Q
36Dr.
Harris: My question was, why has it not been
repealed?
Kathy
Evans: Attitudes are starting to change. There has
recently been consultation on the Government’s intended revised
updated guidance on safeguarding children involved in prostitution. A
straightforward question was asked whether responding organisations had
views about decriminalisation. My understanding is that a high
proportion said that they did and the Government are currently
compiling the analysis of those views. So the Government have said they
are open to the case for final legal repeal of those offences. In the
past they have been concerned that to repeal the law would send a
message that it was all right, but that is not our experience in any
other form of abuse or exploitation of children. That is the anomaly
that we want to
undo.
Dr.
Harris: One of the issues for me is whether the intentions
of this legislation will be effective in making women safe. I think we
all share that objective. I understand that it has been subject, as far
as possible, to academic inquiry. I shall start with the POPPY project
witnesses. What academic evidence in the Home Office review led them to
believe that they would be safe in welcoming the review’s
proposals for the new offence of controlling for gain, and the closure
orders in respect of the safety and health of women—usually
women; vulnerable women—in the sex industry?
Frances
Brodrick: We work with large numbers of women who
have been exploited in the worst possible ways, controlled and
prostituted by their traffickers. They come to us and tell us about the
types of exploitation and abuse they have suffered at the hands of
their punters. Sometimes, men who buy sex do not know, for various
different reasons, that they are buying sex off a woman who is being
controlled, but sometimes they do, and it gives them an enormous amount
of power over women. We have heard horrific stories about how women
have been exploited and abused, and they are powerless to do anything
about it. The measure not only says very clearly to punters that they
need to take responsibility for the sex trade and for buying sex off
women, but provides for legislation and enables women to come forward
to testify against punters.
Q
37Dr.
Harris: I understand that, but there may be alternatives
that do it better. My question is, what is the academic
evidence—either from the Home Office review or elsewhere, if it
is not there—that underpins your view that the legislation will
be the best way to improve the situation generally, and particularly
for your clients?
Denise
Marshall: In terms of academics, the situation is
quite difficult, because one academic will say that prostitution is
empowering and the best way to move it forward is to legalise it, but
another academic will tell you that 85 per cent. of women in
prostitution are there against their will. So those on each side of the
fence use whichever academic research suits them
best.
Q
38Dr.
Harris: I accept that, but the separate question about
what improves the safety and emotional and physical health of women is
more amenable to comparative study than the more political question
about whether it is generally exploitative or empowering. I absolutely
understand that different academics have different views.
Denise
Marshall: Unfortunately, that impacts on the daily
life of women with whom we work. I have a quote from a POPPY service
user. We talked to her about prostitution, and she said,
“Let’s say if I don’t feed you, you’re
going to die. If men don’t pay for this, prostitution will
die.” And she will not be in the situation. There is no demand;
there is no supply, and her situation will not occur. You have to have
the resources. There is no point in doing this if you do not have the
resources to help women get out, or the resources for trafficked women.
It is quite clear to me that this is the start of ending prostitution,
which means violence against women.
Q
39Dr.
Harris: I accept that that is your view, but I am
interested in the academic evidence, so I shall ask Hilary: are some of
your projects NHS funded?
Hilary
Kinnell: Many of them,
yes.
Q
40Dr.
Harris: Do you have a view on the evidence base for this
policy? That is my last question.
Hilary
Kinnell: We are dismayed by the lack of evidence that
the demand review appears to have consulted. The Home Office
commissioned a literature review of academic work on demand, and we
were told that it would inform the demand review, but the literature
review has not yet been published. My briefing is a little sketchy on
the issue, but the references in the demand review are to Home Office
documents and to the POPPY project’s “Big Brothel”
report. I would say that the strongest evidence around the relationship
between safety and the legislation surrounding the sex industry is that
of over 100 sex workers who have been killed since 1990, 84 per cent.
were street workers, whereas the proportions of street workers versus
off-street workers in the industry are probably the other way
round—80 per cent. indoor and 20 per cent. street. That
vulnerability of street workers does not seem to be falling, even
though the numbers of actual street workers are falling, which takes us
back to the very inadequate evidence base on which this whole subject
is being discussed.
An earlier
question was about the extent of drug use. We are frequently told that
the vast majority of sex workers are dependent on class A drugs, which
is true as far as street work is concerned, but with
reservations—when you are running a project that provides a drug
service you are likely to see sex workers who are drug users, so the
level may not be as high as is sometimes thought. Certainly, I have
been working with sex workers for more than 20 years and it is my
experience that the extent of drug use among street women has gone up a
lot in the last 10 years. As far as indoor work is concerned, there is
no such connection, and it is entirely false and misleading to say
so.
There
is no evidence that says that the vast majority of women involved in
the sex industry were coerced into it or coerced at an early age, or
came into it at an early age. There is none whatsoever. There are small
projects that have been based on, say, women who became involved in the
sex industry under the age of 18, which have remarkably shown a very
high percentage who came into the industry under the age of 18. But
they are small, localised studies and they cannot be generalised to the
whole population of sex workers in the country.
Niki
Adams: Just on the figures, I think that Hilary has
indicated how any evidence that the Government have produced to back up
the legislation has actually been discredited or is completely false.
They are ignoring evidence that would actually prove the opposite. The
New Zealand experience is that there has been an increase in the number
of women coming forward to report violence. I think when you look at
what measures are needed to make women safer in prostitution they are
very similar to—not disconnected completely from—whatever
women generally need to be safe from rape and other violence. The
conviction rate, for all women, of reported rapes is an appalling 6 per
cent. and there is evidence to show what could be done to improve that
conviction rate: investigate offences thoroughly; improve
women’s ability to come forward and report rape; deal with the
way that women face character assassination in court. Those are the
measures that should be addressed by the Government if they are serious
about dealing with women’s
safety. I
wanted to comment on what the POPPY project said about the idea of
getting rid of prostitution. We would like to get rid of prostitution,
but we know that it cannot be done until we have abolished
women’s poverty and dealt with the exploitative situations for
women working in every other industry, when women’s wages are so
low. Women’s average wage at this moment in time ranges between
£5 and £11 an hour. If you are a mother you get less
money; if you are an immigrant woman you get less money. Until those
economic conditions are dealt with and women can support their families
in other jobs, women will be forced into
prostitution.
The
Chairman: Dr. Harris, may I move on? Three other members
of the Committee want to put
questions.
Q
41Miss
Kirkbride: Niki and Hilary, if the provisions go through
as the Government intend, in the Bill, whatever their desire to improve
the lot of women, what do you think the impact will be in
reality? Hilary
Kinnell: I think that the impact will be almost
entirely detrimental. The only element of them that the UK network
would support is removal of the term “common prostitute”
from the statute book, which is an entirely symbolic move. The
provisions relating to street work rehearse all the things that we have
already had, such as targeting the clients and enforced reform of sex
workers.
About 10
years ago, street sex workers started to be given ASBOs. We were told
that that provided an opportunity to engage, provide services, address
offending behaviour and all the rest of it. As has been said by
others—and remarkably by both Niki and the representatives of
the POPPY project—resources are needed. There is no provision
for any resources to address those issues.
As
far as indoor work is concerned, particularly the orders for closure of
brothels or premises in which it is suspected that somebody may be
controlled for gain, the Bill is utterly disastrous. It will
destabilise indoor working situations for a vast number of sex
workers—both men and women. Looking at the fine detail and the
accompanying schedule, the Home Secretary will be able to give the
police the power to raid premises under almost any circumstances that
he or she likes.
Control for
gain is a terribly indistinct definition, which applies both to the
premises and to paying for the services of somebody who is controlled
for gain. We fear that the police will be required to target such a
wide range of individual clients and premises that places in which
there is abuse, exploitation and coercion and clients who are violent
and destructive will simply be lost in the mass. In my experience,
police officers who are tasked with investigating serious crimes
against sex workers do their damnedest to carry out such work, and they
are inhibited all the time by the law itself because it inhibits people
from coming forward to give evidence. It also makes sex workers more
vulnerable in the first place. I—and also the
network—cannot see how these provisions will do anything to
improve any of those
things.
The
Chairman: Sandrine Levêque, would you like to
comment? I gather that you hold a slightly different view from the one
that has just been
expressed. Sandrine
Levêque: Yes,
although I should also like to talk about clause 25 if there is
time.
The
Chairman: Do so very quickly. I know that Mr.
Brokenshire wishes to put a question. Should he put the question, and
then you make a
comment?
Miss
Kirkbride: May we finish that point? The impact of the
legislation is possibly the most worrying
thing.
The
Chairman: We have seven minutes. I am
concerned. Niki
Adams: I will be quick. Concretely, it will force
women out of premises on to the streets, where it is more dangerous.
Women will be forced to work alone. That is already happening in Soho,
where receptionists are being threatened with controlling charges. The
change in soliciting for the purposes of prostitution will increase
arrests. It makes it easier for the police to arrest women on the
street because in order to prove persistence, they have only to prove
that it took place a couple of times over a period of three months,
which is very different from what happens at the moment.
Imprisonment
will increase because of the closure orders, the imprisonment aspect of
the compulsory rehabilitation, the number of arrests of women on the
street and the controlling convictions. It will prevent women from
coming forward. When they criminalised clients in Scotland, attacks
against sex workers really soared. It will prevent women getting out of
prostitution because they will have a criminal record, it will
institutionalise women in prostitution, and it will divert
prosecutions.
Hilary’s
point is very important. She says that it will divert police time and
resources away from prosecuting rape and other violence to prosecuting
consenting sex.
As a result, the prosecutions will increase because there is the big
motivation of profiteering by the police, the CPS, the Home Office and
the Inland Revenue, which all get a cut of the earnings under the
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The
Chairman: I will call James Brokenshire to speak next, and
then Sandrine Levêque will probably want to
comment.
Q
42James
Brokenshire: I want to move on to clause 25 and
the Bill’s proposed changes to the regulation of lap-dancing and
sex-encounter venues. I understand that you, Ms Levêque, do not
believe that the provisions go far enough; perhaps you would explain
why. Sandrine
Levêque:
We welcome the commitment behind the reforms. There is a clear
consensus that the law needs to be changed, and for that reason it is
important that the reforms are as robust as possible. We are concerned
that the reforms are undermined by two key flaws. First, the clause is
optional, which will create a postcode lottery in which local people in
some areas will be empowered to have a say in licensing processes and
to bring up gender equality in those processes, while those in other
areas will not. That sends out a mixed message on the gender equality
duty. On the one hand, all local authorities are required to promote
gender equality in everything they do, but on the other, a major piece
of legislation, the Licensing Act 2003, prevents them from doing that
when it comes to licensing. We have a real opportunity here to put that
right and strengthen the gender equality duty by allowing all local
authorities to license lap-dancing clubs as sex-encounter venues and
make that universal.
Secondly, the
reforms currently exempt premises where lap dancing happens less than
once a month, which creates a major loophole for venues that hold
monthly events of that kind and are catered for by a growing number of
agencies. They also reinforce a current loophole relating to temporary
event notices, which are used by many pubs and bars to obtain 12
permits a year for stripping or lap-dancing events. Those permits can
only be opposed by a police authority on the grounds of crime and
disorder. They cannot be opposed by a council or anyone wishing to have
their say. There will always be a loophole that will not be touched by
these reforms.
There is
massive public support for the reforms from a broad coalition,
including women’s organisations, councils, the Equality and
Human Rights Commission and the Local Government Association—you
know who supports this. It is therefore important that they deliver on
social justice and equality, and to do that, the reforms need to be
universal and ensure that all sex-encounter activities are regulated,
regardless of how frequently those activities are
happening.
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