Kerry McCarthy – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kerry McCarthy on 2014-05-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his Vietnamese counterpart on preventing child trafficking from that country to the UK.

Mr Hugo Swire

The UK has a highly cooperative relationship with the Vietnamese authorities to tackle human trafficking, including of minors, from Vietnam to the UK.

Our Embassy staff in Hanoi engage regularly with the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, to facilitate visits to the UK to showcase the mechanisms we have in place. Later this month high level officials from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs will be visiting the UK Human Trafficking Centre of the National Crime Agency, the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Unit and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s (NSPCC’s) Child Trafficking Advice Centre and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to improve their understanding of the UK’s approach when working with victims of trafficking.

Equally the Embassy has worked together with local authorities to open Compassion House in June 2013, a UK funded shelter in Lao Cai on the Chinese border for girls who have been trafficked.