, which is their vulnerability that is very often connected to the threats, to the violence and, more importantly, to their status in the country, as well as look at the situation in the countries of origin, why the people are forced to migrate, why the people are forced to solve their situation connected to poverty and lack of opportunities by migrating somewhere for labour; and why are they not able to do it in a safe way, why are there people taking advantage of that situation and forcing them into exploitative conditions.

Q12 Martin Salter: Looking around Europe in particular, what would you say are the top countries of choice? Where is the destination most favoured by the traffickers? Is it Britain, is it Italy, is it Spain?

Ms Skrivankova: I think Western Europe as a whole is the place and more increasingly also Central Europe, but what we have to bear in mind is that people are very often trafficked to different countries. So somebody might be trafficked to the UK for a couple of months and then moved to Ireland or moved to Italy, to Spain, which is one of the ways in which the traffickers control the people, by moving them more often, by preventing them from maybe learning about their rights and getting to know their environment and escape. So that is something we need to bear in mind, that whatever measures we put in place here in the UK we have to see what is the context in Europe and what the implications will be on the whole scale of trafficking.

Q13 Martin Salter: But you would not say that Britain is a more preferred destination than France or Italy or any other relatively prosperous European country?

Ms Skrivankova: I would say it is comparably popular. I think all the countries where there is a need for migrant labour are the countries that are going to be targeted by traffickers, unless there are channels for safe, legal labour migration.

Q14 Chairman: Taking Mr Salter's question in an opposite way, is Moldova still the top as far as people coming from Moldova? We have had a statistic that a third of the population of Moldova has now left Moldova; is that a correct statistic?

Ms Skrivankova: It is a correct statistic and it is an indication of the vulnerability; it is an indication of why people migrate; it is an indication that there are no opportunities and no possibility to support themselves. Moldova is not at the moment, according to the information I have, the top country of origin for the UK.

Q15 Chairman: Which is?

Ms Skrivankova: At the moment in terms of sexual exploitation we are looking at people from Lithuania, Nigeria, China and Thailand. For labour exploitation and for illicit activities it is Vietnam. If you look at the profile of women that are trafficked for domestic labour we see a lot of women from the Philippines, from India, from Sri Lanka; and we see a high number of the new EU nationals trafficked to the UK from Poland and Lithuania, which is one of the examples I have already given.

Q16 Bob Russell: On the trafficking in the sex industry, if I can use that term, it is all down to supply and demand. What is your view on the large number of local newspapers, regional newspapers that carry advertisements for so-called massage parlours? Is this feeding the frenzy of the sex trade and the trafficking of women?

Ms Skrivankova: I think you would be aware that there are various different approaches to regulating or criminalising the use of sexual services. What we know is that from countries that have decided to go the either/or way there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that one way or another would influence trafficking. What is important to say is that trafficking does not equal prostitution and there is a potential danger in creating this equation; it is a more complex issue that, as you say, is connected to the situation in the country of destination as well as to the situation in the country of origin. There is a lot of coercion going on; people are put under threat, people are exploited, there is violence involved for those who are traffic, and they are at danger before and they are at danger after. There are causes and consequences of trafficking and that is one thing that needs to be borne in mind when we talk about the sex industry as a whole, and there is no conclusive evidence based on research that would suggest that the existence of the sex industry would be the main reason why trafficking exists because trafficking exists in other industries as well. So it is really looking at the protection and the rights aspect of the issue that unveils what are the underlying problems that are connected to poverty, lack of opportunity and people being forced into survival strategies that they would not choose if they had opportunities.

Q17 Bob Russell: I recognise all those points you are making but, in a provincial town, unless there were two or three columns of these adverts in the local newspaper how would potential customers know about them? In other words, the demand is being created and therefore people are required to fulfil that demand created by the advertisements. That is what the advertising industry is all about; that is why firms advertise their wears, and here we are advertising the sex trade.

Ms Skrivankova: As I said, if you wish to tackle that sort of demand there are things that need to be borne in mind that could be created by putting in place certain arrangements. There are dangers of things going more underground, of the problem being displaced and also of putting people at more risk by, for example, criminalising punters who present a certain percentage of those who actually help out the women. But if you imagine a situation where you have a trafficker that can be potentially criminally liable as well as the punter and the victim of trafficking then there are two sides that can potentially put the person in danger, whereas in a situation where the punter is not criminally liable the victim might have a resort how to get out. There are statistics from the police as well as from the POPPY Project that suggest that loads of intelligence would come from that.

Q18 David Davies: A sensitive matter but you will probably be aware that one police force in the Midlands area has launched an investigation into what they call internal trafficking, that is the trafficking of - if I can say it - white indigenous British girls for sexual purposes. Are you aware of that and is that a major problem?

Ms Skrivankova: I am aware of that investigation being made. I do not have much more information about that. The important thing I want to point out is that when we talk about internal trafficking by definition internal trafficking means trafficking of anybody within the UK, and we have evidence of people who came to the UK from other countries legally and then became victims of trafficking within the UK, very often trafficked from London to Scotland, and this particular case I have in mind was a man who was trafficked into the fishing industry. So I think again if we start talking about internal trafficking we should be looking at the whole scope. I know of countries, for example the Netherlands, they started an inquiry into internal trafficking and once they had started it they found that it is quite a significant percentage of people trafficked within the country.

Q19 Mr Clappison: Going back a moment to the list of countries which you read out to us, most of those are outside the European Union and many, if not all of them, are subject to what we were led to believe was a strict visa control, one of them being Nigeria which we visited as a Committee. Can you give us some indication as to how people are getting around the visa controls because people are only supposed to get permission to come and work in this country if they are skilled or semi-skilled or if they are coming here as students, otherwise there is supposed to be a very strict visa control. What is going wrong?

Ms Skrivankova: If you look at the information that we have gathered in our research, as well as the information, for example, from the Operation Pentameter, the trend suggests that the majority of people who are trafficked to the UK, both from the countries of the EU as well as from the countries outside of the EU, came to the country legally and very often were made illegal by the traffickers. It is a very commonly used method of coercion to take the passport away, to replace the passport with a fraudulent document, which actually shifts the liability to the victim, or prevent the people from extending their visa and at that point starting to exploit them. One of the most commonly used methods of coercion is indeed retention of documents or replacing them with fraudulent documents, or preventing them from extending the visa.

Q20 Mr Clappison: A labourer from China or Vietnam that you mentioned, or a girl from Nigeria, how are they actually getting into the country? On what basis are they getting permission to come here?

Ms Skrivankova: Many of them would be coming on regular work visas but one of the things that is worth noting is that work visas are very often tied to one concrete employment or employer, which puts a very high power into the hands of the employer. What we have witnessed is that people threatened the victims saying, "If you complain, if you run away you will be illegal and I will get you deported," and there are instances of workers who tried to complain about working conditions, they were forced to overstay their visas and the employer calling in the immigration services and the people were subsequently deported. There is an example of how the system can be improved and it is the system that is currently in place for the migrant domestic workers, that was put in place in 1998 as a result of evidence of abuse. Under the current rules the migrant domestic workers come in on a renewable visa with the family. If abused they can change employment within the same sector; they can find another employer, and thereby they are protected when they come forward. The regulation is very clear, the regulation stays with the government, the visa is given for a purpose and it is given only in a certain category; they can renew the visa only when they are in full employment. At the moment they have no recourse to public funds. And at the moment there is a proposal on the table to reverse that and to put migrant workers in a situation that would de facto condone trafficking exploitation when there is no reason for it. And evidence also from other sectors shows that if the people had a chance to change employment within the same sector they are protected against abuse because the fact that the employers effectively hold the visas of their employees puts a very significant amount of power in them.

Mr Clappison: Could you write to us with any evidence you have on the subject?

Chairman: That would be very helpful. I do not want to stop what you are saying, Ms Skrivankova, it is just that we have a lot of questions to ask of you. Janet Dean is going to ask about the employment of children.

Q21 Mrs Dean: Obviously the media recently has focused on children being brought into the UK to work as criminals, whether that is tending cannabis factories or acting as pickpockets. Could you give us some information about the children? Where are most children trafficked into the UK employed? I would also be interested to know which countries mainly children come from into the UK and how many of them, for instance, come with their parents or come alone, and on what basis do they come here?

Ms Skrivankova: You have already mentioned the issue of children being trafficked for the purposes of committing illicit activities and it is one of the problems and one of the trends we have been facing in the UK. At the moment unfortunately we still see those children being treated as criminals rather than as victims of trafficking. There are instances of children that were put in detention centres and indeed convicted in connection with illegal cannabis factories as opposed to being treated as children, as victims of trafficking and afforded protection. So there seem to be a number of children coming from Vietnam, according to the information of the organisation called ECPAT as well as the social services. There seems to be over the past six months an increasing number of Vietnamese children coming to the UK. Some of the children would be coming as a part of the family, some of the children would be coming as unaccompanied asylum seeking children; and that is an important aspect to point out, that the children very often go missing from care and you will have a lot of submissions I believe from the children's agencies on that. There is a failure in identification of the children and there is a failure in providing an institute of guardian that will be assigned to each child identified potentially at risk of being trafficked to ensure that this child is placed into proper care, and that the best interests of the child are addressed. What is important to point out is really again the issue of vulnerability because many of the children coming to the UK have been previously abused and exploited in their home countries, or they were living in a family where the adults of the family had no parental responsibility over them, and that is problematic. There are other issues that are connected to that but I do not want to go into much detail on that because I do not have that much information.

Q22 Mrs Dean: Do you have any information that would help the Committee to look at what percentage came with parents, without parents, as to whether they came seeking asylum or whether they came to work?

Ms Skrivankova: I am afraid I do not have that information, but I am sure an organisation called ECPAT has much more thorough information specifically on children.

Q23 Ms Buck: Just on that point, do you actually liaise with the Association of Directors of Social Services and know from social services how many children are with families or particularly unaccompanied asylum seeking children are in each borough? And are they saying, as you are, that there has been this change in the country or origin of children, because they would presumably know if there are, for example, Vietnamese children arriving in the country without parents?

Ms Skrivankova: Yes, according to the information that ECPAT has received from the social services there is an increasing number of Vietnamese and Romanian children as well. The problem we have at the moment is that the UK has a reservation on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child that basically prevents children that are non-British nationals from getting a complex way of protection, and I think that is very problematic and is one of the ways in which children are still vulnerable when they escape from the situation of trafficking or when they come to the UK and are at risk of being trafficked.

Ms Buck: Can I ask have we actually had representations from the Directors of Social Services?

Chairman: We will be asking them to give evidence to us; we will certainly be doing that. Can I bring in David Winnick?

Q24 Mr Winnick: How far are we able to distinguish between adults who are badly treated by their employers, paid less than the minimum wage and treated generally with contempt, and actually forced labour? Is there a distinction there to be drawn?

Ms Skrivankova: That is a very important point you have raised. Sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish what do we mean by bad conditions and where the line is to forced labour. What is important is to look at the situation of exploitation as the indication and as the important element, to look at the indicators of forced labour which are available, which have been created by the international labour organisation, and those indicators are exactly those indicators that are also indicators of trafficking, such as removal of documents, confinement, violence, threat of violence, threat of denunciation to the authorities. So if these indicators are present there is an indication that trafficking might be happening, and this situation should prompt an investigation. However, at the moment the situation of exploitation is not taken as the decisive part of an identification situation. Very often you would see that immigration patrol is the part that is being the control and because of the contradictions between the policies - the immigration policy, trying to meet the deportation target and the trafficking policy that is actually trying to tackle traffickers - there is a contradiction and, as you said, it is very difficult to find out a situation of exploitation, and those who are charged with the identification process will have to be aware of the indications and will have to know that the people who are trafficked are unlikely to self-identify as a result of the coercion. So what we need to have is a shift in the focus and start looking at the situation of exploitation first, and secondly asking how do these people arrive at a situation of exploitation?

Q25 Mr Winnick: There is general concern - and some cases have come to light - where people have been used as domestic servants. Saudi Arabia, rightly or wrongly tends to be mentioned - not necessarily connected to the Embassy but very rich Saudis in Britain - although I am sure there are other nationalities, who have domestic servants who are almost slave labour. Is that a widespread problem, the use of domestic servants in that way?

Ms Skrivankova: Yes, some of the situations of the migrant domestic workers are really situations of slavery. From the information we have from Kalyaan over 68% of those who were referred to Kalyaan were subject to some sort of psychological abuse; over one-quarter have suffered physical violence that goes from hitting, burning with an iron, spitting on the people, encouraging children to abuse domestic workers; over one-third had their documents removed and more than half of the workers were confined to the workplace. So we see it as a situation that is very serious and, quite rightly, it is a situation of slavery. But, again, I have to reiterate that at the moment there is a chance for these people to get out of the situation and be employed by somebody who is not going to abuse them.

Q26 Mr Winnick: Is it fair to point the finger more at the Saudis in Britain or other nationalities who come to Britain, very rich characters who are unfortunately allowed to live here, who treat their domestic servants in this way?

Ms Skrivankova: I would not have the information about the particular countries. We know that there are some families coming from the Middle East that would bring domestic servants, but not exclusively those.

Q27 Mr Winnick: It is always unfortunate that we allow these rich characters to be in Britain in the first place. Can the police help in any way? Are they helpful in the sense of making inquiries and helping the victims?

Ms Skrivankova: In the particular case of domestic workers there are some London boroughs that have excellent experience in dealing with domestic workers and that could, for example, go into the employer's house to recover the passport of the domestic worker and assist. Unfortunately what we have not seen yet is a prosecution of that particular employer for trafficking for labour exploitation.

Q28 Mr Winnick: There has been no prosecution?

Ms Skrivankova: There has been no prosecution under the law that criminalises trafficking for labour exploitation since its introduction now four years ago. That is very problematic and I think it comes down again to the lack of identification, as well as to the lack of incentives for the people to come forward and complain because at the moment there is no system of protection and assistance available to those who are trafficked for exploitation. So if a person decides to go and complain about being exploited the person is first of all not going to have a chance to get shelter; they are very likely to be deported because some of them would have illegal status or would not be able to prove their identity or to prove their status. So the implication is - and that is one of the things you might want to ask the government - if they are going to introduce a pilot scheme similar to the POPPY Project that exists for women who are sexually exploited for those who are trafficked for exploitation to afford all the rights that the people will be granted under the Council of Europe Convention that the UK will ratify this year, and that also those who are trafficked for labour exploitation can enjoy those rights, which of course contributes then to the prosecution of the traffickers because, as we know, without people providing information it is very difficult to bring a trafficker to justice.

Q29 Ms Buck: Staying with that same point for the moment, I work very closely with Kalyaan, which is based in my constituency, and for a number of years when the domestic workers' concession was first being developed. What I would like to know is your view - and I think that domestic workers are at the very particular sharp end of the problem because they are almost by definition isolated. Kalyaan has over the years been able to be very effective because a word of mouth network can operate and that can help some of those people. If there were a need for a different kind of approach in other sectors what other sectors of the economy might people be trafficked - and we are not talking about sex here, we are talking about forced labour - where they would be so isolated? If workers are forced into a situation - again, probably akin to the cockle pickers or in agriculture - are there ways of dealing with that which are different? Are there structures that do not exist that should exist to help those people?

Ms Skrivankova: I think it is very important to point out that the setting where domestic workers are trafficked to is different. However, if we look at people who are trafficked into areas that are, I would say, visible to the eye it does not mean necessarily that they are not isolated - there are other ways how to isolate, for example by the language barrier. A lot of the migrant workers that are trafficked to the UK actually do not speak English and in the process of recruitment there is a deliberate choice of those who did not speak English because they are easier to control and isolate behind the language barrier. Sometimes they are moved into very remote areas when the group is there in isolation; nationalities are mixed that do not have a common language at all - you would have Brazilians together with Polish workers, you would have Lithuanians - so the workers are isolated despite being in a group. So these are just some examples. The fact that they are moved from place to place is a form of isolation. Sometimes they are forbidden to leave the house; they are transported from the place of their accommodation, which is mostly appalling conditions, to the place of workplace and back without a possibility to interface. So these are the patterns and what we need is more research into what the patterns are and where the entry points would be. You will be aware that the government has suggested that there is a problem with trafficking for labour exploitation in the governmental action plan but there was no commitment to carry out thorough research into that to know where the entry points are. We know, for example, that citizens' advice bureaux or sometimes the unions or sometimes local language organisations pick up on these issues and they are the ones that can possibly identify these people. However, without a system of protection and assistance in place there is very little that actually can be done for these people because they are dependent on the employer not only for the employment but also for accommodation and for transport.

Q30 Ms Buck: Firstly, what can be done to reduce demand? Again, it seems to me that that has to be a sexual approach, if you like. Just taking the domestic workers because that is a very particular, discrete group, is there an argument for saying that wealthy overseas visitors should not be allowed to bring in domestic workers? This question of reducing demand, should we not just ban it? Take another sector, which is harder to do if you are bringing people over into the agricultural sector where there is clearly a very large demand, there might then need to be a different way of using other bodies of legislation - minimum wage enforcement, health and safety enforcement and the environmental health work that is done around housing standards - to crack that problem.

Ms Skrivankova: If we look at trafficking from the migration perspective the people who are trafficked are, de facto, migrant workers who are need of employment and are solving their situation through migration as a survival strategy. If you wish to look at the demand for migrant workers the question is, is it that sort of demand that we want to discourage because in the economy there is a need for migrant labour? If there was not a need for migrant labour no migrant would come because if there is no work nobody would come, and that is very clear and the information spreads. So what we need to focus on is we know that there is a need for migrant workers, is that need matched with the policy that would ensure that there are safe, legal migration channels? What we need is legal migration channels to meet that demand. If those are available people will not have to resort into the hands of traffickers or into the hands of smugglers, and if there is a right for the people to change the employer within the same sector, which is something that the government ---

Q31 Ms Buck: Which the concession achieved in that particular sector, that is right. But have you yourself identified the raft of existing legislation, existing powers that might be used in different sectors in forced labour, to bear down to be used not for the specific purpose of forced labour but having in effect the benefit of being able to target and deal with forced labour abuses?

Ms Skrivankova: I think at the moment the solid piece of rules we have are the rules that are granted to the migrant domestic workers, and we know that the system is working and we know that the system ---

Q32 Ms Buck: That is a different point. I take your point about migration and that is something that I think you are arguing is transferable to other sectors and that is something the Committee may want to pick up, but there is a different issue, though, about using the existing legislation that can be used in employment, in housing standards and so forth which can be used and targeted to deal with forced labour. Is that something that you have looked at, looked at that legislation and would put forward recommendations and say to the government, "This is where you should be bringing to bear the existing powers that you have in order to deal with this problem"?

Ms Skrivankova: I think the Council of Europe Convention and the provisions that are under the Council of Europe Convention provides a solution to that because it looks at prevention, protection and prosecutions, and it suggests methods how to protect people by, for example, providing a reflection period and it enables them to reflect on the situation, recover, press charges, seek compensation and receive a renewable residence permit for those who might be in danger. So I think that is one of the issues. However, at the moment there is a clear contradiction within the immigration policy and the anti-trafficking policy that, for example, would prosecute some of the people who, as a result of being trafficked, are in breach of immigration and they are the ones that are not granted a reflection period and would not be protected. At the same time there is also a tendency not to afford any protection to those who do not cooperate with the authorities, which again goes against the principles. So at the moment I would not like to see any additional legislative measures; what I would like to see is to use the legislation that is available and implement it and ensure that those provisions that are under the Council of Europe and the Convention that focus on protection, which is something that we do not have in the legislation at the moment very explicitly, are in there are and should be sufficient when implemented to protect them.

Q33 Ms Buck: I take all of that and I am sure that the Committee will want to reflect on that, but is it not also the case that that kind of lets the abusers in this off the hook? That really in addition to looking at protection we also need to have much more focus on how we actually crack the abuses by employers who are using forced labour, because not only will they be in breach often of an abuse of individuals and sometimes a breach of migration in spirit if not in the letter, they will also usually be in breach of just about every other piece of legislation that is there to protect employers as well.

Ms Skrivankova: That is absolutely correct and I think the focus on targeting rough employers and exploitative employers is very important. If we take an example of the industries that are prone to exploitation and would also find sometimes irregular workers being employed very often it is just the workers that are being targeted; they are deported without anybody asking about the conditions, and the employer gets away with a fine, sets up a new company the next day and the whole thing goes on. So I think there is a clear focus that needs to be shifted from again seeing trafficking from the immigration angle to actually look at those who are exploited and again why there has not been any prosecution on trafficking for labour exploitation. That might be something you would like to ask the UK Human Trafficking Centre, what are they doing in targeting those who are trafficking for labour exploitation because at the moment there has not been any focused police operation that would be looking at those who are the employers.

Q34 Bob Russell: You mentioned in the agricultural and food processing areas that if there was not the work there would not be this illegal activity going on. Is there any connection, do you think, between the work being available because of the supermarket chains forcing down prices so therefore the indigenous population are not going to take work of that nature with salaries and wages below the minimum wage? If that is the case do you think that the boards of those supermarket chains are oblivious to the fact that some of their products are reaching the shelves through the use of illegal labour?

Ms Skrivankova: There are two important points to point out in this sense. There is the question of, again, the demand for cheap labour that might be fuelled by the demand of cheap goods, and that goes back to actually each of the consumers and the culture of looking for a deal. But there is also the issue of we do have a minimum wage so how is it possible that somebody can get away with not paying the minimum wage? That also comes down to the issue of enforcement and resources put into enforcement of the minimum wage and the ability of the workers to actually ask for the minimum wage. For example, at the moment if a worker is paid under the minimum and is irregular in the country as a result of being coerced and the passport has been taken away and their visa overstayed they do not have the right to get the minimum wage paid back; they do not have the right to compensation. Again, it is the employer who gets away with that repeatedly.

Bob Russell: I think we should have the supermarket chains in here giving evidence, Chairman.

Chairman: I think that is a very good suggestion and we will certainly do that. Thank you, Mr Russell.

Q35 Gary Streeter: On the point of the evidence we have just heard, if the prosecuting authorities in this country are reluctant or incompetent at prosecuting some of these clear breaches - and I am sure that you are right on that - has your organisation considered bringing some kind of civil or private prosecution to look at a test case to try and get the ball rolling and demonstrate what is going on in this country?

Ms Skrivankova: Yes, we have considered that possibility and it is again a question of resources. On the other hand, I do not think that necessarily only a test case is a way forward how to change the system. There are ways that the government has already considered to take forward. There is an action plan on trafficking and that includes trafficking for labour exploitation, and the Committee might like to ask the responsible governmental bodies why there is still more focus on trafficking for sexual exploitation than trafficking for labour exploitation? We see it again in the police activities and again in the measures that are being put into place.

Q36 Gwyn Prosser: Ms Skrivankova, I want to ask you about the treatment of victims. You have just mentioned the publicity given to the sex side of the industry. We are used to seeing the television pictures of the door being broken down at dawn and young girls being taken away into the vans and away to the police station, but what happens next? Your organisation, as we understand it, was set up to make a shift between considering the immigration issues and the organised crime issues on to the essential human rights of the victim. How successful have you been, would you say, in making that focus?

Ms Skrivankova: I think if we look at the treatment of people who are trafficked in the UK today and situations we saw three, four, five years ago I must say there has been an improvement. For example, we have lobbied quite intensively for setting up the POPPY Project which is now available for women who were trafficked for sexual exploitation. There are issues about capacity and resources but this project is available. We are working very closely with the Council of Europe and we have been involved in the drafting of the Council of Europe Convention, which again will bring a difference, especially on the protection side. But what we need to stress is that introducing a system is quite an extensive and long-term task and what we need to do is to look at good practices outside of the UK and also good practices that exist in the UK and retain those and extend those. Again, one of the issues is the issue of migrant domestic workers but also the involvement of NGOs, for example, in the identification of trafficked women. That is one of the things we have been highlighting with the government and we are at the moment working on as establishing the competent authority, and what we would like to see, based on the evidence we have from abroad that a multi-agency approach where there is the police, for example, and an NGO working alongside in identification proved to be the most successful in protecting the victims and also in having witnesses that are willing to come forward to testify and are fit to do that. For example, if we take the example of the Netherlands, there is an organisation that has been working in the Netherlands for over 20 years on trafficking and they operate what are called help desk procedures and all cases of trafficking or suspected cases of trafficking are referred to them and they, with their experience, are able to carry out thorough identifications and assess the needs of that particular victim, and that has proven as a very successful model, and you can look at the number of prosecutions in the Netherlands and compare them with the number of prosecutions in the UK. So you might want to ask the government, especially the Home Office, how successful has the pilot been that has been run at the moment under Operation Pentameter 2 to grant a reflection period and some sort of referral to trafficked women, and have they considered to actually bring in the NGOs as one of the organisations helping with the identification because, as we know, people do not self-identify, people are scared of the authorities and, more importantly, it is not the job of the police to provide social services and protection; the police's main task is to catch those who traffic them, but of course they have to know how to deal with trafficked women and they have to have somebody at hand who knows how to talk to them, what questions to ask and who knows from experience the trauma that they have been through and who knows that they behave in a certain way as a result of the trauma. That is something that is a task of the support services; it is not really the task of the police to provide the social services.

Q37 Gwyn Prosser: To what extent are there regional variations in the effectiveness of treating victims? You mentioned the pilot scheme; would you put the pilot scheme down as an example, in your view, of best practice or something you have seen elsewhere?

Ms Skrivankova: I do not think we have enough evidence about the pilot scheme as yet to say that it would be good practice. To my knowledge it is unfortunately not piloted in all the regions that are involved in the police operation. There is an example, that unfortunately is not a good example of good practice, that was mentioned in the Croydon Guardian about a week or so ago of a woman that had been rescued as part of a raid that was prompted by a member of the public suggesting that there might be women held in a particular brothel against their will. The woman was rescued and the policeman who was involved said, "Well, she was too terrified to be a witness so we were not able to provide her any support services." That is not an example of good practice because we know that women are going to be terrified, we know that they need time and protection and identification is a process - and that is something, for example, that the Council of Europe Convention stresses - and that is why we need a reflection period where the person can get information about their rights, about the possibilities and can decide whether or not they want to cooperate with the authorities.

Q38 Gwyn Prosser: Thank you for that. Lastly from me, earlier this morning we had evidence from Anthony Steen MP, who has done a lot of work in this area, and he suggested that your organisation, the Human Trafficking Centre, will never get to grips with the human rights elements for as long as it is under-resourced. What is your view of that?

Ms Skrivankova: I am actually representing Anti-Slavery International; we are a charity so I am not in a position ---

Q39 Gwyn Prosser: You are a sub-committee, are you not?

Ms Skrivankova: Yes. We are working with the UK Human Trafficking Centre as an expert organisation on some of their sub-committees but I do not have information about the resourcing of the Human Trafficking Centre or what their position is on that.

Q40 David Davies: Ms Skrivankova, one of the advantages of keeping prostitution illegal at the moment is that the police can actually go in and raid any brothel or massage parlour where they think there might be girls trafficked or under the age of 18 working there. Would you accept that if there were any moves to legalise prostitution it would be very, very difficult for the police to conduct those raids unless they had very hard evidence indeed that such girls are there, and that the great advantage is that they can raid any brothel they like at the moment without having to go through a great deal of paperwork because the law is already being broken?

Ms Skrivankova: I am not quite sure about what you mean because even in the countries where prostitution might be regulated trafficking is illegal, very often you would have procuring as illegal ---

Q41 David Davies: Let me make this simple. The police actually know where the brothels are; they can go and raid any brothel at any time because they know a law is being broken. If they choose not to do so frankly an official blind eye is turned if a place is well run and there is no suspicion of under age activity or trafficking going on, and that is actually what happens. Where there is the slightest suspicion the police can put the door through at any time and raid it, therefore that is the advantage of keeping prostitution illegal; would you accept that?

Ms Skrivankova: My question would be if prostitution was illegal does it effectively mean that prostitution will not exist or that it will go more underground out of the sight of the police and there will not be a possibility for the police to actually infiltrate.

Q42 David Davies: Is it better to have it legal or illegal?

Ms Skrivankova: Unfortunately there is no yes or no or an easy answer to that.

Chairman: Mr Russell has the final questions on the international dimension.

Q43 Bob Russell: What links does your organisation have with the source countries for trafficked people, if any?

Ms Skrivankova: We have a wide range of partner organisations we have been working with for many years in virtually every continent, so we have information and we have partners on the ground that have been doing excellent work in the countries of origin and there are ways how we can work together with them on issues surrounding awareness raising, on issues surrounding, for example, safe return and risk assessment when we are considering somebody from a particular country who wants to return or is obliged to return, is it safe for the person to return? Are there enough mechanisms for protection for them? So we do have very extensive contacts in the countries of origin.

Q44 Bob Russell: But these are organisations in the source countries but in your view how willing are the governments of the source countries to cooperate in prevention of trafficking? Could you give an example of where there is a government which is very supportive of your work and perhaps a government which could not care less?

Ms Skrivankova: Some governments are better than the others. There are some examples, for example from the Ukraine, of some big progress where the government has been cooperating on an awareness raising campaign and there is a very good cooperation between the Czech and the Ukrainian government because there are high numbers of migrant workers from the Ukraine. So there is a very successful example of cooperation of the countries in the region, especially on issues of trafficking and cross border and protection issues, so there are good examples.

Q45 Bob Russell: That is a good example. Is there a bad example where a government shows no interest in its people being trafficked?

Ms Skrivankova: For example, I notice that you have visited Nigeria.

Q46 Chairman: Which other countries? Nigeria was one of them, are there other countries that are not cooperating?

Ms Skrivankova: The issue is not only with the cooperation but it is also with the willingness to actually put provisions in place.

Q47 Chairman: But are there other countries?

Ms Skrivankova: I would not know; I cannot give you concrete examples.

Q48 Bob Russell: Could I ask you and your colleagues to perhaps draw up a list because we need to know where we need to direct our attention, I would suggest? Linked with that, what is going on in these countries, the source of trafficking, and what can be done to educate and warn people about the danger of being trafficked?

Ms Skrivankova: When we look at awareness raising and effective awareness raising the focus of awareness raising needs to be really on provision of information about the rights, obligations, information about how to migrate safely, what to do if the people are in a problematic situation, where to turn to for help; and more importantly it is about creating safe, legal migration channels because people will migrate because for many of them it is a survival strategy, and if they cannot migrate legally somebody will come and offer them an arrangement that includes a visa and everything else that puts them, at the end of the day, in debt bondage and puts them into a situation. So there are good examples, for example, with usage of awareness raising through a hotline and provision of information pre-migration about where to turn for help, what to do and what are the possibilities. One concrete example I can think of was a group of Ukrainian women who were trafficked to the Czech Republic and were provided information beforehand as to what to do if something happens, what are the phone numbers of the organisations that are going to help. When they came to the Czech Republic and became exploited they knew what to do, they knew where to go and they were able to get out of the situation very quickly.

Q49 Bob Russell: We as a Committee are going to need to find some good examples of where work is being done and where work is not being done if we are going to have any progress at all because I am trying to work out, from my line of questioning, how cooperative are the transit countries? Do they, for example, regard this as a European Union problem because it is going to end up in Europe, or do they regard it as a problem on their own doorstep?

Ms Skrivankova: I think the European Union, especially the European Commission has been focusing on trafficking very intensively, and I think it is important to cooperate with the countries of origin. But what we need to do is to also realise that trafficking is more than an issue of crime and immigration, it is an issue that is connected to migration, and it is an issue connected to development. Poverty is one of the main underlying sources, so if we target it it is to be targeted more on the other policy areas rather than just focusing on one specific area that is targeting the crime.

Chairman: Thank you so much for your very, very helpful evidence this morning; you have certainly given us an opportunity of exploring even further the very important subject of human trafficking. We would be most grateful if you could let us have a note on the points raised by Mr Russell and others because we are keen to go to look at some of these countries, so your guidance would be very, very helpful. Our next session is on 19 February when the Home Secretary will be giving evidence to us. Thank you very much again.