HC Deb 10 March 1993 vol 220 cc1080-6

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Patnick.]

2.2 am

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley)

We move from Plymouth to Thailand. Despite the late hour, this is an important debate and I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise the subject. It would have been debated much earlier but for some of the most appalling antics that I have seen in the House since I was elected on 9 April 1992.

The fact that this is an important issue has been recognised by the very fact that 138 Members of Parliament have signed early-day motion 1168 on sex tourism in Thailand, asking that action should be taken to stamp it out.

This is my first Adjournment debate. I could have chosen almost any subject—perhaps one closer to my home of the Ribble valley rather than something that is going on in Thailand many miles away. However, I am grateful to have this opportunity to air such an important subject tonight. I know that many people will read the report of this debate in Hansard in days to come and will take heed of what I and the Minister have to say.

The whole issue is enmeshed in corruption, drugs, violence, power and perversion. Sex tourism is big money. It is seedy and sordid. It is the perverted preying on the poor. A whole generation is in danger of being wiped out by AIDS.

Thousands of women and children are involved. Independent estimates vary from between 200,000 and 800,000 children being involved in prostitution. That is an astounding figure. Even the much lower estimate of 30,000 child prostitutes that the Government hide behind is amazing.

Children as young as seven years of age have been involved in prostitution in Thailand, and with AIDS rife in the area, sex tourism is not just a carefree fling but a death sentence for thousands in the region.

Thailand has always been tarred with the reputation of easy sex, but it is now scarred with child exploitation and forced prostitutes. How do the young become involved in that lethal trade? Money inevitably has a role, but so have absolute poverty and the lack of education.

Some parents feel forced to sell their children into prostitution, to raise money to fund their drug addiction. The Thai Government have come down hard on foreigners who try to smuggle drugs into the country. I only wish that they would come down equally hard on foreigners visiting Thailand to prey on the children of that country.

Villages in the north are being depopulated. Those villages are poor, and have nothing to offer their young. Consequently, those youngsters are attracted by the bright lights of the south, just as youngsters are attracted to cities in any other part of the world. Eventually, those young people are sucked into child prostitution.

Parents in the north see the opportunity to raise lump sums—money that they could otherwise only dream about —by selling their children into prostitution. The money is spent on drugs or on the consumer products that they covet. That gives rise to the prospect of pimps moving in.

There is a premium on young children. Some visitors to Thailand naively imagine that child prostitutes will not have AIDS. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whereas older prostitutes may resist certain perverted practices, younger children will not. HIV passes more easily through the blood stream than anything else, so if bleeding takes place—and the chances are that it will with young children—the virus will be transmitted.

That leads in turn to another problem. Those who have contracted diseases are compelled to borrow money from pimps to pay for hospital treatment. They find themselves locked into a life style and hooked by their pimps for the foreseeable future.

Tourism in Thailand has boomed in recent years. In the 1960s only 180,000 visited the country on holiday. Today, the figure is 5 million. Rice used to be Thailand's big earner, but now tourism is the No. 1 earner—and the foreign exchange it generates is extremely valuable.

In 1980, the then deputy Prime Minister, Boonchoo Rojanasthian, spoke at a national conference of provincial governors and urged them to boost tourist numbers by encouraging certain entertainments, which some of you may find disgusting and embarrassing because they are related to sexual pleasure. That is an amazing declaration from a deputy Prime Minister, but those were his words. As tourism increased, so did the sex trade.

The supply of Thai children for sex is supplemented by children from Burma, Laos and China, where sex tourism is seen as a means of escaping from the poverty of their home economies. Kidnapping goes on as well, to ensure a constant supply of young people to the area. In the 1980s, when one of the brothels was burnt down, the bodies of five young children were discovered handcuffed to beds. This appalling traffic of flesh and blood meets the demands of paedophiles from the west. We export our perverts to prey on innocent children.

Some of the children who try to escape from their brothel prisons are beaten and tortured, and some are killed. Some are drugged to make them compliant. Sudrat S. Srisang, the project consultant of the ecumenical coalition on third-world tourism, has stated: consumption of sexual favours has become so open and crude that the demand for new varieties of sexual fantasy inevitably arises. Engaging in acts of intercourse with minors has become the rage. There are the pimps on the make; the compliant parents with topsy-turvy values, who sell their kith and kin for a lump sum; and a system that outlaws such acts—for they are against the law in Thailand—but is only too willing to turn a blind eye to their continuation. There are collusions between some local police and politicians—parasites on the people. It is a gruesome corruption, of which children are the victims. Even the Thai Prime Minister, Chuan Leekpai, noted in a speech last year that the problem of child prostitution stemmed from the collusion of police officials with influential local figures.

Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point)

Will my hon. Friend join our own Prime Minister in condemning child pornography, which promotes the activity that he is describing?

Mr. Evans

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Like my hon. Friend and many other hon. Members, I visited the exhibition of pornography that was held in the House not long ago, and I was amazed at some of the things that I saw: I had never thought that such things went on. Unfortunately, they lead to the perversion and corruption of people, some of whom then go out to Thailand to satisfy their desires.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury)

Is not the key problem with child pornography in this country the fact that, although there are heavy penalties for trafficking, the penalty for possession is still only a modest fine? It is not an arrestable offence.

Mr. Evans

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I know that he feels very strongly about the subject; he has spoken about it in the House many times.

Mr. Michael Bates (Langbaurgh)

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for bringing the matter to the House's attention. Many of us were previously unaware of this horrid and depraved practice, and we are immensely grateful to him: Parliament is well served by his action.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that this matter is being debated at such a late hour is entirely due to petty practices on the part of Opposition Members? Given that they knew that matters of such gravity would be discussed later, it is deplorable that they should choose to focus on other issues.

Mr. Evans

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that he fights very hard to raise the moral values that, unfortunately, have fallen so readily in our own country. He has made his point only too well; this debate should indeed have been held a long time ago.

In a letter to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) on 11 February, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office—my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. Goodlad)—hit the nail on the head when he said that the difficulty with the problem was not education but enforcement. As I said earlier, many of the things that go on in Thailand are against the law, but too many people are turning a blind eye to what is happening because there is money to be made.

Unfortunately, some of the children who have been sucked into prostitution are arrested one night and then, on payment of a very small fine to the police, are released the next day and go straight back into child prostitution. Action should be taken to stamp that out.

We are signatories to article 34 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It calls for international co-operation to protect children worldwide from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. This issue—which I believe has appalled so many of us who are here this evening, and many other colleagues who have spoken to me about what is going on in Thailand—ought to be raised at every opportunity by Ministers and officials with the Thai Government.

The Thai Government must beef up their laws. They must also enforce their laws on this abuse. We must give as much assistance as we possibly can to the Thai police and the Thai authorities. Our police expertise should be shared with the Thai authorities. I know that we cannot police the world. Some people say that we are not so good at policing our own country. I believe, however, that we ought to share the knowledge and expertise that we have built up over a long period with the Thai authorities.

One of the first things that we should do is make available to the Thais a list of all known paedophiles so that these perverts can be prevented from going into that country. Germany will probably introduce a law shortly to enable the Germans to try people in Germany who are suspected of having sex with children in another country.

If that becomes law in Germany, can I ask the Minister to monitor what happens there, see whether we can learn from that process and, if so, introduce a similar law in this country? If any of our paedophiles then went to Thailand, got caught and were deported to this country, they could be tried in this country for that offence.

Without any shadow of a doubt, all the agencies—whether they be non-governmental, the Churches, Interpol or the police authorities—need to get together to make a concerted effort to ensure that this depravity and child corruption is stamped out as soon as possible in Thailand. It is an absolute nightmare for the children who live in Thailand at this moment.

The world seems to unite when it comes to tackling the problem of saving the Amazon rain forest. Can we not therefore unite to save the children of Thailand?

2.17 am
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Michael Jack)

It gives me particular pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this very important debate. Apart from it being a very humane and proper subject to discuss, my hon. Friend is also a near parliamentary neighbour of mine, and a fellow colleague from Lancashire. I felt that he did the House a singular service in painting a vivid and moving word picture of this vile trade and by referring to some of the unsavoury and sometimes almost unspeakable things that happen to innocent children who get caught up in this disgusting trade.

In preparing myself for the debate, I watched the "Dispatches" television programme. It provided a singular service by showing vividly just exactly what is involved. My hon. Friend mentioned the recent exhibition, which I too saw. What he may have seen is perhaps not as bad as it can be, in terms of the way that paedophiles use this type of information. I visibly winced when I saw other material of this nature. Therefore, I understand the enormous sensitivities that this issue evokes. The very fact that 138 hon. Members have already signed early-day motion 1361 is a genuine sign of how seriously the House takes this issue.

I was glad that my hon. Friends the Members for Ayr (Mr. Gallie), for Castle Point (Dr. Spink), for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates) were in the Chamber for the debate, and that they lent their support to our hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend rightly mentioned concerted action on a worldwide basis. It is important to put in context article 34 of the United Nations's convention on the rights of the child, which this country ratified in 1991 and which requires parties to take all appropriate national, bilateral, and multilateral measures to prevent:

  1. a. the inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
  2. b. the exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;
  3. c. the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials."
Although we signed up to the resolution, I must say that it is for individual states to determine what measures are appropriate to discharge that commitment, and the convention does not stipulate that extended criminal jurisdiction, which has been mentioned in this regard, must be introduced.

The United Kingdom has not been complacent, but has raised the issue at an international level. Indeed, at last year's Commission on Human Rights, we co-sponsored a resolution implementing a programme of action for the prevention of the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. At last year's United Nations General Assembly, we introduced a resolution on the problem of street children. It was adopted by consensus, and we are following up both resolutions at this year's session of the Commission on Human Rights, which began on 1 February. We have done something solid in taking up the problem.

My hon. Friend mentioned the size of the problem, which is notoriously difficult to predict. Worrying about which figure we choose should not diminish the seriousness of the problem, because if only one child is involved in this vile trade, that is one child too many.

My hon. Friend referred specifically to what was happening in Germany, and rightly suggested that the German Government's action should be monitored. I can give him an assurance that we shall monitor the German Government's action in that regard, but part of the reason they have taken the action they have is that they are constitutionally prohibited from extraditing their own nationals. They are unable to do what we would do, which is to use our own extradition procedures to send anyone charged with such vile crimes in Thailand back to Thailand to face justice there. We would also use the various powers that we have to help in getting evidence if someone were to be extradited. I shall spend a moment talking about the judicial co-operation at our disposal for help in these circumstances.

We have taken steps to aid the enforcement of criminal law where there is an international element. We passed the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990, which specifically enables us to assist criminal investigations in foreign countries by arranging for the service of summonses and other legal documents in this country, for statements to be taken from witnesses or for other evidence to be obtained here. The Act also provides for a person in custody to travel abroad to assist in proceedings and, in certain cases, for the search of premises here and the seizure of documents or other evidence. In that way, we are able to assist other countries to enforce their domestic law but, in the final analysis, the main responsibility must rest with them—in this case, the Thai authorities.

I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall do all we can to assist, but we should not lose sight of the fact that it is for each country to enact its own laws and to ensure that they are properly enforced, a telling point raised by my hon. Friend.

In watching "Dispatches", I took some comfort from the fact that the Thai Prime Minister twice made clear his personal concern about and commitment to dealing with the problem. If our extradition proceedings are to be brought into play, the question of getting evidence and finding persons involved in the vile trade and bringing charges against them is an important first step in the process.

Some people have suggested that we might, for example, do what the Germans do. But in the few moments remaining at my disposal, I must tell my hon. Friend that, if we were to do so, there would be serious problems in evidential terms. He will understand that, in this country, considerable strictures govern the gathering and presentation of evidence in our courts, and it would therefore be difficult to bring cases in the simple way suggested. As I have already said, however, we shall monitor what happens in Germany.

I want to make it clear to the House that, although I have emphasised our work within the United Nations, our efforts to give prominence to the matter do not stop there. The Government have taken extensive steps to ensure that the Thai Government are made fully aware of our concern about the sexual exploitation of children through prostitution. We have emphasised our willingness to assist with prosecutions where appropriate. Our ambassador has made several representations about prostitution to the Thai Prime Minister, and has assured him that his Government is urgently considering ways in which to tackle the problem. In addition, the Thai Government have made public their concern and their resolve to take effective action.

We shall, of course, continue to bring to bear whatever pressure is appropriatre in an effort to ensure that the issue is properly dealt with. The fact that the House is having a debate on the subject should assist that process.

Dr. Spink

Will the Minister take this opportunity to make the public totally aware of the fact that to go abroad and indulge in such activity is illegal and puts people at grave risk, not only from the law in this country and in Thailand, but in terms of AIDS and venereal disease? My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) strongly made that point.

Mr. Jack

My hon. Friend raises an important point, but although a debate such as this, if properly publicised and used, can serve to inform the public, one of the problems is that around the world there is no uniform code on the age bracket at which such offences occur. That is one of the dimensions of the problem involved in bringing people to book in this country for offences that they may have committed abroad, when there are differences between the legal codes. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend makes a valid point, especially with reference to AIDS. My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley, too, drew out that aspect extremely clearly—and anyone who happened to watch the television programmes on the subject could have been left in no doubt about it.

I hope that what I have said in the limited time available has conveyed to my hon. Friend the fact that we take the subject very seriously, and that we shall put the full weight of our extradition procedures and our international co-operation at the disposal of the Thai authorities should they be able to bring charges. But I lay particular emphasis on what we can do to reinforce their resolve to tackle the problem, both through the work that we have undertaken in the United Nations and through the work that our ambassador is doing in Thailand.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend on raising the matter. We shall monitor the situation closely.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Two o'clock.