nine months old

The trade in hundreds of children smuggled into the UK for sexual exploitation, drug smuggling, under-age marriage, street crime and domestic slavery was exposed last night in a government report. The Home Office-commissioned survey identifies 330 cases of suspected or confirmed victims of trafficking - most of them from China or from Africa - but warns of an "unknown quantity" that have not come to the attention of the authorities. The true scale of child trafficking is believed to be far higher.