Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The work of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, HC 513
Tuesday 8 December 2015
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 December 2015
Members present: Tim Loughton (in the Chair), Victoria Atkins, Mr David Burrowes, Nusrat Ghani, Mr Ranil Jayawardena, Stuart C. McDonald, Naz Shah, Mr Chuka Umunna, Mr David Winnick.
In the absence of the Chair, Tim Loughton was called to the Chair.
Questions 1 - 35
Examination of Witness
Witness: Kevin Hyland OBE, Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair: Mr Hyland, welcome. Sorry that we have slightly overrun on the earlier witnesses. We will try to get through these questions as expeditiously as possible.
You have been the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner now for about a year, unofficially, and then officially after the Act went through, so you have had time to get your feet under the table. You gave quite an extensive interview in The Evening Standard about a month or so ago, and you particularly referred to rich overseas individuals coming to this country with domestic servants who were, effectively, slaves. Can you elaborate on that, and where there are other jobs that you think effectively constitute slavery that the public is not as conscious of?
Kevin Hyland: Yes. Thank you, Mr Chair. The issue of the overseas domestic workers who end up in exploitation is a really alarming one, because we have mainly women who are brought from places like the Philippines or originate from the Philippines and other parts of South-East Asia who are then brought over to work in premises in the United Kingdom, but also this is happening across Europe. Many of them come direct from their country of origin, but the majority would come via another route, so they may have been working in the Middle East with a family there, and then end up coming to the United Kingdom.
At the current time they are on a tied visa, which means they have to work for that employer. That then holds them to that employer. They can, if they come forward as a person who has been in modern slavery, have an extension and work elsewhere, but there is a mixed message that is received by those women.
Part of the work I have been doing is looking at what happens in source countries. I have been looking at how the visas are issued and the whole process in how somebody is brought to the United Kingdom, because I very much want to focus on prevention. I have met with some influential individuals from the Philippines. I have been working with some of the NGOs who work in this country and work in the Philippines and elsewhere in South-East Asia. Last week I was in Vietnam, so I was hearing about the issues there.
Q2 Chair: On the specific issue, though, what are the scenarios that some of these people are involved in, beyond domestic service?
Kevin Hyland: We have a wide range, and that is the issue. If you looked at people where there is high vulnerability, we are talking about the fishing industry, the maritime industry, construction and agriculture. I think there has been quite a lot in the media, and I have done some articles, about East Anglia. We are also seeing people who end up in factories, packaging and food processing. We are also seeing sexual exploitation, where people are forced into prostitution, and people who are forced into criminality. That can be as wide-ranging as a case earlier this year in Gloucestershire, where people were forced out to do charity collections and were held in servitude and slavery while they were collecting money for other people.
Q3 Chair: At which point does exploitation by paying somebody illegal wages in illegal conditions tip over into slavery, in your definition?
Kevin Hyland: There is a spectrum where we have issues where people are in bad working conditions, but I think it is slavery when people end up losing the right to make a choice, when they do not have the freedoms that we would expect of a person in a working environment, when their documents are taken from them and when they are subject to threats. It is not just about pay, because they could be paid, but receiving all those threats, coercion and exploitation. Not receiving the pay on its own, or low pay on its own, would not amount to an offence of modern slavery. In a sense, each case has to be examined on its own merits, but there are some that are very clear, where people are being exploited because they do not have the freedoms that we would expect of a British national. I think that is where we should set the benchmark.
Q4 Chair: So a Vietnamese national, for example, who was employed on a construction site, who was paid the minimum wage, but was effectively coerced and had no choice and whose visa permits and everything else were entirely dependent on their employer, and who did not have access to their papers and so on, could that constitute a slavery scenario?
Kevin Hyland: It could, if the person does not have the freedom. The complexity there as well is the immigration status, because if they are illegally in the United Kingdom they immediately become vulnerable, or if they believe they are illegally in the United Kingdom. It is a difficult area, but it is one that there is enough expertise and skills within law enforcement and the non-Government organisations to provide clear guidance and understand the issues. That is part of my role, to make sure that all those agencies understand what this crime is.
Q5 Chair: Can I just come back to your role, before I go to Mr Burrowes? In terms of the resources that have been made available to you as commissioner, what effectively are they? Are they sufficient? I would not expect you to say they are more than sufficient. Clearly you have initiated a number of investigations and trips to get to the source of the problem, as you say. Are you hampered by the resources available to you to carry out your job to the best of your ability, do you think?
Kevin Hyland: No, I am not. The way that I am operating is I will have a team of seven people. I am also looking at having other resources allocated to me, for example the Romanian and Nigerian authorities are looking at allocating somebody to my office, so that I can have that direct link with those countries.
In terms of the projects that I am looking at creating, for example, in Vietnam and in Nigeria, I have people who project work on those, develop a project, and I go there and meet with the authorities. Once we get it to a stage where it is ready to be delivered, I want to be able to hand that over to the people who deliver it, and then I will act there purely to monitor, and ensure that what should be happening is happening. At the moment the resources I have are sufficient, but if there are projects that come up, or specific work that I am asked to do, or I need to do, then that may be something for which I have to go back to the Home Office and ask for additional funding.
Q6 Chair: Finally on that, in terms of the statutory powers that you now have, which came in under the Act when it came into force earlier this year, are they sufficient or do you think at some stage you may have to go back and recommend that your powers need to be extended in some way?
Kevin Hyland: At this current time the powers that I have, in order to improve the response to this in terms of the statutory requirements of prevention, investigation and the increase in prosecutions, are sufficient. Potentially there may be additional powers I may need in respect of the Crown Prosecution Service or, for example, the College of Policing, which do not come under my remit at the moment. However, the legislation does allow me to engage with anybody and also make recommendations about anybody, and of course I can bring those things to book when I make my annual report to Parliament, which is a responsibility of my role. That also gives me an international remit, because I can make recommendations to Parliament when necessary in terms of a statutory duty to co-operate.
Q7 Mr Burrowes: Are your powers sufficient to deal with what you describe in terms of support for victims being morally unacceptable? Do you have sufficient statutory powers to deal with that support for victims?
Kevin Hyland: My role is to promote best practice. I do not have the powers to say what will happen. What I can do, though, is make requirements and ask police forces to co-operate with me, the law enforcement agencies, the National Crime Agency and local authorities. I am already making recommendations and researching on the support for victims. Sometimes the support pathways are not known. Sometimes existing support mechanisms perhaps have not been used or identified. I am looking at best practice, engaging with a number of NGOs, for example. There are NGOs who use discretionary leave quite regularly. There are others that are not using it at all. It is a piece of legislation that is there, a facility that exists, and it will support victims far better.
However, I cover three different legislations in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. In Scotland and Northern Ireland they have put the support to victims in the legislation. In England and Wales it is not part of the legislation; it is part of the national referral mechanism, so I do see that the NRM has somewhat confused issues. I have talked about how the investigation by police and the support to victims are separate things. They are not exclusive to each other, but they do sometimes confuse what is happening.
Q8 Mr Burrowes: I will come on to the NRM now. You described the numbers of victims of the modern slave trade in this country as on a shameful scale. What would you put it at? What is the scale that you think is out there in the UK?
Kevin Hyland: The estimate by the Home Office is 10,000 to 13,000.
Mr David Burrowes: What is your estimate?
Kevin Hyland: I think that is quite a good, conservative estimate.
Mr Burrowes: A good conservative estimate. So is it larger than that?
Kevin Hyland: I go with that estimate, but in terms of cases I dealt with in my previous role, one organised crime group could be bringing in over 200, 300, 400 people, and a lot of those will have returned. This is a constant number. The 13,000 does not go down—it is a constant number—so as you remove people they are replaced.
Q9 Mr Burrowes: In terms of the national referral mechanism, the Home Office reviews take place. Do you think their recommendations are sufficient in relation to the three competent authorities?
Kevin Hyland: I think there are problems with the competent authorities. One of the things that you will see in my plan is very much about crime reporting, and that has sat with the UK Human Trafficking Centre for the National Crime Agency, and since January I have been very clear about the fact that I expect all reports of human trafficking and modern slavery to be reported to law enforcement, not just to sit in the NRM as data or a mechanism that is looking at support. There needs to be an investigation. Of course that has to be in line with what the victim wants, and the victim needs to be very carefully considered in that. If we have organised crime groups who are bringing people into the United Kingdom from all over the world, the statutory agencies need to deal with that. Until that ends up in the law enforcement environment then I am afraid that practice will just continue. While victims are being rescued, and I wholly support that, once they are rescued the criminal gangs want to replace their commodity, which in this case is a human being, and they will go and do that, so we have to address the investigations far more rigorously.
Q10 Mr Burrowes: You are talking about the mix between looking at victims of slave trade and considering their immigration status. Do you see that being particularly apparent in immigration removal centres? I have certainly seen evidence of that among those who are victims of trafficking. Once they are eventually released, everyone accepts that they were victims, but before that, during the time when they have been clear about their background, it has not been properly referred through to investigation and they have not been provided with the support they need?
Kevin Hyland: In my old role as a police officer I dealt with the very cases that you are talking about, when somebody had been in immigration detention but was a victim of modern slavery. Even recently we have seen cases where people are looking at the immigration status and people who are non-EU nationals, or for whom there is an immigration issue, are being looked at through the lens of immigration. I am working with some specific NGOs such as the Helen Bamber Foundation to look at these particular issues. I am also working with David Bolt who was here before me. I mentioned in my plan the need to look at these issues, because I do not think there is enough training in the detention centres. I can tell you of a case when I was a police officer of a 14 year-old who was in detention. She had been arrested as a 27 year-old Nigerian. It was obvious to everybody that she was a 14 year-old child, but yet all the processes, whether it is police, immigration, courts, the prison service and the health service did not take a common-sense approach to it. That is something I am really concerned about.
Q11 Mr Burrowes: You argue that criminals can often operate with impunity in this area. The legislation has been passed, there is implementation happening, you have been appointed. At what point will you be able to say that that is not the case, that there isn’t that impunity, and that we are eventually getting these evil people through the courts and delivering some justice to the victims?
Kevin Hyland: I think there is a change already. If you look at Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, West Yorkshire Police, Kent, Essex, they are all looking at this and creating bespoke responses. We are seeing an enormous increase in victims being identified and prosecutions and investigations in those areas, but I need to see this across the United Kingdom. It is happening piecemeal, but I want to see it across the United Kingdom. What is really important, and the work that I have been doing in Nigeria and Vietnam reinforces it, is about the link-up. When I was in Vietnam I spoke to victims who had been trafficked not just to the UK but to China and other parts of the world, but there is no link-up. When I was in Nigeria I was speaking to victims who had been trafficked into Europe to a staging post in Italy, and then moved on to other parts, for example France and the United Kingdom. That information is not ending up with the National Crime Agency. I am going there as the Anti-Slavery Commissioner and hearing this, so I have linked up with the law enforcement agencies in Nigeria. I am looking at doing a project there linking up the communities and sustainable development, so then we can implement prevention. Yes, I want to see more prosecutions, but I do not want it to happen in the first place.
Q12 Mr Umunna: I am very glad you are in post doing what you are doing, because I think that most of the issues that we are talking about here shock people in 2015, that we are seeing these kinds of things happening. I think it is very important to our knowledge that the victims come from many different countries. You have mentioned Nigeria, which I wish to come to, but of course there is Romania, Vietnam and Albania, which I think is number one in terms of the data.
Just going back to Nigeria, I should declare an interest; I am one of the four parliamentarians who are of Nigerian origin in the House of Commons at the moment. You said in June that trafficking and the extent to which this is coming out of Nigeria is a top priority. Why did you say that in particular in relation to Nigeria?
Kevin Hyland: If you look at it, historically Nigeria has always been at the highest levels for trafficking into Europe. When you look at the data, and I have looked at it from the UN and the IOM, consistently 95% of women trafficked to Europe come from Edo State. Also, they are very much—
Mr Umunna: Did you say 95%?
Kevin Hyland: 95%.
Mr Umunna: 95% of women trafficked to Europe are from Edo State? That is an extraordinary figure, Mr Hyland.
Kevin Hyland: I know, and that is why I saw that as a priority. When I went to Edo State and I met with the different agencies there, it is very much localised to Benin City and to Uromi, so I have been to those two areas. I can see an opportunity of making a real difference there.
Mr Umunna: Where does that figure come from? That is such an extraordinary figure. 95% of all women trafficked to Europe—
Kevin Hyland: From Nigeria, sorry.
Mr Umunna: Okay. That is still alarming, but 95% of women trafficked to Europe from Nigeria come from Edo State?
Kevin Hyland: Come from Edo State. The history of that is because there was a lot of trade between Italy and Nigeria in jewellery in the 1990s, and criminals muscled in on that. Of course, when it got harder to travel to Europe the criminals took it over.
So when I was there I saw it at first hand, and I went and spoke to the mothers of the victims. I spoke to a mother whose first son was trafficked. He was murdered by the traffickers and she gave her life savings to get her second son back, who was heading to Europe. She gave me a clear mandate. She said to me, “Can’t you stop people leaving this area?”
Q13 Mr Umunna: Can I just stop you there, just partly because we are a bit pushed on time? The latest figures I think that you cited back in June had Albania in the number one spot, in terms of the numbers coming from a particular country of origin, followed by Nigeria, and there was somewhat of a gap between the two. I think the latest figures from January to March of this year mirror that pattern. Do I take it from what you are saying that you believe that the numbers from Nigeria are much higher than the figures would suggest, given the lack of detection of the number of people coming from Nigeria?
Kevin Hyland: Sure. If we worked on the official numbers from the NRM last year, there were 2,340. The Government’s own estimate is 13,000, so it is one in five at best. What we also see is the recent figures of the people coming in through Italy, across the Mediterranean, in the first 10 months of this year and there were 19,000 Nigerians in that.
Q14 Mr Umunna: So they have disappeared between Italy and arriving in the UK?
Kevin Hyland: Yes. There is a big market of people from Nigeria available to traffickers.
Q15 Mr Umunna: Do you believe the authorities in Nigeria are equipped to deal with this problem?
Kevin Hyland: This is from them: no. I have worked with NAPTIP, which is the agency who is there to deal with trafficking. They are increasing their work, but I have met with them and part of my plan is to increase their capacity. That is part of the recommendations I have made around conflict funding.
Q16 Mr Umunna: Do you believe they take these issues seriously enough?
Kevin Hyland: I think NAPTIP do. I think that it is an organisation that realises its limitations, because it does not have the training or the equipment, which it is very keen to have. It also realises there are serious issues of corruption. It realises that the messages are not getting out there to the communities. In Edo State the vast majority of the population are Christian and Catholic, so by working with the Church there we can convey a message going out to the communities in a way that perhaps we could not in other ways.
Q17 Mr Umunna: Essentially, it is going to be very hard for that national federal organisation in Nigeria to do an effective job if all of the State Governments and State Governors do not take this seriously enough as an issue.
Kevin Hyland: Sure. I am looking at conflict, stability and security funding and the plan that I have put together in those three areas has the buy-in of the local leaders, so I met with the Enogies and the Obas, who are the local leaders. I also met with representatives of the governors, and I am going back next year to have more formal meetings. I met with Cardinal John Onaiyekan, who has direct links to Buhari, and I have support on this from our High Commission to have a project looking at this as a source country issue. In Benin City, Diageo are based there, with an enormous Guinness factory, so I am starting conversations with them as to how they can help. They have done big projects there already about water supply and I also know Unilever are now launching some work there, and I have met with the CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, to talk about this. We do have an opportunity to change the way it is. In Edo State there is lots of fruit growing, but they are selling it on the side of the road.
Q18 Mr Umunna: From the evidence that we have seen, for example from the latest case—if the Chairman would permit me these last couple of points—the case that there was last month where two individuals were convicted of essentially keeping a young Nigerian immigrant a slave for around 24 years, part of this is people understanding that the conditions that they are being kept in is slavery, to all intents and purposes. The other part is of course the community coming forward and providing the law enforcement agencies here and the diaspora community here with the evidence that they need in order to take action. I think it is very important, Chair, that we send out a very clear message to all our diaspora communities here, not just from Nigeria but from all other countries, that this is completely and utterly unacceptable and we will ensure that the strong arm of the law comes down on anybody guilty of perpetrating these acts.
You have the floor here, so what message, given you say that Nigeria in particular is a top priority, would you like to give to the community here from which we need intelligence to come if we are to clamp down on this barbaric practice?
Chair: There is a question in among all that, if you can be brief.
Kevin Hyland: Sure. On the case you mentioned, I was the first senior investigating officer on the Edet case, and it was a horrendous case of a Nigerian young man, or boy as he was, being kept. Part of the plan that I have is working with the diaspora community, working with BAWSO, working with AFRUCA and that is why I want to have somebody from the Nigerian authorities in my office, because that person can speak directly to those communities.
What they need to realise, and this is very much about the overseas domestic work situation, is that we do have a great system in this country to support victims, something I am going to push forward. When they come forward they will be supported. It is for the law enforcement agencies to, as you say, put the full weight of the law on the criminals and make sure that they pay the price, which will always be custody.
We need to give confidence to the communities, but also some communities do have a class system where it is accepted that you can have somebody who is a slave as such, and we need to educate the communities right down to school level that that is not acceptable, because this is a long-term plan, to remove slavery from the face of the UK and internationally. We have to go right back to the schools, we have to give the message to the communities, and we have to tell the communities what happens to people, like in the Mediterranean, and give them examples of exploitation.
Mr Umunna: The churches are very important as well. Thank you very much.
Q19 Chair: Before bringing in Mr Winnick, can I just ask Mr Hyland, some years ago in my part of the world in West Sussex we had a problem with unaccompanied asylum-seeking girls coming from Nigeria and Sierra Leone who were being trafficked, effectively. They were then going into local authority care and then being abducted by pimps and ending up in the sex trade in northern Italy, Milan in particular. Social services went to speak to social services in Nigeria, to see what could be done, which was limited. It turned out that in quite a few of those cases those girls had effectively been sold to the traffickers by their own families. Is that what you are finding? It is not just a question of the authorities clamping down on the pimps, it is also about the need for a better education programme and clamping down on some of the parents who are contributing to this trade.
Kevin Hyland: What you say is exactly what I have seen in Nigeria. It is accepted in some cases that you send someone. What I did see also was if they knew the horrors that they were going to go to, someone in the family would be stopping it, particularly if that did come from the Church in Edo State. They would be against it. I have been to Nigeria twice now and the first time I went out there I spoke about the juju ceremonies. Even after that first occasion when I went there they held meetings and they have created an association, as it were, of juju priests who are now saying, “We will no longer do these ceremonies for women and young girls travelling” so the changes sometimes are quite simple to get the messages out there.
In Vietnam it was exactly the same, it is an extended family member who is engaging and trafficking people and selling them. We need to be able to get the organisations to reintegrate people who return so that there isn’t a stigma. That is a big problem in countries like Nigeria, Vietnam and the Philippines where that return, going back without being successful, can be viewed as a failing.
Q20 Chair: Nigeria is a big recipient of UK aid. Are you seeing any aid programmes that are directed at dealing with this problem at source, or do you think there is much more scope for those resources to be used?
Kevin Hyland: I think there is much more scope, and that is one of the things that I am talking about and one of the things that I have put a plan together about, using conflict and stability funding to come up with a plan and looking at all issues: looking at community engagement, sustainable development and creating jobs and opportunities so that people can become self-sustaining, and looking at rule of law. All too often it has been a campaign of just handing out a leaflet. We did see that there was some work done in Benin City, which did have a slight impact, but what it did was push the criminal activity out to what they call the interior, so the rural areas.
It needs all three elements happening in unison to really create that prevention model. When I was in Vietnam last week, we discussed similar ideas of working, although those plans are slightly different because they are more developed in Vietnam, but it is about not just opting for one element. You have to opt for wider activity to create the real prevention.
Q21 Mr Winnick: If one made the distinction between the trafficking for sexual purposes and using people for domestic reasons without any sexual overtones, purely as domestic slaves, without any rights whatsoever and kept in that condition, so therefore the word “slavery” would be justified, which countries would you say are the main culprits?
Kevin Hyland: If you are talking about domestic workers and the main culprits, as in the offenders, you would be talking about countries in the Middle East, and the victims coming from South-East Asia.
Q22 Mr Winnick: Yes, and of the countries in the Middle East, which would you say were the top offenders?
Kevin Hyland: If you were talking to me in my time when I was a police officer, you would be talking about countries such as Saudi Arabia, maybe Qatar. I am now working on the data about from where victims are trafficked and where they originate from themselves. Now, the data would show a Philippines national as being the victim, but they may have come from Qatar or Saudi Arabia or anywhere in the Middle East. That data need to be worked on so that we can see what the countries of origin are, where the victim has come from, as opposed to their nationality.
Q23 Mr David Winnick: But it is a continuing problem, isn’t it?
Kevin Hyland: It is a continuing problem, yes.
Q24 Mr Winnick: Since we have diplomatically close relations and trade with Saudi Arabia, rightly or wrongly, do you feel the British Government could do more in alerting, if they need alerting, which I doubt, the Saudi authorities to what is happening?
Kevin Hyland: There is a lot to be done through diplomatic channels on that, because there are a number of cases which involve diplomats. I think if you look at the figures and the records, the Saudis would have been the highest on that. In fact there is the case of the servant who was murdered in a hotel in London not so long ago. There is a lot that can be done through diplomatic channels and particularly again in the diaspora communities in the UK and among the diplomatic workers and the communities in west London. There is far more that can be done.
I recently attended a meeting and a conference at the Philippines Embassy, for example, where these very issues were discussed, and they came out with an action plan on how they are going to try to educate their people in-country. There needs to be an education in-country before people even leave there. It needs to happen in the countries of the Middle East where we tell them our expectations. We have seen the issues around the football stadium in Qatar and so forth, and there needs to be, in the destination country, education and a response also.
Q25 Mr Winnick: Domestic servants used in slavery may be confined more or less to London, I would be surprised if it was not in the main, and quite likely within certain boroughs in London. My colleague rightly said the “community”, and he meant in general, all these obnoxious and evil offences against humanity. Could more be done by both local authorities and various voluntary organisations in those sorts of boroughs where the problem is greatest? I am talking in particular about domestic slaves, do you agree that more could be done by way of awareness, such as notices going up, newsagents keeping themselves very much on the alert as well as the local police.
Kevin Hyland: I think that is an issue. There is more to be done in the communities, but I really do think that the main thing that we need to do is very much about prevention. That is why the recommendations that I suggested were very much about the process—that when people arrive, they are told of their rights and the process that they can follow, if they are being made a victim of crime. Prevention is the main thing, but I totally agree there is far more that can be done in those communities by local authorities, by the statutory agencies and by the communities themselves and by the NGOs to assist people out of those exploitative situations.
Q26 Mr Winnick: One more question, and the Chair may probably ask the question himself, but as far as the Modern Slavery Act 2015 is concerned, which everyone welcomes and there is no controversy about it, there is a clause for transparency in supply chain provision, certainly involving businesses with a turnover of at least £36 million, and I wonder if more could be done by businesses to make sure that what they sell is not used for all those purposes that the Act, the legislation, is very much opposed to.
Kevin Hyland: Sure, and I think that the business sector has been very proactive in developing models. I am working very closely with companies like KPMG. Last week when I was in Vietnam, I met up with UK Trade and Investment, and I think they are going to be a very important department to work with to get the message out internationally.
I went to Clarks’ factory in Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, to see their work. They are training all their staff to be aware of modern slavery, so that they can go back to their communities and tell them about the issues. There is a great deal being done, and the fact that, as from 1 April, companies will have to report on what they are doing to make their business and supply chain slavery-free, has led many people to see the legislation as the real global lead. That is the bit that will change countries like the Middle East and South-East Asia, because when they are doing business with companies in the UK they will have to change their practices. Also, there are other countries who are really interested in our legislation. For example, this week I am speaking at the G6 to talk about this very issue.
Q27 Mr Winnick: Will you be following it up as far as businesses are concerned? It is felt by some, rightly or wrongly, that there are not adequate policies and processes in order to make sure that this supply chain is working.
Kevin Hyland: Of my five priorities, number four is private sector. It is one of the very areas that I am looking at and focusing on, to work very much with the private sector, to identify best practice, working with companies like KPMG so that they can create models where there is slavery-free trade.
Q28 Chair: On that score, certain companies have used it as a selling point, that they specifically avoid using what could be construed as slave labour. Using the carrot rather than the stick incentive, are you seeing more examples of companies who are using as a marketing tool the fact that they are much more ethical in the way that they source their products?
Kevin Hyland: I think they are. The carrot instead of the stick is the best way forward, because it is a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. The other thing is that if a company does find slavery in its supply chain or business, I would prefer that it openly says that, because then it will rectify it. We do not want to lose employment opportunities in developing countries. We want that to stay there, but we want people in good working conditions.
If they are doing their supply chain transparency properly they will find slavery issues or exploitation issues, and then if they go in and put models in place that prevent that and make sure people are treated properly that is what this Act is there to do.
Q29 Chair: Before going to Mr Jayawardena, can I just ask you about training? We asked Mr Bolt earlier about multi-agency training across five inspectorates for which he has connections. You have officially endorsed the Human Trafficking Foundation standards, which are aimed at improving service provision, and the use of training materials across a broader remit. What further training do you think the police need to make sure that they know how to tackle human slavery? Obviously it is a relatively new thing in terms of the law and their responsibilities. Child sexual exploitation is something that has never had a higher profile and training for that across various agencies is absolutely essential. What more do you think the police can do and the College of Policing should be leading on as well on this?
Kevin Hyland: The College of Policing have produced an approved professional practice, which gives guidance to law enforcement, which is a related document. That is one step, but nowhere near enough. I have been working with the International Bar Association and we have held a meeting of police officers who have all investigated cases of modern slavery, to see what challenges they had and to see what best practice they could pull out of it. We had the Crown Prosecution Service there and the College of Policing. We are developing a training module that we will look at delivering around the country in what is the ROCU, at the regional level, so that we can get training into police forces fairly quickly.
The College of Policing only this week are looking at developing training modules, and we fed into that. I have already met a couple of times with Alex Marshall about this to discuss the need for the necessary information to be included at the basic level of training, at promotion levels and in detective training.
One of the things that I am also saying to law enforcement, is that, based on having that background, police officers have a lot of the skills already, but they are not using them in this area. So, for example, when I look at how many victims of the 2,340 last year received an ABE interview, so a proper debrief from a police officer or a trained professional, it is too low, in fact shockingly low. Once we bring those numbers up, we will start to see a better response to the investigation. Sometimes it is a question of the police realising they have the skills and putting the jigsaw together properly.
Q30 Chair: Have you been approached by chief constables, or other senior police officers, asking for your expertise to help on the training front with what they should be doing? To know what their officers need, we need to have the people at the top going through the training themselves, and that would show willing and that it is not just a box-ticking exercise.
Kevin Hyland: I have met with a number of chief constables and I have met with people from the National Police Chiefs Council from almost every force across the UK. I have also presented at what is called the PIP level for training at Ryton-on-Dunsmore, which is where the senior officers, so assistant chief constables and the like, would attend. I have written to every chief constable and sent a copy of my plan to every chief constable, every PCC and every Member of Parliament. I am getting the message out there, but I think there needs to be specific training. The National Police Chief lead for this is Shaun Sawyer, whom I am meeting tomorrow, and we are talking about developing something for the National Police Chief’s Council so that they are aware of what the issues are and the response.
Also there needs to be an operational delivery to this, where on a day-to-day basis these cases are picked up, like other cases should be. For example, recently there was a case in the south of England that had a couple of officers on it. It was people being found in a ship. I wrote and said to the heads of all the different departments, “How many people would you have on this if it was drugs that were found? The commodity in this case is people and there should be far more officers on this”, so it is changing the psyche of the officers to think that this is more serious than a drugs find.
Chair: Mr Jayawardena, and then we will end with a single point question from Mr Burrowes this time. Mr Jayawardena.
Q31 Mr Jayawardena: If I may ask two very quick questions. The first follows on from yours, Chair, which is a British Medical Journal report in August highlighted that approximately 89% of the 800 staff interviewed did not know what questions to ask to confirm whether a patient was a victim of human trafficking. I wonder what progress has been made since your discussions with the Director of Nursing and the NHS lead for safeguarding.
Kevin Hyland: There was an announcement made on 2 December by the Department of Health with the Royal College of Nursing and all the royal colleges about their commitment to this. We are working together on developing training that is going to go to every nurse. First of all it is going to be NHS England, because they have the buy-in of the Royal College of Nursing, and we are going to extend that further. There is a package of training that has already been developed by the health service for healthcare professionals. I have only looked at that this week. It is fit for purpose, it gives clear instructions, and it is a half-hour e-learning, so I want to get that promoted also.
We need to do some really bespoke training to the high risk areas, so A&E, maternity. In my last role, one of the cases that ended up with an entire gang from three different countries being prosecuted and hundreds of victims being supported came from a nurse who identified something in the A&E in Whipps Cross Hospital, so it shows the importance of healthcare professionals knowing what to see and how to see it, but more importantly to know what to do next. That is sometimes the problem—who do you phone next?
Q32 Mr Jayawardena: You referred to gangs just then, Mr Hyland. What more could be done to interrupt the way in which organised criminal gangs are increasingly using cyber techniques to facilitate their activities? For example, their use of online advertisements to recruit victims, the use of browsers that stop and certainly encrypt activities so that they stay anonymous, and of course allow them to collect payments often from their supposed clients and to pay themselves for the victims’ transportation.
Kevin Hyland: As I have said before, to address modern slavery you need to use modern techniques. I have been working very closely with DARPA, which is a United States Government agency, who have developed some incredible software for these very issues, to do in seconds what would take somebody many weeks, months or maybe years to do. They are coming over to the United Kingdom in January to host a training event for law enforcement. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority has already agreed to be the first labour inspectorate to trial the software, and I am going to get a number of police forces across the UK to trial it as well.
The National Crime Agency’s IT people have looked at it and were extremely impressed with it. It can capture all that data very quickly, allow you to target your resources, and then disrupt.
Chair: Thank you, and then Mr Burrowes so we can finish by 5.00 pm.
Q33 Mr Burrowes: We will shortly be hearing from the Government about the progress of child trafficking advocates and I wonder where you see your role, or what your view is of those advocates and how they could be as effective as possible to provide the necessary support for some of those most vulnerable of victims to support them through prosecutions, but also to avoid all too many going missing and being subject to further abuse and slavery.
Kevin Hyland: I think the support mechanism for victims, particularly children, needs a lot of review. I learned a lot last week in Vietnam, when I was talking to people who knew victims who had been trafficked, or knew the situation, and they gave me some very simple advice. They said, “Do you know what you need to do? Those people need to be speaking to a Vietnamese person in the first hour of their recovery because they will think that they have to pay for that accommodation because in our country that is what would happen. They will think that it is going to be added to the debt. You take away that risk, you do some simple things like that, and the chances of their staying are massively increased”. Now, I have only been told that recently. I need to research it, but I think it is by talking to people who are the real experts, who understand the cultures, that we will come out with a better result.
At the moment a victim comes forward, they may enter the NRM, they may get social services care, and they may get a police investigation. There are too many “mays” in this and there needs to be a process set up that really does look after the victim in a holistic way, but also gets the other things going, like a police investigation. I fully support guardians for children. I think it is essential.
Mr Burrowes: I think it is child trafficking advocates, rather than guardians.
Kevin Hyland: Yes. There is a difference as well in the Scottish and the Northern Ireland—
Q34 Mr Burrowes: It is being piloted at the moment. We piloted this child trafficking—
Kevin Hyland: Sure, and I am waiting to see what the results are. I saw the review that came after the first five months. There were low numbers in it. There were still children that went missing, particularly Vietnamese children. I would not say that the process of following them up was effective. While there has been a process, I am not too sure it achieved what it should have done on that first review. It may be the second review is better, and so I reserve my comments for that. When I looked at the first findings it was not coming up with the solutions for everything, albeit it did deal with a number of the issues. Something that comes out of it needs to be better than what that first review said, and that may be in the second review.
Q35 Chair: Mr Hyland, we are very grateful. As they say on “Mastermind”, you have answered all the questions without any passes and offered to provide further information to the questions we have asked, so thank you for that. In the light of today, if there is further evidence you feel you would like to give, and if we could have it in the next week or so, that would be exceedingly helpful.
Kevin Hyland: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman.
Oral evidence: The work of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, HC 513 14