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Policing and Crime Bill

Can I be absolutely clear about this? I have already made it clear that I am not a lawyer, so I speak for somebody who saw this clause and said at once, "This is way outside what seems to me to be the normal process of law in this country". Is the Minister saying that the particular action of a man having sex with a prostitute is so serious that, by all definitions, he has no defence whatever, even if he has no means of finding out whether somebody has been trafficked? That seems so far away from a court of law being able to listen to, balance and weigh the arguments and understand where there is a defence and where there is not. This is so far away from that that one has to ask whether this offence is so much more serious than any of the others—we have been quoted some—that one has to take away all possibility of a defence. We need an answer to that.