 I welcome everyone to the ninth meeting of the Justice Committee in 2015. I can ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with broadcasting even when switched to silent. No apologies have been received. Item 1, as the committee agreed to consider item 3, a draft stage 1 report on the Prisoners' Control of the Scotland Bill and our work programme in private. Are you agreed? Item 2, this is our third evidence session on the human trafficking and exploitation Scotland Bill. We'll hear from two panels of witnesses. I welcome our first panel, Paul Broadbent, Chief Executive Gangmaster's Licensing Authority and Helen Martin, Assistant Secretary to the STUC. I'll move straight on to questions from members, please. Good morning. I wonder if I could start with Mr Broadbent and ask a little bit about the role accommodation plays in attracting people here who are then subsequently trafficked. I'm aware there's often adverts, which turn out to be quite misleading, often attaching accommodation and employment. If you could just talk a little bit more about that, that would be very helpful. I can indeed. Thank you very much. Your microphone comes on automatically. If you wish to come in, if it's not directed, the question is not directed at you specifically. Just indicate to me and I'll call you. There are currently 68 gangmasters' licenses in Scotland. Attached to those 68 are conditions that, if a gangmaster advertises and provides transport, accommodation and other means, they should be of a sufficient standard for a reasonable person to reside in. Quite often, though, either some gangmasters subcontract the accommodation issue or they don't provide or advertise accommodation at all, and it's left to the worker to find their own accommodation. That, in our experience, is where the problems lie, because there are so many rogue landlords and people willing to charge exorbitant fees for not just substandard accommodation but woefully inadequate accommodation, and that forms part of our enquiries. Where a gangmaster, as I've said, doesn't advertise any accommodation at all, that's where the problems lie. What we try to do with the 68 gangmasters in Scotland, all of whom at this point in time are compliant. I don't think that anybody applies to be a gangmaster if they intend to break the law. With those 68, there are in total 209 gangmasters across the UK who supply labour into Scotland. It's not just the 68 who are registered officers in Scotland. There are 209 in total who supply labour into Scotland. We make sure that, as far as we possibly can do, the accommodation that they provide is of a sufficient standard and it complies with our licensing standards. If it doesn't, that licence can be revoked. We can in place additional licensing standards to give them a period of time to improve that accommodation, but overall our work is much more and more with the unlicensed gangmaster, also known as the criminal. How is this picked up? Is it adverts monitored? How are the checks done to bring this to light? Is it through complaints, for example, from local authorities, maybe of overcrowding and subsequent noise that then unearths these abuses? It's through all of those means. It's intelligence led almost entirely because people will advertise that they've got good accommodation and it's only by looking or a snippet of intelligence from a member of the public to say next door seems to house a disproportionate amount of people that may be coming in and out almost in shifts because that's a typical pattern as well. Changes in day and night are between 10 and 20 people living in a small house. We receive intelligence from Police Scotland, local authorities and licence gangmasters themselves who don't want tarnished with the same kind of operation as the unlicensed gangmasters use. We unashamedly receive intelligence from all and every source anonymously as well and we will act on that intelligence to see whether there's any basis from it. Is there a particular type of employment linked to the kind of accommodation that tends to be abused? We did a recent job last year, the year before, which was Operation Rego. There were two operations in the Fraserborough and Peterhead environment in the north-east of Scotland where we discovered, with the local authority, a number of firstly unlicensed landlords and some of the legislation and regulation in that local area was certainly tightened up to prevent the exploitation of people into substandard accommodation. Can I ask Ms Martin the extent to which you're aware of that link? From the trade union point of view, we have a slightly different kind of relationship with those sorts of issues. Given that where we tend to organise our members tend to be the better end of the sector, the fact that the trade union movement is in a workplace tends to mean that it's a better quality workplace than some of the other ones. From our point of view, I think that there is a link between general exploitation that you see within society and issues of trafficking and forced labour. I think that we are quite clear that we need to see the tackling of trafficking on a spectrum of tackling a wider range of abuse, so tackling accommodation abuse would be one of those things that we might want to try and do to make sure that people aren't being subsequently abused in other ways. We should also think about other sort of labour market issues around very poor quality contracts, breaches in the minimum wage and other sorts of things that we know are happening within industries that wouldn't necessarily constitute the severe end of labour abuse such as trafficking, but open the door to that form of abuse. We would like to see that more as a spectrum of issues rather than simply trying to look at the most severe thing and tackle that without thinking about the other stuff. Are you confident that the balance is right by looking at the wider spectrum that you're not maybe neglecting the potential and the training to spot trafficking? No, no, no. To be clear, I think that it's very important that we do that as well. In my submission, I talked about the need to make sure that public sector workers who might come into contact with trafficking are probably trained. I think that the Scottish Government is now starting to do a bit more of a focus on that and we would welcome that and hope that this is something that this bill really rolls out in full. The bigger point that I'm trying to make is that if we focus simply on tackling trafficking and ignore wider labour market abuses, we are unlikely to get very far in tackling trafficking. It is much better to tackle the abuse that we can see, that is quite visible, that we know is happening. That helps to create sectors that are better organised, better run, that have a mixture of a workforce in it as well. We often find that a particularly vulnerable workforce, an immigrant workforce, is particularly vulnerable. Immigrant workforces tend to work in sectors where they're likely to receive bad contracts per levels of pay. If you raise the quality in the workforce and bring more Scottish people into it as not to do down immigrant workers, we would welcome immigrant workers working as well. The point is that the better quality, the jobs, the better the workforce functions, the less likely you are to have trafficking of anyone. I think that we would dispute the general context of what you're saying to improve working conditions and contracts and so on across the spectrum, but we've got to focus on this bill that's before us. I'd like you in your evidence to focus on what is in this bill, not saying what you're saying is incorrect but to keep the focus tight on how we improve or where this bill is falling in your requirements as you're out on the shop floor and the work face and so on. We've got too far why you've missed the focus. Where does the bill do it? Someone else can ask that. I'll go to Christian now. It's not wrong what you were saying, it's just that we've got to deal with this and do a report on it. Christian? Thank you very much, Governor. What I would like to understand is, as the Gangre-Mainster Licensing Authority, from you, how we are, do we have an increase of illegal activities, particularly in some sectors that you didn't know before? Can you give us a picture of where we are? Yes, actually there has been an increase in unlicensed activity which could manifest itself as forced labour, compulsory labour, domestic servitude or even human trafficking, but I actually believe that increase has been a result of public awareness and public authorities awareness and an increased understanding of the issue as opposed to there is more human trafficking. Out there at this time and that has been evidenced through the increase in intelligence that we get in now from sources that we didn't get intelligence from before. So I don't think there's been an increase in human trafficking, all the offences covered in the act. I think the increase in public awareness and public authority awareness has given us more information with which to work. Do you think this bill will provide more awareness again, which will in turn bring an increased activity for yourself? Absolutely. Attached to the bill, the non-legislative activities that are talked around, the strategy, some of those will involve awareness raising and training across the board for people on the front line, even more so on the front line than myself and Helen. So, yes, that is the next stage, I believe. The question will come then, can you cope with this activity? We're up to capacity and capability as we are now, but we will do our very best to do more with increasingly less as austerity moves even further. Is there anything in the bill that you would have liked to see to try to address the problem you talked about, which was the difference between the 68 you have in Scotland and the 209 in the UK? Is there any way we can more literally fight for this to make sure that you don't have the 209 who can maybe come and having different standards than the 68 that you have? I think the bill actually suits the purposes of the gangmasters licensing authority very well at this moment in time. Thank you very much. What about STUC? You did say that you had some concern about this increased activity and the GLA will maybe not be able to cope with it. Yes, we have long been concerned about the under-resourcing of the gangmasters licensing agency and we have repeatedly called for them to have a much better resource because we think that they are a very important organisation, that they do a very good job of inspection and regulation, something that we really need more of. We also believe that their remit is too narrow in the sectors that they focus on and that there is a real need to increase the number of sectors covered by the gangmasters licensing agency. However, there isn't a huge amount of point in increasing someone's remit if you're not properly resourcing them to do that. I think that they are on the resource to do the remit that they have, so we would like to see them properly resourced and then the remit widened or a similar organisation created to do the other sectors. Can we be more specific than the sector? Yes, for example, the fisheries sector is a real area where we would have concerns about the maritime sector. We have had concerns about construction in the past, though we aren't particularly concerned about that sector at present. However, there is a huge amount of labour abuse in the construction sector and it has the potential things change over time given economic conditions. It has the potential to be one where a better system of regulation would prevent traffic in the future. Will you back up, Paul Bundant? Giving you his evidence that there is not such a thing as an increase really of exploitation. It's more an increase of the awareness of what's happening, what Paul just said, regarding the increase of illegality regarding trafficking. It's not so much the increase happening, but there's awareness happening, meaning that we are more aware of the activity taking place. I think that that's nearly certainly the case. I'm pretty sure that Paul would have a better insight into some of those issues than I would. I think that there are structural issues, however, that do make trafficking more or less likely. We're concerned about domestic workers and issues around the exploitation of domestic workers that are likely to have been made worse by the changes in the tier 5 visa system. Again, that's about things that are happening at Westminster. It's important to remember that that creates a context that we need to take into account when we are doing our anti-trafficking work here in Scotland. There are also real issues in the maritime sector in particular that are structural about how that sector works. If we were serious about tackling trafficking in that sector, we would need to think about those issues, even though it is much broader than the bill that it can do. There are issues that we need to think about in the context of writing legislation, but it's also important that we focus on what the anti-trafficking strategy is going to do and all the different mechanisms that we have as the Scottish Government and as the UK Government are at our disposal to tackle trafficking in the round. Do you think that the bill's weighties will help to decrease the illegal activities? I think that it's a good start. I think that there are things that the bill could do that would help to support that. We were somewhat concerned about the fact that there isn't a huge amount of prevention focus within the bill. As such, we thought that there were some changes that could be made to the bill to give a better prevention focus, the first being the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. I think that that helps to change the market that exists for prostitution at the minute and has been shown in other countries to provide a good basis for eradicating trafficking in that sector. Secondly, I think that it would be useful if the bill established an independent trafficking commissioner in Scotland. I understand that the Westminster bill is creating a trafficking commissioner and that will cover Scotland, but we are hugely worried about the independence of that commissioner and we also think that it's far too law enforcement focused. We would much rather see one in Scotland to provide a focal point for work in Scotland than I think that it is an opportunity for this bill to do that. Thirdly, we would like to see a wee bit more put into the bill about how it is that the anti-trafficking strategy is developed and who needs to be consulted within that. Those sorts of things have gone into bills in the past and I think give a really good sort of legislative footing to how it is that we develop this work in the future. Just for a move on, can I just ask the Gangmasters Licensing Association what is your funding, where do you get it? You made a comment about cuts, you made a comment about being under resourced. Could you tell me what your source of funding is, how much it is? The source of funding is £2.68 million from Westminster and £100,000 from the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland. At the moment, is there any contribution from the Scottish Government? No, there isn't. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify what the position was about your funding. Roderick Fonver-Alleson, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. You have covered some of the points that I was going to raise, but if I can just focus a bit more on the legislation. Martin, do I take it that you have any specific comments on the clause for the slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour point? Are you happy with the way that is drafted? You were talking about abuses, wider labour abuses. I wasn't quite sure, whilst taking on what the convener said earlier, whether you had any particular concerns as to the drafting of the forced labour clause. Not in and of itself, we were a little bit concerned about the general definition of trafficking and the fact that there was a real focus on travel. I think you've received quite a lot of evidence on this point. We've got that matter here. We would sort of share the wider concern that there needs to be perhaps more wording that is in line with the European directive, but the actual points on compulsory labour itself, we aren't massively concerned about. We think that it's a reasonable definition and we hope that it will provide a good legislative footing. In terms of the section that deals with the strategy, in terms of drafting, what would you like to see in that, bearing in mind what you've said, section 31, part 5? We did have some concern about how that was drafted, so if I just find the... We felt that the actual specific points that it says that it's going to do tend to focus quite a lot on raising awareness. There's two of the bullet points that essentially go to raising awareness. We felt that that was perfectly reasonable for the short term but wasn't necessarily future proof in the strategy. There comes a point when raising awareness of the legislation is something that you hopefully have achieved and that you might want to go on and do other things. The second bullet point starts to get behind the arrangements to facilitate the detention prevention and that conduct. We felt that the way that the legislation is drafted at the minute suggests that more of an emphasis will be done on raising awareness of the bill than it will be done on prevention and enforcement, just the way the bullet points are drafted. It's a small point, but I thought that that wasn't necessarily a fantastic signal, that there maybe should be more within that that talks very strongly about the need to prevent trafficking from happening in the first place. The need to disrupt the markets that facilitate trafficking. We also felt that it would be important to put within this section a clause that requires consultation when drafting or refreshing the strategy with trade unions, with civil society organisations, with people like the gang masters. It's important that we take a range of evidence from people within sectors about what is happening within Scotland at the minute, because that can change from one year to the next, depending on labour market environments. In your view, in terms of consultation, a range of stakeholders needs to be set out in Bill 1? Yes, I think that that is a helpful approach. That is something that we've done in the past in bills. Obviously, one of the disadvantages of the strategies and the bills is that it needs to be flexible and not too prescriptive, but I'll take your point on consultation. I think that if you put a list of people or any list on the face of a bill and you want to add anything to it or subtract from it, then you've got to amend the legislation which is cumbersome. I think that I would share Roderick Campbell's view that we keep it flexible. We have taken a view in the past, as trade unions, that if you keep that list relatively tight and talk about people who are absolutely key to be consulted, that does create an impetus to consult those key people. It also doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have a clause that says, on anyone else, you find appropriate. At the end, but we have done this in other bills and we have found out a very useful clause that has helped the actual creation of policy in the longer term. Thank you, that's helpful. Thank you. Alison Falle by John Falle by Eileen. Christiana, you've explored much of what I wanted to discuss, but perhaps be interested in GLAs. Mr Broadbent, in your response to the STUC's claim that it would be beneficial to expand the remit of the organisation. It's a question that I get asked on a regular basis. As a public servant, the official line would be that we have enough to do within the GLA regulator sector. However, what I am aware of is that we only regulate a third of the temporary labour market in the UK. That would be agriculture, fish and food processing only, so not fishing. If it lays on the sea bed and it's dragged up where it's regulated, if it's swimming in the sea it's not, and that is an anomaly, I feel. We certainly don't cover construction, renovation, warehousing, care homes and the like. To go back to Mr Allard's point, I haven't seen a marked increase in exploitation in the GLA regulated sector. That's not to say that there hasn't been an increase in exploitation in areas that we don't regulate. Often, where we find information of exploitation in areas that we don't regulate, we need to pass that on. We do quickly to the police or other authorities that they can make investigations. One frustration I do have is that if someone is GLA compliant in our sector abiding by our rules, our standards, but sometimes a licensed gangmaster will operate a different business model outside of the GLA regulated sector, which if it was in our sector would fail our standards. That's a concern. I appreciate that you say that you've got quite enough to do, but would it make sense, rather than setting up a separate regulator for other industries, to draw on the experience that your organisation has and to expand that organisation, providing the resources that are there to do that? It would, yes. That's a matter for the UK. Is there any prospect of it? I haven't followed this in Westminster. Is there any prospect of these gaps or extending the remit of the GLA? The conversations are taking place in committees such as this across the UK, but nothing firm is being put down at all. Thank you very much. We might want to pursue that if the committee does by writing to the Justice Committee at Westminster and see what they're going to do about it. John Fall by Leane. Good morning, panel. Thank you both for your evidence. I'm aware of what the convener said, Ms Martin, there, as I understood it, the abusive labour, generally, you were seen as something that, if properly addressed, could in some way be part of a preventive process. Is that correct? Yes, that's exactly it. From our point of view, we're reasonably clear that where you start to see trafficking or start to hear reports of trafficking or workers held in different forms of bonded labour or having their passports taken off them, really poor, quite worrying abuses is in the sorts of places where you're already seeing quite abusive practices happening. Those sorts of things tend to be associated with companies that have quite long supply chains, that use quite a lot of temporary labour, that use quite poor models of contracts and where minimum wage abuses are known to happen either legally or illegally. I know from your evidence that you prefer a statutory basis to address some of those issues. You also referred to something called the ethical trading initiative. Can you expand a bit on that and what role of any it could play in addressing some of the factors that we're talking about? The ethical trading initiative is an organisation that brings together trade unions and employers. It has an international stand-in. It looks at how labour markets function around the world and it has created what's known as the base code, which sets down a list of principles that employers would have to follow in order to make sure that they are treating their workforce fairly and to make sure that they are providing products that get sold then into the UK that don't come with a lot of exploitation attached to them. It's a reasonably good model in that it provides a template of what you would actually require a company to do, the sorts of checks that they would have to follow in order to make sure that they aren't abusing their workforce or inadvertently taking contracts from other people who are abusing their workforce. It's a part of a much wider movement that we're seeing at the minute around human rights and business. That is something that the UK Government has signed up to and Scotland should be enacting things around human rights and business, which means that businesses are responsible for what happens in their wider supply chain. Supermarkets, for example, would be responsible for what happens in the food processing sector. Hotels would be responsible for what's happening to the workers who are potentially cleaning their rooms or coming in and doing services in the hotel but they aren't directly employed by the hotel. It means that all of a sudden you can't just say, well, I took the cheapest contract and I never thought why it was the cheapest. All of a sudden a business has a responsibility to look at what's actually happening within their supply chains and to make sure that they're upholding human rights. Ultimately what we're talking about when we're talking about slavery is the complete breach of someone's human rights, the complete breach of their freedom of movement, their freedom of dignity. That is a really important issue and we need to recognise the fact that employers and businesses are legitimate actors to place requirements on to. As the Scottish Government you will have limited powers in that respect. A lot of those powers sit with Westminster but we're seeing within the modern slavery bill the supply chains clause, which gives a legislative footing that does apply in Scotland. There are other things that the Scottish Government could potentially do around procurement that could mean that we could start to use those sorts of tools. It's not an easy answer, it's not simple but we could start to think about how we could do that as a Government and how we could enact our requirements under the business and human rights legislation that's coming from the UN. If I can come to you Mr Broadband, in your evidence that is mentioned made of the supplier retail protocol, that's the same sort of philosophy isn't it? Has that been successful as there are any plans to roll it out further? Yes, it has been successful. It started off as a supermarket protocol with the big six then it went to the big ten. That was in 2010. In 2013 we distilled that down a minute more focused into two parts of the supply chain. We licensed the gang masters who are the labour providers but what we focused on with the protocol was the labour user, the people who actually pulled the product out of the ground and the retailer. That has developed and evolved into now some accredited training between the GLA, the ethical trading initiative and the University of W can provide the trained accreditation and there are a number of supermarkets who are literally queuing up to buy that accredited training which takes one step further than raising awareness. It actually trains people in spotting the signs, securing best evidence without putting themselves or the workers at risk and then presenting that to authorities who can then go on and investigate. The most crucial issue about that training is to put in place systems and structures to prevent people from infiltrating legitimate supply chains in the first place, thus preventing exploitation at the very first point. It's much more prevent based than it is reactionary identifying things when they've already taken place. I have to say again and sometimes it's quitting members. I mean this is all good background, I don't want to stifle it but we have to focus on and I understand all the interlocking legislation. We have to focus on the bill and how this will assist and if it's needed but the failures are within it with regard to the limits of the legislation here and whether it can be amended. I do want us to continue, committee, to focus on the bill itself and whether there are clauses that deal with it or don't deal with it and conflicts if we may do that from now on, please. I would ask you about something that's not in the bill actually. If it is a recommendation that the STUC makes, Ms Martin, that you criticise the bill for not containing provision for the criminalisation of the purchase of sex and you made reference to that earlier on and you make reference to what you said, the Nordic model where the purchase of sex is criminalised but the sale of sex is decriminalised and you also make reference to the Trafficking and Explitation Act in Northern Ireland, which does have a clause. It criminalises the purchase of sex and you say that there is little to stop a clause that criminalises the purchase of sex being included in this bill. The problem, I suppose, for the committee is that it's not and that we've therefore not been able to take evidence on what would be a fairly significant change, a change through which I'm actually personally very sympathetic. Do you think that it is straightforward that you could bring it in at stage 2 or does it require a greater degree of consultation given the nature of the change? I personally believe that you could bring it in at stage 2 as an amendment and I think that it would be perfectly reasonable for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether they want a clause of that nature. In my view, I think that there's no real reason not to have a clause of this nature given that it has been shown in other countries to reduce trafficking, so it does have a clear fit within this bill. It's also not a massive change in the law as the law stands at present. At the law stands at present, prostitution is illegal, it is something that we don't want within our society, we are agreed upon that. That is a change of emphasis on the law rather than the change of law itself, in that it means that we are still trying to make prostitution illegal, we are just changing where the burden for that illegality lies, from the prostitute to the client. For me, when you think about who is involved in prostitution and when you bring it through a trafficking lens as well, the vulnerability of those people who are involved in prostitution is so great that this bill already has provisions about not criminalising the victim, that I think that it makes sense to change where the criminal responsibility lies under the person who is coming out of their workplace quite happy in the evening and using their hard-earned cash to abuse women and children. I'm personally very sympathetic to the arguments, I'm just concerned that it might be a bit wider than the bill about human trafficking and that provision would be a bit wider than the scope of the bill. It is wider, it is, because it would affect all prostitution, but as I say, prostitution is already illegal, this is something that we already have a view on as a society, so in my view I don't think that it's inconsistent from how we should be approaching trafficking within our society, and this is consistent as well with my evidence on the labour side, that this is something that we should try to tackle in the round using every lever that we have possible. The convener is quite rightly trying to give me evidence on the bill and this is an area where the bill could be changed and it is in our power to do so and it would potentially disrupt the market for traffickers and make us a much less welcoming place for traffickers, a much more hostile destination for traffickers is maybe the better way to put it and it would ultimately defend vulnerable women. I think that the issue that my colleague is making is that at stage 2 there is a limit to evidence that can be taken on what might be arguably a far-range, whatever your views are on it and that it might be difficult to do it at stage 2 in the bill and as I understand in Northern Ireland it came in at the end of last year, don't know the impact of that, whether it's been successful or driven underground or whatever, we just don't know. I think it's a big issue, it doesn't mean to say that it's not worthy of dealing with, I think the concern might be and I don't know if other committee members have a view on that but we'll no doubt discuss it when we come to deal with our reports whether or not it could be dealt with within the ambit of what we have before us and at this stage. That's just the issue for us I think. Gil, you want to come in here? It wasn't on that but I would like to say that I would think that the committee would need some more substantial evidence before we could do anything in reality. I know a lot of people are sympathetic to that. I personally am not for different reasons, not that I support prostitution but I'm concerned about other areas where it may thrive underground. It's something that's been going on since men and women were born so I really worry about that. It makes it more difficult to reach people who really need help when you drive underground and you're unable to expose it. That's more a comment but the question is more on the bill itself. The fundamental question, I know that the STUCs get concerns with the definition and in that regard I would like some comment on that but I know that we have written evidence, we haven't had anyone before us but we have written evidence from the Crown Office, the Faculty of Advocates and the Bar Association so that illegal beavers seem to at least be content if not supportive. I'd be grateful for your comments in that regard. Yes, I, through the course of doing my work on human trafficking have had a lot of discussions with various organisations including lawyers who specialise in this area and there was a sort of consensus view coming through that there was some concern around the focus on the word travel within the definition in article 1 and that it didn't completely cover the article 4 European Directive definition and basically the STUC's position was that, I think to be clear, the intention of the bill is to cover the entire article 4 definition because they try and tie up different elements of it in different ways later in the bill but the STUC's view was quite a simple one in that it is important to get the definition right. It's important that the definition is clear because the last thing we want to do is pass legislation and then spend a lot of time trying to pull back and saying oh no but it means this or it means that when it goes out into the world and gets interpreted. It seems to me anyway that if you have a clear definition at a European level that people are agreed on and people think is a good definition, why is that not put into this bill just as it is so that we all know where we stand and we all know that it covers the entire definition? I'm grateful for that. I'm convinced of that, the emphasis on travel is misplaced. I think we've sort of come to that pretty early on with the evidence. Now Jane, I know you say it's got nothing to do with the bill but I'm hoping there's a 10 years link. It's based on some responses that have been made this morning. I was wanting to go back to the GLA licensing scheme and I want to know how Labour providers are assessed to get a licence, how specific are the criteria, how specific are the standards. Is there a lot of reasonable or are there actual things that Labour providers have to demonstrate? What evidence do you take? How do you know that Labour providers are actually meeting the standards that they claim to meet and how is that monitored? Is it a one-off demonstration of those standards or do you go back and do spot checks? How is it regulated? You spoke about Labour providers in unregulated sectors behaving quite badly. I just wonder how much evasiveness or how much avoiding of the standards goes on. That is excellent. Two different processes. One is the application for a licence and either a new company or an entirely new company or a company who already operates in a different area of supply labour will ask for a licence. There are a number of thresholds to be met, which includes enquiries with all the other government agencies. You would imagine a number of other checks and that will involve a physical site visit as well to go and look. Sometimes, if it is a new business, all you see is an empty room. If it is an existing business, there is much more to go with. The threshold needs to be met. Essentially, it all revolves around two specific things. One is that the licence holder, because it is issued to a particular person, is fit and proper to hold a licence. The second issue is based around, and we are in the process of reviewing the GLA licensing standards, that we believe that that person will adhere to the GLA licensing standards, which includes the international labour organisation indicators on forced labour, that they won't withhold wages, restrict movements and other things. That is the application. Someone has a licence and we then conduct compliance inspections, which are entirely intelligence-led. What we do not do is random checks. What we do not do is to decide to visit everybody two or three years because people know that we are coming. We will work exclusively off adverse intelligence received, that there may be something like withholding of wages, holiday pay, millions of pounds of withheld from workers at this moment in time, which appears low level until you realise the money involved and the interest that can be made even now with interest rates from that money withheld. It could start there right up to. It could be a piece of information that people are kept in outhouses in substandard accommodation with no water and electric and are being forced to work for pence for day or maybe not as much as that. We will do either individually on our own, anounced or unannounced inspection, or we could be there with HMRC, the police or anybody else that can assist us with our inquiries. If there is immediate threat to life when we receive that or risk to life, we will action that straight away with the police and go around and rescue people. We are a first responder in relation to rescuing victims of human trafficking and we do that on a regular basis. More generally, we will go around and conduct a compliance inspection against the 38 standards that we have, which are part of the gangmasters licensing regulations. Any one of those could be contravened and some have different scores, but a total of 30 points could result in the revocation of a licence. That is clear. The industry knows it and that is the bar with which they cannot go over. There could be a number of minor standards that are breached that are just really process and procedure. It could be that passports have been withheld by the gangmaster. That is restriction of movement that could end up in a revocation of the licence and put in the business out of business. We are very mindful that, when we revoke a licence, we could immediately make a number of workers jobless and homeless. We work with the industry, helping them to find jobs and accommodation with other labour providers. We do not take any draconian action such as that in isolation. Focusing on the workers and the victims is absolutely key to what we do. There is nothing in the bill that gets in the way of you performing those functions. Is there anything in the bill that would strengthen those functions or make your work easier? There is nothing in the bill that gets in the way, thank you very much. In respect of some of the other aggravating factors, we have done a job recently where a number of female workers, if they did not acquiesce to the unlicensed gangmaster, had three choices. One was to enter into a sham marriage, enter into prostitution or donate an organ. Donate being the loose word. Those were the three difficult choices that those people were given to work with that organised crime group. Of course they chose the sham marriage. There are another raft of aggravating factors out there that will change all the time as criminals become more entrepreneurial. It is keeping a weather eye on what those trends are to make sure that we can identify them quickly and effectively. That's very interesting. Thank you very much. Do the police have a database in Scotland of the licensed gangmasters in Scotland so that if a report comes to them from a member of the public with concerns, the police can check whether or not they're licensed by themselves and maybe breaching it or unlicensed and it's a criminal offence or there's criminality going on? At this point in time, police Scotland don't but what we have is an officer embedded in Garkosh who works alongside the police all the time so actually there's no need for that because it comes in and they've got full access to our database although the database sits with us. If something happens in Scotland, let's say that it's a member of the public that sees something on Caravan's factory behind a high wall and suspects that there's forced labour going on in there, is it the usual route that they would phone the police? What would they do? I'm trying to get something on the record so if somebody suspects something's going on and that they can feel secure in reporting it, how would they go about it? They can ring the police, they can ring crime stoppers, they can ring the GLA, all those three numbers are out there already and by ringing any one of those numbers it will always come back to us. I beg your pardon Christian, I didn't see you coming in again. If I may, I just wanted to add something. For Miss Martin, you talked about an anti-slavery commissioner having a Scottish one. Would you think the same thing for the GLA? Would you think that maybe you could have a Scottish GLA? We proposed that in the past, I think that it depends on whether it would be compatible with the remit of the Scottish Parliament but if it was possible to do so we would be extremely keen to do that because then we could do what we wanted in terms of what industries it covered and those sorts of things. Certainly inspection and regulation is the sort of thing that can be devolved and we have looked at that in other areas such as health and safety. I think that it's hugely important that we get to grips with the fact that the GLA does a very good job in certain sectors but there is a lot of abuse potentially happening in other sectors. We are extremely concerned about the maritime procession sector. We do think that there are abuses happening there and those are not being covered by the GLA at the minute. We are working with the maritime authorities in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and the Republic but that is on an advisory capacity because we have no jurisdiction and no powers there. I'm just saying that the committee could probably write to the UK Government and ask whether there's any proposals to extend your remit to encapsulate the other areas that are not met currently under the three headings that you have. I don't know if the committee would want us to just do that to see if there's any proposals as it links in with our exploitation. Thank you very much. I'll suspend just for a couple of minutes to allow witnesses to change places. I'm going to call you a panel of one but don't be frightened. Iain Crum, Shou-Yard. Iain Crumston, director of the national crime agency, organised crime command, UK human trafficking centre and I can say to members who are aware, we also invited immigration enforcement at the home office to attend this panel but they are unable to send a representative as they are involved in the modern slavery bill considered at Westminster today. I think it's a bit disappointing to understand why but it's disappointing given the key role in relation to immigration and how sometimes it conflated with trafficking. I can discuss later with you whether we want to pursue this and have witnesses from there in front of us. I'm going straight to questions from members. I look around and hope, John. Thank you. Good morning, Mr Kirkson. What is the extent to which the problem of human trafficking's link to immigration makes the issue difficult to deal with for a number of agencies, yourself included? Certainly on occasions there are real difficulties with people, as the convener mentioned, conflating the two issues. We recognise that organised immigration crime is one of the ways in which it provides a rich seam of people who are potentially available for exploitation. From an international perspective, one of the things that we see regularly is people who begin their journey to the UK, to Scotland, often as some form of economic migrant or fleeing a conflict area or something of that nature where they have willingly entered into an agreement with people who will assist them on that journey. Quite often, during the course of that journey, they fall into the hands of people who see them as ripe for exploitation and strip them away from the kind of control over their own lives that they would routinely have. A really important point there around organised immigration crime is absolutely one of the rich fertile grounds by which we see people who ultimately end up exploited, whether on their route to the UK or ultimately within the UK. There is a really important point as well, which we have already touched on in the earlier session, which is around the degree to which people who are already Scottish nationals, UK nationals, have never left the country or are perfectly at liberty to remain within the country, are nevertheless exploited hugely and there are some real vulnerable people, so it's very important that we always make the distinction between the two. Certainly as the national crime agency, as the convener mentioned, I've got the human trafficking centre sits under one of the areas that I've got responsibility for. One of the things that we're doing now is actively seeking to make a clearer distinction between organised immigration crime and the issues around human trafficking and modern slavery but at the same time recognising where there are linkages between them. We heard the terms smuggling and human trafficking. Is that where the status may change or someone may retain that status throughout the time but it's still a crime, is that correct? There's a clear definition in terms of human trafficking, which is the Palermo protocol, which is what we tend to operate to. There are some additional subtleties in terms of the modern slavery bill, in terms of describing some of the categories of people that there is concern may not necessarily automatically fall under the definition of human trafficking. People smuggling is a different issue where the language I've used in the past is that in some of the other areas of criminality that I have responsibility for, the commodity that is moved is agnostic, so drugs, firearms are areas that I also have responsibility for. They don't have an opinion, they don't have an attitude, they don't have a desire to hide or they're not coerced or bullied or subject to having their support mechanism stripped away. The real difference with this is the distinction between when the commodity is a person, so people smuggling from that perspective we see as people who are willingly entering into a journey as opposed to people who are human trafficking when they are used very much as a commodity. Clearly, it's important that this is done on an international basis. This Parliament will legislate but it's important that the legislation dovetails with elsewhere in the UK, the European Union and indeed beyond. Are you content that that is the case with this legislation? Yes, we believe that the legislation works very comfortably alongside both the legislation of the modern slavery bill and also the way in which we work with our international partners. There's extensive co-operation both at the European level, with Europol and the impact projects in respect of this. The National Crime Agency manages an international liaison officer network worldwide, which is one of the niche and unique capabilities that we provide for Scotland. Through that, you are able to access our international network, both in terms of securing intelligence, getting operational activity under way and also on occasions launching joint operations with international partners. There's a really important relationship there. Of course, as always, there is more that we could do. Nevertheless, we have significantly realigned resources over the last couple of years to ensure that we are now starting to place people into geographical locations worldwide, which traditionally we may not have done based on an improved understanding around the nature of human trafficking. Can I ask about the specific distinction of Scots law and, in particular, law in relation to children? Are you content that, for instance, your organisation is sufficiently versed to understand the different approach that's taken to the wellbeing of children, legislative framework? Which particular aspect, sorry? Well, in the past, for instance, issues around ungable and people being placed there, juvenile being placed there, that's no longer the case. It is the case south, elsewhere in the UK. Are your staff versed on the different approach that's taken to children? I'd have to come back to you on that point, I'm afraid. I don't have the detail around that, sorry. I just want to take you back to the idea willingly. It's a very tricky distinction to make between somebody who agrees to be smuggled into a country and somebody who is... I'll keep with the coming from outside, although I agree with the difficulties that the definition is trafficked. Because in the bill it says quite frankly at one subsection two, it's irrelevant whether the other person consents to any party of the arrangement because one of the issues that arose with us when we visited and we went out and the other visits was the person may not think they're being trafficked for we would looking outside but because of the nature of their experience elsewhere they think that this is fine, it's okay, their criteria is very different. It must make it complex, therefore, to distinguish between... I know you try to say the transition but it may be that in fact that person... I think one of the issues we raised when I was with Alison McInnes at Bernardo's was trying to get someone to see that that's exactly what had happened to them. They didn't see that as their journey and then it took a lot of them to understand they'd actually been trafficked and exploited. So I think it's difficult, is it not, to draw lines and say... And that's what makes the conflation difficult sometimes to disentangle as well. Convenie, you're absolutely right. Apologise if my slightly sloppy language in terms of... No, no, I just... Clearly there are some instances where we can see that an individual, a family group, actually pay formally to be moved from one location to another. In those kind of circumstances it's hard to not assess that in those instances people have actually entered into some kind of a willing engagement relationship with the people who may well be managing that transition. But you're absolutely right. There is huge complexity in this. We have real difficulties on occasions persuading people many weeks and months after they come into contact with either the National Crime Agency, police service or others in the victim support arena. That the people who have, from our perspective, exploited them and trafficked them are anything other than friends, the people who have acted as a support mechanism for them because they may not have had experience of that kind of a relationship previously in their lives. It is hugely complex. Thank you, Rodrink. Morning. The UK Human Trafficking Centre is a competent authority for the purposes of the national referral mechanism. That's obviously been subject to a review and recommendation using multi-disciplinary panels replacing the role of your agency. Are you able to help us with your comments on how it's been working up to now and what your view is on where we go from here in that respect? Okay. Rather than replacing the agency, a little bit of the history around this was that back in 2009 the responsibilities around human trafficking moved to the then serious organised crime agency. With that, it was identified that there was a requirement to start to record those instances when we came into contact with potential victims of trafficking. As a result, we self-resourced the creation of the national referral mechanism and the infrastructure that went with that. Over the past few years, we have had to continually supplement the resourcing in there, actually from operational resources just to continue to handle what has been an increasing volume of referrals year on year. So that's been some of the history to it. Within the review, what we have made by way of our submission from an operational perspective to the Home Office who led the review was that this was predominantly the national referral mechanism as it currently operates is predominantly an administrative process. It isn't an intelligence process. It isn't designed to be an intelligence process. And as such, our submission was that that is something which would be better handled by the Home Office or another organisation that was better prepared and equipped to deal with that so that actually we could get on with the law enforcement aspect of this, of trying to identify, tackle the traffickers sitting behind this and bring those people to justice and also to assist in preventing other people falling into the hands of those individuals. So that was the submission and that was the basis on which the review heard evidence from the national crime agency. There's been a range of recommendations on the back of that and you're quite right that the proposal around creation of multidisciplinary panels is the preferred recommendation in terms of the way forward. So our intention is that that will at some stage still to be determined transfer away from the national crime agency to the Home Office. And at that stage we are anticipating reinvesting the resources that we currently tie up doing the referral mechanism and that are currently resourcing that. We're seeking to reinvest those into our intelligence development to identify more and tackle more organised crime groups. In the sense that you talked about the mechanism being administrative rather than intelligence based, without wishing to draw you on policy issues, is there a significant problem in therefore having a Scottish national referral mechanism or administrative unit? I think that is a policy decision but nevertheless I think the only thing that I would say is we have a really, really good relationship with the national human trafficking unit in Police Scotland. That works incredibly well. At the moment they utilise the services of the national referral mechanism. Anything that would seek to reduce the effectiveness of that relationship I think would need to be looked at long and hard. And also the ability of us to draw down on the analysis of what is happening within human trafficking has been a powerful contributor to the journey that we've been on over the last few years. We've been able to do that because we've been able to compare figures like for like over a range of periods. If there were to be duplication or a shift in the nature of the analysis it would mean that we'd start to lose some of the distinction around that. So it may well be that it's the right decision. That clearly is a policy decision. But I would just cancel that anything that does has to improve what we're doing currently as opposed to just changing it. Are there new evidence that you made reference to the fact that you used the definition of trafficking contained in article 4 of the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention? Am I correct there? This bill has a different definition and other witnesses have suggested that it should be amended to reflect the Council of Europe Convention's definition. Do you think that that would be your view that it should replicate what's ahead in the convention? We found the benefit of it replicating the European standard being one that in terms of unlocking international cooperation you are aligning it to something which is readily acknowledged, identified and often embedded in statutes in countries around the world. So rather than arguing about the nuance of specific new words or new phrases that might be introduced, you're actually already adopting a standard that people readily recognise and understand. So that's been our experience of it. We certainly in the discussions around the modern slavery bill, our advice from an operational perspective was not to complicate by trying to alter and create a new definition in respect to modern slavery. Of course we did acknowledge at the same time that that was ultimately a policy decision but the slavery bill as it stands currently does not seek to redefine that. We've also heard concerns and in fact you've referred to the fact that people can be trafficked without travelling and that travel is not necessarily a part of trafficking and yet this bill does seem to in its definition focus on travel. If it was reworded in the way that you suggest, would that no longer be a concern? Would that actually mean that the definition was more encompassing and could recognise the fact that people could be trafficked from within Scotland for example? We've always taken the view that the wider definition, the European definition actually is sufficiently broad that you can utilise the same definition to define those individuals that might not geographically move around, might not cross a land boundary but may for example pass through the hands of different individuals who might be seeking to exploit people. So yes, we believe that that covers it. Would that in any way assist with the conflation of the issues with immigration? Would that be of assistance to have a... We did assist in terms of decoupling it with. I mean there's to be concerns raised about the conflation of trafficking with immigration issues. Actually would that definition actually help to decouple that? I think it does because it very clearly doesn't specifically make reference to borders and boundaries. Margaret, you've covered the aspect that you deal really with enforcement. NRM is essentially administration but is there an issue about establishing the credibility of the person in front of you in order to establish if NRM kicks in the support is available? Is there a timeframe within this where you have to establish that when the victim is maybe quite confused in a vulnerable state? Are these issues of concern to you? The current national referral mechanism works on the basis of a five-day timeframe for establishing reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person is a victim of trafficking and then a 45-day timeframe for providing conclusive grounds. The information for that is provided from the referring organisation, first responder organisations, police forces and others. Those are the timeframe. The five-day one is something that we in particular are very strong on ensuring that we meet because that's the point at which if we identify that somebody is, we believe on those reasonable grounds, a victim of trafficking or potential victim of trafficking rather, that's the point at which it unlocks the victim support mechanisms, et cetera, so we can make sure that that person has moved to a place of safety and looked after in that way. The 45-day threshold is more challenging for us. Some of the more horrendous cases that we see, it can take 45 days for a victim to even start to speak. That's something that is much more challenging, but by then, at least, we can be confident that we've got the right support mechanisms around them and the victim support in place. I think that I'm correct to say, however, that it's a paper exercise. I think that I would have concerns that, on paper, somebody might sound very much like they've come here as an illegal migrant, but in fact they are traffickers. I don't know whether it's practical to do this, but being able to see somebody and speak to them makes a huge difference to what's on a bit of paper. Is that an issue? You're correct that it is a paper exercise. It's conducted on it. It's a very detailed breakdown of information that is presented both at the initial phase and at the subsequent phase, so there is a lot of information that goes in there. Of course, in some instances, it would be fantastic to sit down with the individual, but if you couldn't do that for every single person, then you would immediately be interested. Did you do it for anybody? Not at that stage, I don't believe, but I'll confirm for definite and come back to you if that is the case. So who fills in the form? Who fills it in? The people who come into contact with the potential victim of trafficking, so whether that's a police force, approved governmental body or the first responder organisations, they complete what is a very comprehensive form. Of course, the person who is believed to be the victim of trafficking has to give their consent as well to enter into the national referral mechanism. That could be difficult if I've not got English as a language. I wanted just to pursue this a bit further about, is there an approved list of people who can refer? There is an approved list. Are organisations who deal with voluntary sector, third sector, deal with victims of trafficking and exploitation? Are they people who fill in these forms? In many instances, yes, they are. It's quite useful to know the list because I think we did have some criticism of the national referral mechanism in that it was a bit of a paper exercise and that people fall through because it's that. They're not identified, as I said earlier, with John Finnie, when people don't consider they've been trafficked, but sometimes spent talking. I don't mean to do it with everybody. There may be black and white cases, but absolutely there's not an issue here. They've come in this or obviously. But there must be people very vulnerable who don't have any English as a language, who really are being done a disservice perhaps by what we do, by putting them through that and treating them as a legal matter, and they are indeed being trafficked and not aware of it. As I said, from what we went in our meeting, it was obvious that it took months sometimes for people to appreciate what's happened across several continents. I mean, we saw one trail, I think, I'm correct, that was over two years a person being moved. I want to keep the travel of it being moved. No idea that they were, as you might have said, being used as a commodity across it. I would quite like, I think, on behalf of the committee, to have a list of those organisations who are referred to the national referral mechanism. Now, if anybody else wants to come in on that particular point, but I think that that was something that was of Callas and you want to see, because you were there, and that was something I think you felt too. I agree with what you can hear. Yes. Aro is on the list and they were very keen to look at the 45-day window frame, which they thought was inadequate, and also the issue of consent having spoken with a trafficked person. It was quite clear that she had no idea what the national referral mechanism was, so that must raise huge questions about how effective it is. Christian Isant, you wanted to come in. I just wanted to add to it as well, but it's not only vulnerability because of languages, it's vulnerability as well. I don't know how much there is an assessment made to know if people have got learning disabilities, for example. Clearly we can't assess that the first time we come into contact with people and first responders can't, but part and parcel of putting the appropriate victim support alongside people actually does take account of a range of different issues. For us, that's managed in England and Wales by the Salvation Army. I understand that in Scotland it's dealt with by TAR in respect of sexual exploitation and migrant help for other types. There is a range of support functions in there, and depending on the nature of the activity, some of our pre-planned operations, we're very clear what we're going into in terms of language requirements and other things. It's more tricky when you first come into contact with someone where you weren't expecting it. A part of it I wanted to know, is that document with the questions which you make your assessment, I would love to have the details of it and particularly if there are questions about the ability of the person to be able to respond to this questionnaire. Is it more online? I don't believe it's online. It would be useful if it is. I'm told it is. Sorry, it is. I see the sport. I think we'll look into this. Anything further you can give, particularly with the list of organisations in Scotland that are designated to refer and the process, a little bit more about it, would be very useful to the committee. Certainly there is an approved list of organisations. Is that yet online, or is that online too? Right, we can find that for ourselves. It's all on the Home Office website. No other questions. Thank you very much Mr Croxton. That concludes this evidence session. We now move into private session, as agreed previously. Thank you very much.