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Policing and Crime Bill

No, I do not have enough time. States have a positive obligation to tackle prostitution, trafficking and sexual violence. Fulfilling those positive obligations may require legislative action such as the new offence, but it also involves non-legal measures such as the development of safe exit strategies for women who wish to leave prostitution. In his summing up, I hope that the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing can assure us that such measures will accompany the law, or at least be included in the forthcoming sexual violence strategy. The Government have not gone as far as I have argued they should in following the Swedish model. I feared that their alternative would fail, because it echoes too closely the approach of Finland which, until recently, had not mounted any prosecutions. Now, however, Finland is beginning to use its law. I have been to countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands to look at their approach. I have spoken to prostitute women and police in both countries, I have talked to politicians and support workers in New Zealand and Australia, and I have concluded that the legalisation of prostitution has, in every case, increased, rather than reduced, exploitation. The human rights approach is the basis of law in more and more countries. Even Amsterdam, with its infamous windows, has rowed back, because of the criminality and violence that such widespread sexual exploitation has brought in its wake. Norway has recently followed Sweden's lead. Those measures to tackle demand are effective in reducing the number of trafficked women in Sweden, which is why Norway has followed its example. Norway is the smaller country, but it had many more trafficked women than Sweden. The present burden of law enforcement in terms of prostitution is going in the wrong direction, as it rests with the woman. She has, since 1824, been labelled a common prostitute, and risked regular fines or probation for soliciting. Generally, those fines are paid by her servicing more men. The Bill seeks to shift the burden: it drops the label, ““common prostitute””, ends fines and substitutes meetings as the sentence for soliciting, which is required to be persistent. The purpose of those provisions is to address the causes of the street prostitution and to find ways of addressing them in the future. It is therefore not just a meeting with the same old probation officer—a meeting with a citizens advice bureau or a drugs counsellor to help women deal with debts or addiction could fit the requirements of the law. The courts receive no new powers of imprisonment, despite the claims of those who say that they do. However, as in all sentences, the courts have a power to issue a warrant for those who do not comply with court orders, and if a woman fails to answer a warrant, the police can detain her to ensure that she attends court. That happens to prostituted women who fail to adhere to probation orders under the present offence, so the Bill provides no greater power of detention than exists at present. It is right to ensure that the burden of enforcement lands on those who have most control and choice in their actions. Different groups of people are involved, including those who pay for sex and those who control vulnerable women, often coercing or conning them into prostitution and making large sums from their work. Often, those people are not included within the ambit of the current law. The people who live in communities affected by prostitution have no choice about whether they take their children to school past condoms and drug litter. Until now, prostituted women have borne the brunt of law enforcement in a manner that is counter-productive, especially as powerful studies consistently show that most prostituted women start to work as prostitutes when they are children. They were groomed to work as prostitutes under the age of 16, they want to leave prostitution, they are likely to be addicted to class A drugs, and they overwhelmingly demonstrate symptoms comparable to those for post-traumatic stress disorder. This is not just any job—this is a job that destroys women. The English Collective of Prostitutes and representatives of the sex industry have implied that the designation, ““controlled for gain””, could mean that someone who pays for sex with a woman who has a landlord, an accountant or a maid could fall foul of the Bill, but they are wrong. The courts have already defined ““controlled for gain”” quite narrowly, as I informed the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). In that case, the trial judge ordered the jury that in order to prove that the appellant had controlled the complainant the Crown had to prove that"““he exercised control over her activities, in the sense that she was acting under compulsion exercised over her activities by the defendant. The Crown do not have to prove that on every occasion she acted under compulsion; they must prove that over the whole period the defendant was exercising control over her activities””." The judgment was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Sex workers, as they are called by many people—I do not like to think of it as a job, as it is so exploitative—are often vulnerable young women with disturbed backgrounds, who have never known a stable relationship or respect from others and are therefore prey to pimps. It is all too easy for such a person to fall under the influence of a dominant male, who exploits that vulnerability for financial gain. Exploitation of prostitution for financial gain is the broad mischief at which clause 13 is aimed, whether or not it involves the intimidation or trafficking of the prostitute or prostitutes concerned. I urge the Home Secretary to keep that offence sufficiently broad to protect all women, not just those who are trafficked from overseas but those who are terrorised by their pimps and controllers. There are ways in which the Bill could be improved. I still believe that the Swedish approach would be better, but the legislation is an important step in the right direction. I am struck that opposition to the measure is going along the lines of ““It's too hard to enforce””, and is coming precisely from those quarters who, when I offered a simple-to-enforce solution in which all purchases of sexual services would be outlawed, made equally powerful arguments that that was not the way to go. Let us be clear: those who oppose the measure have exposed themselves as people who are more concerned about the right of men to purchase women's bodies than about protecting those women from the exploitation inherent in every single occasion of purchasing and of prostitution.