The
Chairman: Two people have caught my eye: first,
Mr. Whatton, who is involved with Manchester
airport—he was more involved, and is now peripherally
involved—and, secondly, the Opposition spokesman, David Ruffley.
Would Mr. Whatton speak for literally 30 seconds, because we
have got about 90 seconds
left? Dave
Whatton: The issue of arms support at airports needs
to be dealt with on a threat basis, and needs to be dealt with through
the process, but it is appropriate at some airports. Something else is
really important: we have talked about a large number of police
officers and replicating BCUs. There are three airports that have
large numbers of police officers
present. At most of them, we are talking about 10s and 20s, but in
Prestwick’s case, we are talking about moving from two police
officers to nine, so I think that the word “large” is
misleading in that
context.
Q
19Mr.
Ruffley: I have a simple question for Bob Jones about
accountability. Are there any amendments that you would like to see
made to these clauses on accountability that would enhance the
accountability of the police to police authorities? Do those amendments
exist? Will you send them
in? Bob
Jones: We would suggest that there are a few that
could be made to improve measures on appointments and reporting back,
particularly of councillor members. Our major aspiration at the moment
is to try to see whether there is any possibility of getting
cross-party consensus on future arrangements, because we do not feel
that the continued party-political debate about these arrangements is
helpful to the police or community confidence in the
police.
The
Chairman: I thank our witnesses for
their co-operation. It is about to strike 12 o’clock. I know
that I speak on behalf of the Committee when I say that we are grateful
for the full and frank answers that have been given to all questions.
You may now leaves us and allow our next group of witnesses to join us.
We are grateful to Sir Norman, Dave Whatton, Bob Jones, Robert
Siddall and Ian Hutcheson. The evidence has been
valuable. 12
noon
The
Chairman: I welcome the second group of witnesses to come
before us this morning. I welcome Denise Marshall, the chief executive
of the Eaves POPPY project, Frances Brodrick, assistant chief executive
of the Eaves POPPY project, Niki Adams, the spokeswoman for the English
Collective of Prostitutes, Hilary Kinnell, co-vice chair of the safety,
violence and policing group from the UK Network of Sex Work Projects,
Kathy Evans, the project policy director of the Children’s
Society and Sandrine Levêque, the campaigns manager of Object.
To assist everybody, perhaps each person will give their name and
explain who they
are. Sandrine
Levêque: My name is Sandrine Levêque
and I will speak on behalf of Object and the Fawcett
Society. Kathy
Evans: I am Kathy Evans, the policy director for the
Children’s Society and a member of the Standing Committee for
Youth
Justice. Hilary
Kinnell: I am Hilary Kinnell and I represent the UK
Network of Sex Work
Projects. Niki
Adams: My name is Niki Adams and I am from the
English Collective of Prostitutes, which co-ordinates the Safety First
coalition. Frances
Brodrick: I am Frances Brodrick from Eaves and the
POPPY project. We work with women who have been trafficked into the
UK. Denise
Marshall: I am Denise Marshall, the chief executive
of the Eaves POPPY
project.
The
Chairman: Thank you. I will go to Her Majesty’s
official Opposition to put the first
question.
Q
20Mr.
Ruffley: Ms Adams, to give a scale of the problem, could
you estimate how many prostitutes in the country are controlled for
gain—that is a term used in the
Bill? Niki
Adams: You have hit on the first big problem with the
legislation. “Controlled for gain” has a wide definition.
People working in the sex industry are no more likely to be controlled
for gain than any other worker in the UK. The definition that Fiona
Mactaggart said the Government would use, in the Second Reading debate,
was that they would require compulsion; but you can see from the
definition of “controlling” in the Bill, plus the
definition used in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, that it in
fact would include any woman working in any situation where there was a
work rota; workmates could be criminalised under it.
We have seen
prosecutions of women; we are actually working with a woman at the
moment whose case is coming to court. She is the mother of four young
children, who was working with another woman in premises, and is being
prosecuted for controlling. We have, here, some women from Soho who
work in flats with maids. They were raided in December and threatened
by the police with being prosecuted for controlling, when they are the
first line of defence for working women against violent attacks and
exploitation. I hope that you will give them an opportunity to speak
and will hear evidence from them.
The
Chairman: I am afraid only those who have been asked to
come as formal witnesses can address the Committee. I have no doubt
that you will be able to speak on behalf of those for whom you have
just replied. I am sorry; those who are not registered with us as
official witnesses cannot give
evidence.
Q
21Mr.
Ruffley: You are confirming that the definition is very
wide, and can catch a large number of people.
Niki
Adams: Yes, and already it is being used in that way,
so what Fiona Mactaggart said in the Second Reading debate in fact is
not true; we have already seen prosecutions, and prosecutions for
controlling under the 2003 Act have actually gone up significantly
since 2003 when the definition was changed. The Proceeds of Crime Act
2002 has enabled the police to claim 25 per cent. of the money, assets
and other resources collected at the time of arrest and after
prosecution, and we think the Act is a big motivation for the increase
in raids and prosecutions in this
area.
The
Chairman: I can help Niki Adams. I have just given advice
on what is permitted at this Committee sitting, but there is nothing to
prevent your colleagues from submitting written evidence to the
Committee. Such evidence, as long as it is acceptable, not in offensive
language and is appropriate to the Bill, will be circulated. If your
colleagues would like to give evidence they can, but, sadly, it has to
be in writing.
Q
22Mr.
Ruffley: On how the clauses might operate in practice, it
has been suggested to some members of the Committee that it would not
be easy to enforce them, because quite a lot of women who were being
forced into this industry would not give evidence, to put it bluntly,
against a pimp or someone who was controlling
them. They would be scared of being brutalised or
attacked if they gave evidence to the police or the Crown Prosecution
Service. From what you are saying, that does not seem to be so much of
an issue. Enforcement is happening, from what you just
said. Niki
Adams: Yes, that is very much the case, because it is
being used against people who are involved in consensual sex. There is
not any force and coercion present, but those are the people who are
primarily being prosecuted under both the controlling legislation and
also, unfortunately, under the trafficking legislation, which, in the
UK, also does not require force and coercion to be proved. A woman in
our network who is from Brazil and who has been here for 25 years
running premises that everyone accepted were a safe and good
environment for women to work in was prosecuted for trafficking and
sentenced to three years in prison. She nearly lost custody of her
young son, and is now facing deportation. She had her life savings, her
house, her car and all her possessions confiscated. The law is being
used in that way to prosecute people who are involved in consenting
sex.
The figures
that have been used to justify the proposals—the figures on
trafficking—are false. They have been discredited in many
academic studies including on a recent radio 4 programme, where they
showed that the figure that was widely being used—that 80 per
cent. of women working in the sex industry in the UK are
trafficked—actually came from POPPY project research that found
that 80 per cent. of women in the sex industry are immigrant women.
There is a very big difference between being foreign and being forced,
which is what the programme concluded.
Q
23Mr.
Ruffley: But paying for sexual services from a person who
is controlled for gain will be an offence. May I just give you this
scenario? If a man understands that seeking and using the services of a
woman who has been trafficked is a strict liability offence and he will
be committing an offence, in practice, if he knows the law, he might
say to the woman, “Have you been trafficked or are you
controlled for gain?” Let us just imagine that scenario. It
seems that there is no incentive whatsoever for the woman concerned to
answer that question truthfully because if the man asks the question,
she will understand that he knows the law. If she says, “Yes, I
have been trafficked,” the first thing the man will do in all
likelihood is say, “Okay, I’m not going to commit an
offence; I’m going out the door.” The woman will then
lose the
money. It
seems almost impossible to conceive of a sex worker—a
female—answering that question truthfully because the minute she
does so she loses business and, if she has already been brutalised, she
will face heaven knows what consequences for losing trade and money.
What are the chances of women answering that question
truthfully? Niki
Adams: The problem is that the figures on how many
women are trafficked are distorted. Where women have been trafficked or
are facing rape, violence or other kinds of coercion, the question is
what will best help them escape from that situation and get the help
that they need. Criminalising them and their clients is certainly not
going to help. What does help, as has been shown in New Zealand, is
decriminalisation, which has enabled women to come forward, report
violence and get help in many different areas. The New Zealand
experience has not been looked at properly by this
Government and, in fact, was reported falsely in the debate on 19
January, when it was said that what New Zealand has done was
legalisation, which is not true. Fiona Mactaggart claimed that there
had been an increase in the number of people working in the sex
industry. In fact, a substantial and thorough recent Government review
found no increase in the number of women in prostitution. They found
that women were more able to come forward to get help and that
conditions were less exploitative in the brothels in which women
worked. In
response to your question, the crucial issue is what most helps women
to escape from violent and exploitative situations. The legislation
will do nothing to help that, and will actually force prostitution
further underground and make it harder for women to be public and get
help.
The
Chairman: Mr. Ruffley, I think that Niki Adams
mentioned the POPPY project in one of her answers relating to
statistics. Do Frances Brodrick or Denise Marshall want to come in on
the
question?
Q
24Mr.
Ruffley: Sir Nicholas, you have asked my question for me.
If I could ask for a response to those
points? Denise
Marshall: I think that Niki Adams said that the Radio
4 programme claimed that 80 per cent. were foreign nationals and were
therefore trafficked. Unfortunately, we cannot control the media. What
we said in our report “Sex in the City” was that 80 per
cent. of the women were foreign nationals and that we believed a
significant proportion of them were trafficked. We did not say that
they were all trafficked; we have not claimed that. We do not know the
figures. We were able to show that around 80 per cent. in off-street
sex commercial establishments were foreign national women, but we did
not claim that they were all trafficked.
Niki
Adams: The problem has been that, for example, in
relation to Soho, which is one of the areas where the sex industry is
less underground and where it is easier to see what is going on, even
the police said for many years that 80 per cent. of women there were
being trafficked. One of the women here today works in Soho. She is
from Hungary. Her father died when she was younger and she is here
supporting her son and her family back home. That is the most common
average situation of women working in the sex industry. Some 70 per
cent. are mothers who have gone into prostitution to support their
families and other people in the community. We are in an economic
recession, and more women will be forced into prostitution to survive.
The legislation will do nothing to help women get safe working
conditions or survive in that way. What it will do is actually force
prostitution underground and make it worse—more
dangerous.
Q
25Mr.
Ruffley: This is my final question. May I ask the
representatives of the POPPY project whether they think that the
clauses as drafted—predominantly those relating to the strict
liability on men—are going to choke off demand and help to solve
the problem through the straightforward criminalisation of the punter,
so to speak? Do you think that that is going to
work? Denise
Marshall: We think that the Bill does not go far
enough. We think that women should be decriminalised and do not
understand why that is not part of the Bill. But, yes, we do think that
men should be criminalised.
Q
26Mr.
Ruffley: Do you think that the proposal will drive down
the number of men seeking sexual services and paying for
them?
Frances
Brodrick: Absolutely. We think that it will have the
really big effect of making men think about their responsibility for
funding the sex industry and the growth of that industry. We also think
that it will also make them examine their responsibility for the
further exploitation of women who have been controlled for
gain.
Denise
Marshall: Interestingly, in the time we have run the
POPPY project, we have had 22 referrals from punters—from those
buying sex from trafficked women. They made the referrals because the
women were in an obvious physical and emotional state of distress. That
sounds good on the surface until you realise that all the 22 men had
sex with the trafficked woman before they phoned us. These are
trafficked women whom we have taken into our projects and whom have
given evidence to us in statements. All those men, knowing the women
were trafficked, had sex before phoning us to help the women to get out
of their
situation.
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