---

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I will be brief. Members might recall that when I was the Minister in the Home Office responsible for prostitution strategy, I was labelled ““Madam Minister”” for wanting a brothel on every street corner, after I had suggested that two women working together in a flat should not be prosecuted for running a brothel. I am disappointed that that proposal is not in the Bill, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that in his summing up. Will he tell me whether legislation would be required to achieve that? Since then, the same media have also accused me of being a priggish, power-crazed, interfering, feminist ideologue. This was because I argued on an issue that was raised during those debates. I was asked why the Government did not prosecute for rape men who paid for sex with trafficked women. The answer was that the way to discover trafficking and to prosecute the traffickers was often through the men who were those women's clients. At that point, it seemed right not to prosecute them because the women would be safer if we did not do so. However, I began to think that there must be a better way of doing this, so I looked up which countries in the world were better at reducing the incidence of trafficking. It became clear that about 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year—four fifths of them women—usually for sex. It is estimated that 80 per cent. of the women in London's brothels are from overseas. So where is trafficking being reduced? There is clear evidence on this. A European study suggests that Sweden, which criminalises men who pay for sex, has massively reduced the incidence of trafficking. Between 400 and 600 women were trafficked into Sweden in 2003, compared with Denmark, where the number was between 2,000 and 4,000. Police officials confirm that this is the case. Kajsa Wahlberg, a detective inspector in the Swedish national criminal police, eavesdropping on telephone calls between traffickers, noted that they complained that Sweden was a bad market, and that buyers were afraid of getting caught. They said that they had to have an apartment, and that they had to move the women around. That police officer said that unlike brothels in Oslo or Copenhagen, where there might be 50 women in each, there were usually just two or three women in the brothels broken up in Sweden. Clearly, Sweden managed to drive down the incidence of trafficking by criminalising payment for sex. My view is that the Bill does not go far enough. On the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, I strongly urge the Minister to end today's modern slavery, which is women enslaved into providing sexual services. If we in Britain followed the Swedish model, we would, just by that act alone, reduce the trafficking and the enforced sexual slavery of women and make our society a better one for everyone to live in.