20. When she will announce pilot areas for the community justice courts. (100533)

The location of the 10 new community justice courts will be announced shortly by the Lord Chancellor.

My constituency has a remarkably sophisticated and well integrated community network, with close co-operation between residents groups and the police. On Friday, I shall chair a meeting involving residents’ groups from the Dyke House, Stranton and Grange areas and various agencies with a view to tackling problems with drugs. Given the strength of my community, will my right hon. and learned Friend press for Hartlepool to be a pilot area for a community justice court?

The Lord Chancellor will announce details of the new community justice courts shortly, but I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has been doing in this area, about which he told the House in a debate in June. He is right to point out that the police and other agencies have done a great deal of work with community organisations. Generally speaking, people feel that the courts have yet to come to the party in that respect, and they still need to see how the courts are involved in the delivery of justice. I take my hon. Friend’s point, and there will be an announcement shortly.

Will the Minister explain the difference between a community magistrates court and a community justice court? Would it not have been better for the Government to fund the Crown Prosecution Service so that it could serve magistrates courts properly rather than creating havoc in Macclesfield with the new listing system, which is opposed by magistrates, solicitors, police and everyone involved in the delivery of local justice? I have written to the right hon. and learned Lady, but have not yet received the courtesy of a reply.

I am looking into the situation in Macclesfield and will write to the hon. Gentleman shortly, although the Government have greatly increased the resources going to the CPS. Community justice builds on the best work of magistrates, but there are some additional elements. In the Liverpool community justice centre, for example, local community organisations played a role in choosing the judge, who attends the sort of community reference groups that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) described. I believe that the community has a role in making proposals to the court about unpaid work sentences. In that way, the people who suffer from crime will be able to be paid back.

From her visit to Plymouth earlier this year, my right hon. and learned Friend will know that there is a good relationship between councillors and the local community safety partnership. Given our track record in successfully using antisocial behaviour orders, dispersal orders and so on, will she consider setting up community justice courts in Plymouth?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work with her colleagues in Plymouth and with all the agencies. It involves not only the police, the prosecutors and the courts but the voluntary sector and local authorities. There is a strong mood in the House, and we strongly back it, that the courts, while maintaining their strong independence and judging each case individually, must demonstrate more clearly that they understand the preoccupations of the community, and deliver justice accordingly.

21. What plans there are for the review of the rules governing the commercial court. (100534)

There are no specific plans to review the rules governing the commercial court. The commercial court users committee is expected to launch a standing sub-committee shortly to make recommendations for changes to the commercial court guide and for improving compliance with the existing terms of that guide.

I am sure that the Minister will agree that the commercial court has been an outstanding success, contributing huge amounts to Britain’s balance of payments through invisible exports. However, there is concern that it is not working as well as it might, and that this will jeopardise our position. Will she reflect on the answer that she just gave me and consider reviewing the rules to ensure that the court runs more efficiently? Will she in particular give attention to the length of trials, which obviously adds to the cost and weakens our competitive position?

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; the commercial court has been doing some outstanding work and deals often with complex and difficult cases. I hope that I can reassure him by telling him that at the end of October a lively symposium was held, which brought together the judiciary, solicitors, barristers, academics and others, and a sub-committee is to be set up to perform a review. Some of the suggestions made at the symposium included listing cases so that proper reading time is available for the legal profession, limiting the length of witness statements and stricter but realistic timetables for cases. I hope that that goes some way to reassuring the hon. Gentleman that we keep the matter under review.

I declare my interest as a barrister, although not in the commercial court. The Minister will be aware of the litigation involving BCCI and the case brought by the liquidators against the Bank of England. She will have read the judgment of the learned judge, who was highly critical of the liquidators’ misuse of creditors’ money in order to proceed with that case. What lessons can be learned from that case, and can we act on those lessons as quickly as possible rather than wait for a users committee to review the situation?

My right hon. Friend makes some important points. The BCCI case affected many people in a very difficult and negative way. Mr. Justice David Steel, the judge in charge of the commercial court, said that the BCCI case was such an unusual and exceptional case that there were no direct lessons to be learned. However, key stakeholders from the legal commercial sector will be part of the review. I hope that we will be able to identify some of those problems. It is a complex case, and we want to ensure that the right solutions are found. We could not have anticipated just how complex some of the issues are, which is why I welcome the sub-committee.

22. What recent discussions she has had with ministerial colleagues in the Home Office on the treatment of people trafficked to the UK for the purpose of sexual exploitation. (100535)

In my former role as Solicitor-General, and in my current role as Department for Constitutional Affairs member of the inter-ministerial group on sexual offending, I regularly discuss with my ministerial colleagues at the Home Office the treatment of people trafficked into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation.

Two hundred years ago, a Bill was about to be introduced to the House of Lords to abolish slavery. Today at Heathrow airport, a person can buy a young woman for between £4,000 and £5,000 to act as their sex slave. There are more than 4,000 such slaves in the country today held against their will, suffering the most appalling violence, intimidation and abuse. Is it not time for the Government to sign the Council of Europe convention on human trafficking to help put to an end this evil trade in human beings?

The question of the directive will be addressed when we produce our action plan on human trafficking. We have been consulting on it and will bring it out in the new year. We have been taking action on human trafficking over a number of years, and the hon. Gentleman describes the problem rightly and clearly. We have to focus on supporting and protecting the victims, but we must tackle the traffickers and prosecute them. We also have to concentrate on the demand side of the sex trade, because women are being brought in for sexual exploitation, often abducted against their will. It is called prostitution but it is actually rape, and we need to look not only at the supply side but also the demand side. We should look at what is being done in other countries to make sure that we do not have the demand that leads to the exploitation of vulnerable women who are trafficked in to be used for sexual purposes by British men.

What progress has my right hon. and learned Friend made on some of the issues that came out of the successful conference in my constituency that she attended to talk about trafficking? In particular, what progress has been made in making sure that agencies liaise so that when women and children in a country are found to have been trafficked they are properly supported and their cases and concerns are properly dealt with?

I thank my hon. Friend for inviting me to that conference in her Northampton constituency. She had involved the Women’s Institute, for which the matter has high priority. One of the WI’s key social objectives is to work with other voluntary organisations, local authorities and agencies on the ground to highlight the problem of the trafficking of young women and children and to stamp it out, so progress is very much under way. I can remember the first time I heard the words “human trafficking”; the phenomenon is relatively recent in terms of its extent as one of the evil undersides of globalisation, but we have recognised the problem and are taking strong action against it.

Is the Minister aware that if a trafficked woman seeks refuge she gets a raw deal in this country? As a nation, we are not responding to the Human Rights Act 1998 and giving those women the protection we should give them. Does she agree?

I agree that protection is patchy. It is not as good as we want in all areas, although I want to mention the Poppy project. In some areas, if a young woman is referred to the Poppy project she will be really well looked after and protected and, in turn, is likely to help the criminal justice and immigration agencies to tackle the source of the problem. We want to make absolutely sure that there is good support for victims across the board, but the other thing we need to do from this country—and are increasingly doing—is send a clear message to perpetrators from other countries who want to get into trafficking that there will be severe sentences for those who are caught.

When I was Solicitor-General I referred to the Court of Appeal a case in which the sentence was 11 years; the Court fully understood the message that needed to be sent and increased the sentence for that offender to 23 years and stripped them of their assets all through Europe. It is right that the House should focus on the issue. We have introduced new criminal offences to tackle trafficking, but we must be vigilant and we must also look at the demand side. Many of us find that difficult to contemplate, but we have to face up to it.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the recent report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that we should see trafficked women not as criminals and immigration offenders but as the victims of a serious crime, and that we should introduce reflection periods to enable them to come to terms with being a victim of crime? In relation to the Poppy project, which we visited during our inquiry, does she agree that we must ensure that there is long-term, secure funding and an expansion of the scheme, as it provides only 25 beds at any one time?

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Poppy project has been very useful, not only in helping the individual women whom it looks after but in working out what more needs to be done, and guiding and helping the Government to develop public policy. The Home Office says that it deals with the immigration status of victims of trafficking on a case-by-case basis. But as my hon. Friend knows, we have been consulting on that, as part of the development of our UK action plan on human trafficking, in which the Joint Committee on Human Rights has played a key part, and further information will be coming forward shortly.

Is it true that immigration officials recently warned Ministers that every week more than 100 unaccompanied children are illegally brought into the UK? Is the right hon. and learned Lady also aware of the various cases documented by the Soroptimists, including one case of a girl who escaped sex slavery and went to her local GP, who referred her to the police, who brought in social services, who referred the girl to the housing authority, who then referred the girl back to social services? That shows a total lack of co-ordination. Surely that tragic case illustrates the need for a national strategy for dealing with trafficking victims.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position; I am sure that he will make a very good contribution in that role. He makes an important point about unaccompanied children. Sometimes when unaccompanied children arrive in this country they are here for perfectly normal and innocent reasons, such as visiting a family member, but sometimes they are not, and unaccompanied children are very vulnerable indeed. Sometimes they are referred to social services and put in foster care, only to fall into the hands of their traffickers again. The problem is incredibly difficult to deal with but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that what really matters is proper co-ordination. If a child is passed from one agency to another, not only is that difficult and traumatic but sometimes the child is picked up again by the traffickers.

The hon. Gentleman is right to bring this matter to the attention of the House. I shall be happy to meet him to further discuss our approach to child trafficking, and I look forward to his making a contribution as we develop policy on it.

23. How many freedom of information complaints have been referred to the Information Commissioner; and if she will make a statement. (100536)

The Information Commissioner received 4,599 Freedom of Information Act complaints between 1 January 2005 and 31 October 2006.

I am grateful to the Minister for her answer. She will have read the Select Committee report “Freedom of Information—one year on”. The Constitutional Affairs Committee received evidence that people had

“waited months for the Information Commissioner to start investigating their complaints.”

In the conclusion to that report, the Committee said that her Department should be taking

“a more proactive role in ensuring that Government Departments co-operate fully with the Commissioner”.

What steps has she taken since 28 June, when that report was issued, to ensure just that?

There was a backlog during 2005, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is well aware, and another £100,000 was given very quickly to the Information Commissioner to help him get that backlog under control. Since then he has had an extra 11 per cent.—£850,000—in 2006-07 for the same purpose, and we are in discussions with him about how to optimise those processes to speed them up.

I was last asked questions on this subject only a little over a month ago, when it was pointed out to me that there were in particular some difficulties with health authorities. One of the hon. Gentleman’s Back-Bench colleagues had sent a lot of requests that had not been responded to. Since then, I have caused a reminder to go out to those authorities in particular, that we do expect prompt results. If this is not moving too tangentially away from what the hon. Gentleman said, the Information Commissioner has announced that he is going to strengthen his enforcement strategy. I think he previously wanted cultural change and guidance to work, but now, where recalcitrant local authorities and “persistent offenders”, as he puts it, in the public sector are not responding, he will serve enforcement notices and use his powers.

A real issue, and a cause of concern to the Information Commissioner, is that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not cover those functions formerly of local authorities that were transferred to trusts such as Stockport Sports Trust, which is now making decisions behind closed doors. Does the Minister agree that changes to freedom of information rules are required to bring such bodies into line with those provisions and similar ones, such as the access to information provisions in the Local Government Act 1972?

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. I think that he has made it before, and I agreed with him then, as I do now, that just because we have brought 110,000 public bodies within the ambit of this provision does not mean that we have gone as far as we need to go. There is an analogous problem with the application of the Human Rights Act 1998 to the private suppliers who deliver public functions, and I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are looking into those problems.

As the Minister knows, it is important that her Department set an example in the field of freedom of information, as it is the responsible Department. She has stressed—she did so last month—how committed Ministers are to that. So why does her Department have a worse record than any other in granting freedom of information requests, even when the information is readily available? The average rate for all Departments is 62 per cent. but the Department for Constitutional Affairs has never managed to answer even half of such requests, and in the most recent quarter it scored a miserable 38 per cent. If the Department for Transport can have a result of 78 per cent. of requests answered where the issue is resolvable, why is the DCA such a sink Department in this area? Is it not time that it got its act together?

I dare say that, because it is full of lawyers, the Department is careful and cautious in its responses and it takes its time. In fact, over the last quarter 92 per cent. of all Government requests were responded to in time—they met the statutory deadline or a permitted deadline extension—and I reckon that 92 per cent. is rather a good proportion.

BILL PRESENTED

Statistics and Registration Service

Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Jack Straw, Hilary Armstrong, Mr. Secretary Hain, Secretary Alan Johnson, Secretary Ruth Kelly, Mr. Secretary Alexander, Mr. Stephen Timms, Dawn Primarolo, John Healey and Ed Balls, presented a Bill to establish and make provision about the Statistics Board; to make provision about offices and office-holders under the Registration Service Act 1953; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed [Bill 8].