- Shadow immigration minister Damian Green outlines how a Tory Government would tackle the rising menace of people trafficking.
This year will see celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in the British Empire, after a long campaign led by William Wilberforce.
But the world should be ashamed that slavery has not been abolished.
Even in this country there are thousands of frightened people working as modern-day slaves. Many of them are young women sold into the most degrading types of prostitution.
We don't talk about slavery these days. We prefer the term "people trafficking". But it is the same thing, and the effects are as lethal as they were before Wilberforce won his battles.
Between 700,000 and two million women and children are trafficked across international borders every year.
Trafficking people is second only to the drugs trade in international crime. The victims are taken from all over the world, including Eastern Europe, China, Malaysia and Nigeria. The criminal gangs who organise this vile trade are equally international, each of them preying on people in their country.
How bad is the problem in Britain? The figures are vague but the Home Office estimated that in 2003 there were 4,000 victims trafficked for prostitution into the UK.
Charities that help these women have much higher estimates. Ten years ago only 15% of the women prostitutes in Britain were foreign. Now the figure is 85%.
A typical example is Eleina. She was smuggled here aged 15 from Lithuania on the false promise of a summer job selling ice-cream. Instead she was herded from brothel to brothel, sold seven times in three months.
Her response is heartbreaking. "I have run out of tears. I try to forget but sometimes I have nightmares about it."
Even those who are smuggled here for other "jobs" are terribly vulnerable. About 60% of those who are here illegally arrived as illegals, many of them in the back of a lorry.
The other 40% have over-stayed the limits of their permission to be here. This 60% represents at least 300,000 people.
They know that the people who smuggled them here can let the police know where they are, so they remain vulnerable to exploitation. Many of them are in debt to the traffickers, to the tune of £20,000 or more. They are kept in appalling conditions.
We all remember some of the terrible effects of this. In February 2004, 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay.
Many of them were illegal immigrants, brought here by ruthless criminals to be exploited doing dangerous work without any training.
Despite the national horror at this episode, there has been only 30 convictions for trafficking offences between 2004 and 2006. Only 17 employers have been convicted for using illegal immigrant labour.