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Policing and Crime Bill

I wish to speak mainly about the part of the Bill dealing with prostitution. The harm that prostitution does is mostly to the women who are for sale. Our duty as parliamentarians committed to human rights is to protect them, because the murders in Ipswich of Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell, Annette Nicholls and Tania Nicol in 2006 were not as exceptional as we would wish. Prostituted women are, according to the British Medical Journal, 40 times more likely than other women to die a violent death. We need to reduce the exploitation and violence involved in prostitution. The Bill helps to do that by specifically interdicting actions such as pimping and trafficking, in which someone controls another human being for gain, and by ensuring that men who pay the prostitutes who are so controlled offend if, even inadvertently, they contribute to such exploitation.