ECPAT UK has given evidence to the Education Select Committee as part of its inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of the child protection system in the United Kingdom, with particular reference to children who may be victims of trafficking. 

During the Committee’s Third Oral Evidence Session (30 November), ECPAT UK Deputy Director Colin Walker raised a number of critical points that ECPAT UK believes must be addressed in order to prevent the trafficking of children into and within the UK, and to ensure that child victims are given the support they require and are entitled to.

These include:

•    The importance of ensuring that all child victims of trafficking are provided with a single guardian with parental responsibility;
•    Ensuring that children are provided with safe accommodation that is tailored to meet their individual need. Critically, this accommodation has to keep children safe from traffickers and help break the relationship with them and control over them;
•    For the Government to start seeing child trafficking as primarily a child protection issue, and not an immigration one;
•    For frontline workers, such as social workers and police officers, to receive adequate training on child trafficking – this will ensure that they can spot the tell-tale signs that a child has been trafficked and ensure that the child is immediately provided with the support to end their abuse. 

Also giving evidence to the panel were spokespeople from Against Violence and Abuse (AVA), Karma Nirvana and AFRUCA.

The evidence session was chaired by Graham Stuart MP. Other MPs present included Alex Cunningham, Neil Carmichael, Bill Esterson, Pat Glass, Damian Hinds, Charlotte Leslie, Ian Mearns, Tessa Munt, Lisa Nandy and Craig Whittaker.

You can learn more about our work on these issues within our website.  If you wish to see ECPAT UK’s comments in full, you can watch them on Parliament TV.