We now move on to the short debate, so if you're going to leave the Chamber, can you do so quickly and quietly, please? I call David Rowlands to talk on the topic that he has chosen—David.

In Plenary, a few days before recess, the First Minister said that leaving Europe would raise the cost of food for us in Wales. Well, perhaps the next time you shred the cabbage for Sunday lunch, or dice the carrots, you should spare a thought for the human cost of putting these and many other products on your table.

I want you to picture a scene at a BP petrol station. It's 4.00 a.m. on a cold January morning, the sky is still black, but the garage attendant has already been serving migrant workers for an hour or more. By 4.15 a.m., the silent figures from across the town have become a steady flow. Summoned by a text message the previous evening, they huddle on the forecourt waiting for a succession of vehicles that would take them to the factories or fields around the area, where they would be put to work for 10 to 12 hours. 

A female police officer is watching from her office in the police station, which, coincidentally, overlooks the petrol station. She was moved to this station, because she has special expertise on organised crime. She has observed the same scene being played out regularly for the last few months. She recognises this as a criminal gang-led activity, but is powerless to stop it. The sophisticated methods used by modern-day criminal gangs make prosecution very difficult. Victims are almost impossible to recruit as witnesses, far too scared to give evidence against these gangland bosses. This is quite understandable given that the local area has seen a spate of apparent suicides amongst young east Europeans over the last few years. Three were found hanging, and with one, there was a message daubed on a nearby wall—translated, it read, 'The dead cannot testify'.

These were by no means the only deaths amongst the local east European community. The remains of a 17-year-old Lithuanian girl were found five months after her disappearance. A Lithuanian courier had been burnt to death as he slept in his van, and all this in an area where murder had been virtually unknown a decade ago.

Most of us are unaware of this brutal parallel universe that often underpins our mainstream economy, but there are areas of the country where it is highly visible. The parliamentary constituency where the scene described above took place voted overwhelmingly in a 2017 survey to reaffirm their desire to leave the EU, recognising that mass immigration from eastern Europe was fundamentally changing their community.

So, if the police are aware of these operations, why are we not seeing large-scale prosecutions? Well, there are two main reasons: the sophistication of the gangland operations and the sheer scale of the problem. The police simply do not have the manpower to cope with a huge explosion in the exploitation of mainly migrant workers that has occurred over the last decade, due almost exclusively to the policy of open borders. 

The situation was vastly exacerbated with the accession of the east European states to the EU. Estimates of the likely numbers expected to come to the UK were often quoted as just tens of thousands. These have proved to be totally inadequate. We now have more than 4 million from eastern Europe in the UK. These are official figures and mask a huge underbelly of illegal immigrants who, being unknown to the authorities, are ripe for the worst sort of exploitation.

I said the criminal gangs have become very sophisticated in their operations. Some examples are witnessed in the fact that they take their victims to various bank branches in the surrounding area and supply them with false documents to open accounts, such things as utility bills, passports and identities. They then give the gangmaster's home address for the delivery of account correspondence on the pretense that the migrant can then claim benefits and seek work. This allows the gangs to hijack the victim's identity and obtain personal identification numbers et cetera. They will open a string of these accounts over which they have complete control. They then use them to launder money, obtain loans et cetera. 

The gangs control huge numbers of these migrants, either trafficking them into the country themselves, while helping new arrivals with small loans and form filling et cetera. Many who do not speak the language find these tremendously helpful, and so easily fall into the hands of the criminal gangs. There is also, of course, the promise of jobs. The gangs will become the agents for work for the migrants, but the jobs given, with the deductions taken by the gangs for such things as accommodation, transport et cetera, will not pay sufficiently to repay the loans. And these unfortunates find themselves on the dreaded debt books kept by the gangmasters. From then on, they become virtual slaves, working simply to pay their upkeep and their debts.

Women who fall into the trap of this manufactured debt are usually given two options: travel to India or Pakistan to take part in a fake marriage for which the gangmasters will be paid upwards of £1,500, or be put to work as a prostitute. There's also a great deal of evidence to attest to far more gruesome manifestations of migrant exploitation where organs for transplant are harvested as a means of debt repayment.

What has become increasingly clear from my research into this subject is the deep hypocrisy that is displayed at the heart of the rhetoric used, particularly from those parties that profess to care about the working classes. Let us be clear here: it is almost exclusively the working classes who are being exploited in this way, yet the political left constantly claim mass, uncontrolled immigration is not only desirable, but is essential to the economy, and that open borders have a very positive effect on the UK. This rhetoric completely ignores the true reality of mass immigration and the resultant misery it causes to thousands of migrant workers. It promotes a business model that depends on a constant churn of workers to carry out jobs that are underpaid and insecure, at best, but are all too often dirty, dangerous and degrading as well. This scenario requires not just mass immigration, but mass immigration without end, since it is only the newly arrived, being both desperate and vulnerable, who can supply the fodder for continuing exploitation. As this exploitation is usually carried out by big business, be it legal or illegal, it beggars belief that the Labour Party still promotes an open-door policy on immigration.

The scene played out in that BP station each day is not simply about immigration or the human cost of cheap goods, or even a few isolated rogue operators. It is the manifestation of a profound social and economic change that has come about in little more than two decades, and which is the direct result of uncontrolled immigration.

Here, I have documented evidence and some convictions for those involved in the sex trade exploitation of immigrants. These are from The Guardian and the BBC, outlining some appalling instances. What both of these media giants fail to do is to identify the root cause of these ills. Mass immigration with a loss of border controls means no-one knows who or how people come to this country. There are those who contend that such controls will not eradicate the problem. Their argument is shown to have no substance. This sort of exploitation was almost unknown before the opening of our borders, and was usually in the hands of a small, localised, underground network. It is now a huge international operation controlled by multinational gangs who are making hundreds of millions of pounds annually through this human misery.

In the few instances where police have had success with prosecuting these criminal gangs, we may pause to ponder what is the cost of these prosecutions. Translation costs in our courts have now reached staggering proportions. It is said that a hugely disproportionate number of migrants now occupy our prisons. It has been worked out that if the propensity of foreign-born nationals to commit crime, based on representation in our prisons, were reflected in the indigenous population as a whole, occupancy of our prisons would be near 120,000, not the 84,000 we now have. And let us not forget there is overwhelming evidence to indicate that crime by ethnic minorities is often overlooked by authorities. We can also remind ourselves that the prison system is the last resort of the justice system, and only occurs if serious or multiple crime is involved. It goes without saying that the vast majority of crime is dealt with as non-custodial sentences: such things as community sentences, electronic tagging, et cetera. So, we must add the cost of monitoring these interventions to the expense of non-UK nationals' crimes, again amounting to an enormous cost to the public purse.

This, again, does not include the vast sums of money leaving the UK, both legally and illegally from migrant workers and the criminal gangs who exploit them. One wonders if any of these factors are taken into account when the economic benefits of mass immigration are being calculated—I very much doubt it. And note, I have not mentioned benefit payments.

Although the police have had some limited success in the prosecution of these criminal gangs, there is only one way to end this appalling exploitation of our fellow human beings, and it is to end mass immigration, take control of our borders, deal favorably with those people who are already here and being exploited, and have a comprehensive crackdown on those engaged in such exploitation, with severe penalties, including automatic deportation, for those involved. So, regardless of the First Minister's comments, if this puts a few pence on the cost of the food on my plate I, for one, am willing to pay it.

You didn't indicate that you had offered anybody a minute of your time in the short debate. Are you willing to give a minute of your time?

I am, indeed, yes. I'm sorry, Dirprwy Lywydd; I thought Joyce had indicated that she would like some time to speak.

No. It's your 15 minutes, and it's up to you, so you have to indicate whether you're happy for somebody to have a minute. I take it you are.

I am, in this case.

Right, okay—thank you. Joyce Watson.

I'm pleased to have a minute in this debate, but I'm not at all pleased about the debate; those two things are completely separate. I am, as everybody knows, the chair of the cross-party group on human trafficking or anti-slavery, and the founding member of that. I do find the whole tenor of what I have had to sit through and endure completely and utterly distasteful. I think it would have been far better to have served the needs of the people who need looking after and protecting if it hadn't been the case that we were focusing on one set of criminal gangs, and that was the immigrant. That is what runs through all of this. It is a pity, in my opinion, that the individual bringing this didn't actually look at what has happened in terms of the prosecutions of British-born perpetrators of this crime here in Wales, where that evidence was right under his nose, if only he had bothered himself to look for it.

I now call the leader of the house to reply to the debate. Julie James.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The criminal exploitation of people, whether they come from outside of the UK or were brought up here, is slavery. The Welsh Government has a long-standing and consistent commitment to combating slavery and addressing the suffering it causes for victims.

I was extremely distressed at the tenor of the tone, and at some of the—I'm sorry to say—made-up statistics that were read out by the person proposing this short debate. I would invite him, if he has not done so already, to visit a prison in my locality, where he will certainly see that most of the inmates there are certainly not from outside the UK. There are large numbers of other issues around imprisoning people, which he should be very familiar with, given his background.

Of course, immigrants will be amongst those engaged in this vicious trade, but there are very many—[Interruption.] You can't intervene in a short debate.

[Inaudible.]

Right; okay.

Sorry, but, yes, Ministers do have to take interventions; I'm sorry. David Rowlands.

Go on.

I'm appalled that you don't take these figures. These are figures that I have investigated and are in the local and national press at all times. All the figures can be verified, I can assure you.

I won't go into that debate, but we need to have that discussion elsewhere.

Of course, immigrants will be involved in this vicious trade, but there are very large numbers of other people involved in it. We absolutely do not need to stigmatise any immigrant community as seeing as synonymous the word 'immigrant' with the word 'gangmaster', for example. It's an extremely racist narrative and, actually, all it does is hamper our work to encourage victims to come forward, as does actually stigmatising people who don't come through the proper immigration routes. The idea that we currently have uncontrolled mass migration is, frankly, nonsense. The level of immigration here in Wales is tiny, as I've had previous experience of debating with this particular Member.

Anyway, getting on with the job of combating slavery should be the priority, regardless of the origins of the criminals. Slavery includes child exploitation, sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, criminal exploitation and, indeed, human tissue and organ harvesting. While formal responsibility for preventing these crimes is not devolved, we are committed to tackling slavery and increasingly seem to be leading the way in the UK through work such as that outlined by Joyce Watson, who has worked tirelessly in this regard, as have a number of others.

Slavery is a serious criminal offence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and the penalties range up to life imprisonment. Given the nature of this crime, the Home Office is unable to confirm the true number of victims; however, based on 2013 data, the Home Office chief scientific officer in 2014 estimated there were between 10,000 and 13,000 victims being exploited in some form of slavery in the UK. Earlier this year, the National Crime Agency stated that this number had been underestimated and that the real number may be in the hundreds of thousands. Potential victims of slavery were referred into the UK national referral mechanism. In 2016, the National Crime Agency reported that, in the UK, almost 4,000 victims had been referred, almost 3,500 from outside the UK. This included the 123 victims trafficked in Wales, of which 114 were from outside the UK. The National Crime Agency reported that there had been over 2,500 victims referred in the first six months of this year, and this included 109 referrals in Wales. At UK level, the National Crime Agency's Organised Crime Command leads on action against organised crime groups. The Organised Crime Command works with the police and other agencies to agree priorities and to ensure that appropriate action is taken against crime groups and gangs.

So, what are we actually doing in Wales? We are making Wales hostile to slavery. We remain the first and only country in the UK to appoint an anti-slavery co-ordinator. We've established the Wales anti-slavery leadership group to provide strategic leadership and guidance on how we tackle slavery. The leadership group will keep me updated on progress with this agenda, and I also expect to receive regular updates from our anti-slavery co-ordinator. But, we recognise that no single agency can be effective in tackling slavery. This is why we are working with a wide range of partners, including the National Crime Agency, the police, and the UK Border Force. We're also working with UK Visas and Immigration, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and with the Crown Prosecution Service. In addition, we are working with BAWSO and Barnardo's Cymru who will provide support to the victims of this crime. 

We are also working with partners to provide support for refugees coming to Wales, which will help reduce the risk of exploitation. We are also continuing to raise awareness of slavery. In 2016, the anti-slavery training that we have developed with partners was delivered to over 5,500 people in Wales across the public, private and third sectors. With our partners, we continue to provide this training, and an estimated 5,000 people have already benefited so far this year.

Slavery is a complex crime to investigate and prosecute; this is why we have worked with our partners to develop joint training provision for senior investigating officers and Crown prosecutors. This training course is a first for Wales and for the UK. In March this year, we launched the ethical employment in supply chains code of practice. This is aimed at making supply chains transparent and preventing exploitation of workers, which includes migrant workers. This is also a first for Wales and the UK.

We are sharing our learning in Wales with other partners, including UK Government departments, and with the UK Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. In fact, our work in Wales is starting to gain serious international recognition. Until recently, slavery was a hidden crime and we know it is still under-reported. That is why we've introduced new data collection systems in Wales. We continue to work with partners to develop a better evidence base that will more accurately reflect the level of slavery in Wales. Our collective work to raise awareness of slavery is expected to lead to an increase in the number of reported cases. It is through improved reporting that we can help ensure victims receive the support they need and that the perpetrators of this heinous crime can be brought to justice, and not through criminalising the people who are victims themselves. 

We remain committed to tackling slavery, we remain committed to supporting victims, and we remain absolute in our commitment to making Wales hostile to slavery. Empty rhetoric about immigration can only damage that important work, while we in the Welsh Government are actually getting on with the job.