Q
205Mrs.
Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): I am not sure why
this part of the Bill is here at all. I do not believe that most men
who go to procure the services of a prostitute have a great
understanding of the law. They probably do not have a clue—they
just decide to procure those services, and they go and do it because it
is so easily and readily available. I also think that society’s
attitudes have changed towards that particular industry anyway. Given
that the evidence we have heard says that this Bill will categorically
make life considerably worse for some of the most vulnerable
people—those prostitutes who are in the business as a result of
a need, whether drug use, poor circumstances, poor background, being
coerced into it, o whatever—why are we doing
it? Mr.
Campbell: We have looked at a lot of different
examples. As Lynda Waltho said, Mr. Coaker knows more than I
about examples abroad. Even in this Committee, we have touched on the
very wide debate between those who say that we should decriminalise and
those who say we should criminalise prostitution.
Like Lynda Waltho, I have received a very mixed
picture from New Zealand, and I have heard that the law has had
unintended and horrific consequences. This part of the legislation is
quite specific. I repeat: we must remain focused on the intention,
which is to tackle the problems for trafficked women and, indeed,
others of sexual exploitation. We are not starting with the proposition
that the Government say that prostitution should be illegal or legal. We
are focusing on a particular issue and in so doing we have to be
careful that we do not send out the wrong message about how we believe
society sees prostitution.
The raids on
brothels could not have taken place under these provisions because, of
course, the provisions are not yet law. I suspect that when we tease
out some of those examples, there are other reasons why those raids
took place and, indeed, why some of the closures took place. We want
this measure and existing legislation to be used proportionately. I do
not share the belief that the police set out to act other than in a
proportionate fashion, and I do not share the view that somehow the
police chose to do something that was outside the guidance that they
already had. They would certainly not choose to do something that is
outside the spirit of the
law. Mr.
Coaker: Nadine Dorries’s point about men not
considering the law when they pay for sex is probably true because
nothing happens. That is the point I was trying to make at the
beginning. If we actually—and this has been the whole focus of
the work that others and I have been doing over the past year or
so—tackle the demand side of the issue, we have to look at how
you deal with that. As I said, you are quite right to say that the men
do not think about it, because nothing happens. Put a strict a
liability offence in
there.
Q
206Mrs.
Dorries: Do you think they will
know? Mr.
Coaker: They will certainly know with a strict
liability offence, because they will know that they cannot excuse
themselves by saying, “Hey, I’d have phoned the police if
I’d only known.” We have put that element of doubt in
there so that people cannot act with impunity. I am not being rude
about people, but we have seen the pictures and we know what happens.
If people think they are going somewhere where there clearly is at
least a doubt about what is going on and they just carry on regardless,
a serious change to the law will make people stop and think twice. That
is an important public policy reform, which will mean that we can start
to try to tackle the exploitation that exists.
Julie
Kirkbride raised the question of why we did not go the whole hog and
make it completely illegal to pay for sex full stop. We thought that
that was impractical and was not based in the real world. When we went
to Sweden, it seemed—again, there are doubts about this because
you get different evidence from people who are equally well
meaning—that the issue had been driven away and gone
underground. Some people in Sweden disagree fundamentally with what I
have just said, but that is the conclusion that I
reached.
Q
207Miss
Kirkbride: This is the real world in which the people to
whom we are rightly trying to reach are women who have been trafficked
and who are terrified of their pimp and everything else. Goodness
knows, but I suspect that the kind of people who go and visit those
women are not particularly cognisant of the law and possibly do not
even care about it. Who is going to shop them? The police should be
raiding these establishments anyway. How are we going to find such
people? Two days later, the DNA evidence of what they might have been
doing has gone. I do not understand how they are going to be
shopped.
I can see,
however, that the pensioner who goes along to see Mrs.
Bloggs occasionally and suddenly finds himself criminalised because
Mrs. Bloggs was running an establishment that was not
approved under the law will suddenly get a criminal offence and be
shamed in his community. On practical grounds, I worry whether the Bill
will really get the person who you are looking
for. Mr.
Campbell: Let me make two points: first, there is an
information point about people being aware of the law. It is incumbent
on us, if there is a strict liability, to make people aware of that,
even though it is no defence for them to say that they did not know.
The pensioner who visits Mrs. Bloggs should be aware of
that, and we should make every effort to make them aware of it.
However, the issue of who Mrs. Bloggs has in her back
bedroom, where they have come from, and the reasons why they are being
forced to do what they are doing, is still there.
Mr.
Coaker: Also, there is the fact that brothels up and
down the country in the cities that some of us represent are raided by
the police, but afterwards nothing happens. They go and rescue women,
some of whom are trafficked and some of whom, but not all, are forced
into prostitution in other ways. What responsibilities do the men have
who go there? That is the question that we are forcing on to the public
policy agenda to get people to confront. The answer up until now has
been a shrug of the shoulders. It has been, “You can’t do
anything about it.” Prosecute them for rape if you are saying
there was no consent. Sometimes, that is totally unrealistic, as you
will know. Where a woman has been forced into that situation there is a
sort of consent because she does not say, “No, you
can’t,” but she does not do so because she is terrified.
As lawyers have said to me: “Prove it in court, then—that
it’s rape” There was not really resistance, because
someone was terrified. There is an information issue, but it will
really change the dynamic in terms of how people react to, and think
about, that, and it will start to get at the
exploitation. On
Lynda’s point about decriminalisation, it is absolutely right
that the evidence is coming back from New Zealand, and, again,
different people say different things. However, the sort of evidence
that Lynda Waltho referred talks about increases in young people
involved in prostitution, increases in exploitation and increases in
the numbers involved. All those sorts of things are going on.
There is
another argument, while we are discussing different models. I went to
Amsterdam: what are the Dutch Government doing? They are considering
reducing the numbers of controlled areas, because they are concerned
about the increase in the exploitation of young women, and about
serious and organised crime. There has been a fundamental reduction in
the number of the famous red light windows, because of the concern
about serious and organised crime and so on. That is in Holland, which
is always held up as an example—“Why don’t we do
what Holland does?”—but it is having the same public
policy debate that we are having.
You can tell
the seriousness of the situation, because in country after country
across the world, people are looking at what we should do about it. I
will finish with this, because it is such a fundamental point. You have
to change the dynamic of how the man thinks when he purchases the sex.
You can have a cosmetic offence,
which will make no difference, or you can say,
“I’m going to make a real difference and try to change
that dynamic.” That is the choice that people have
got. The
Chairman: Thank you. We must now move on to another part
of the Bill. The time allocated is going to have to be dramatically
reduced if we are going to get through all the subjects, as there are
three more. We begin with
alcohol.
Q
208James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): Thank you, Sir Nicholas. I
will be as brief and succinct as possible.
There are
two lines of questioning that I would like to pursue. The first relates
to the code of practice, and the two parts of the mandatory code. Will
Mr. Campbell, as the Minister responsible, tell us which
parts of the mandatory code that have already been published by the
Department of Health are likely to be included in the final
version? Mr.
Campbell: There are discussions taking place between
the relevant Departments. I understand that they have come to broad
agreements on which parts will be included and which not. We will bring
those forward, and will also deal with the question of whether or not
they will be part of the mandatory or the voluntary
code.
Q
209James
Brokenshire: Will you give some clarification, because at
this stage none of us has seen the code provisions or their final form?
Are they likely to be materially different from the code that was
released? Whether it was for consultation or otherwise is a matter for
wider
debate. Mr.
Campbell: I have not seen the final form yet, because
it is under discussion. We are starting, probably as we speak, with
some preliminary discussions across the industry to make sure that
before we go to formal consultation we have the broad headings that
people can sign up to. I am not sure whether you are alluding to a
particular aspect, and asking me whether it is in or
out.
Q
210James
Brokenshire: I suppose the point that I am trying to make
is that at this stage we can only, as a Committee, look at what has
been released to date. The Department of Health released the document.
You can argue as to whether that has been helpful or unhelpful in this
context, because all we can say is, “Well, we can look at
that.” Are there any specific issues that you would like to
mention to the Committee at the outset to help us consider the
provisions in the Bill, or are there any conditions that you believe
should be included in the code, albeit that they might need to be
drafted, finalised or
finessed? Mr.
Campbell: I can give some general guidance. We would
want to see some of the things that were discussed during the earlier
evidence sessions, including for example, provisions on vertical
drinking establishments; on “buy as much as you want for however
much” promotions; and on things that encourage people to drink
faster than a social activity would suggest—in other words
things that go out of their way to encourage drunkenness and the
behaviour that goes with it. Those are the broad headings that we are
looking at.
Q
211James
Brokenshire: Would they include, for example, introducing
Think 21 or Challenge 25 policies as a mandatory requirement under
these
provisions? Mr.
Campbell: Think 21 and Challenge 25 are very good
examples of how we are working in partnership with the industry, which
is bringing forward these ideas. Challenge 21 or Think 21 would perhaps
be more applicable in these circumstances. My understanding is,
however, that it would be difficult to put them in a quasi-legal
situation, as it is not something you could hold people to account for.
You can hold them to account for being under-age or for selling to
people under 18. It is much more difficult to frame provisions dealing
with issues such as whether someone looks as if they are under 18, or
between 18 and 21. As you know, Challenge 25 came out because of the
difficulty of distinguishing 19, 20 and 21-year-olds from people who
are under 18.
Q
212James
Brokenshire: Time is short and we can explore these issues
further in Committee, but some views have been expressed that some
licensing conditions are seeking to promote Think 21 or Challenge 25,
and people are concerned that you are creating two age-test
requirements. Do you recognise that as a
problem? Mr.
Campbell: It has been put to me by the industry that
Challenge 25 is a kind of gold standard. It is easier to do for some of
the big retailers than it is for some of the smaller and independent
retailers. We are encouraging people to adopt that. My advice is that
it would be extremely difficult to try to encompass that in some kind
of legal framework; in fact it would not be
possible.
Q
213James
Brokenshire: That is helpful. You mentioned small
businesses and I come back to the statement in the regulatory impact
assessment that
“there is the
potential for significant transitional costs, including job losses and
the closure of small
businesses.” We
heard evidence during the week that that might be quite significant,
particularly for smaller businesses. What discussions have you
undertaken with Ministers or officials in the Department for Business,
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform about the extent and nature of that,
and any
mitigation? Mr.
Campbell: Not only have we had communication with
Ministers from those Departments but I have met and discussed the
matter with industry representatives as well. We are very conscious of
our obligations, particularly from an enforcement point of view for the
Home Office, and from a health point of view for the Department of
Health, with DBERR and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
bringing their own view to bear. It is part of the wider discussions.
The Government are very aware of the issues, some of which were raised
in an earlier session, particularly in the economic circumstances, but
not exclusively for those reasons. We certainly would not want to
impose a burden either on on-sales or off-sales. However, there has to
be, as I think there is, a growing recognition of a problem that is not
going away. Along with the right to be consulted and our
influence—the burden that might be applied—there is a
responsibility for everyone involved to make sure they are doing
everything they
can.
Q
214James
Brokenshire: Let us come on to offences, namely the
creation of new offences and the strengthening of certain offences. In
principle, I have no objection to
giving the police powers that they need. Which
things were not working as well as you had expected in order to require
these sorts of changes to take
place? Mr.
Campbell: I was struck by the evidence from the chief
constable in a previous session. He gave the impression, quite rightly,
that it is a case of building on what has gone before and making sure
that it works. You will be as aware as I am that when we draft and pass
legislation it does not always have the full effect that we intended.
Some of it is about balancing offences and penalties with what already
exists in other areas, for example what should happen if a person does
not leave and follow the direction of a police officer, and, therefore,
what is appropriate both as a deterrent but also as a
penalty.
One of the
real difficulties relates to age difference and the fact that when
people buy alcohol under age, or have it bought for them, they are
often in mixed-age gangs—it is possible for older people to buy
the drink and share it among the gang. If police are called to an
incident, it is not always possible to treat all of the people in that
gang, or group of people, similarly. For example, it might not be
possible to confiscate the alcohol from everybody or send them all
home, or whatever the punishment happens to be. It is a case of trying
to acknowledge the practical difficulties that the police are telling
us about—which have been reiterated by the chief
constable—that I think lies behind these
measures.
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