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Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Policing and Crime |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Andrew Kennon, Committee
Clerks attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 10 February 2009(Morning)[Hugh Bayley in the Chair]Policing and Crime BillClause 13Paying
for sexual services of a controlled prostitute: England and
Wales 10.30
am Question
(5 February) again proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill. James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): On a point of order,
Mr. Bayley. Have you received a communication from the
Government or any other representations about new clauses to be added
to the Bill? Last Thursday, the Home Secretary announced that she would
introduce new provisions about gang injunctions. That would be a
significant addition to the Bill and, as we are halfway through our
proceedings in Committee and have limited time left to discuss new
clauses and existing clauses, we are obviously worried about whether we
will have enough time to debate what seems to be a significant, new
addition to the Bill that requires detailed scrutiny and examination. I
am therefore interested to know whether you have received
representations or any news about the
matter.
The
Chairman: I have not received any representations, but I
would not expect to do so. The rule is that the Committee can consider
amendments or that I can call them only if they are tabled three
sitting days before our proceedings. Does the Minister wish to
comment?
The
Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing
(Mr. Vernon Coaker): I shall take on board the
hon. Gentlemans point of order and consider whether we can take
the appropriate
action.
Dr.
Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): On a point
of order, Mr. Bayley. I wish to ask two things. First, will
it be possible for the Committee to be told first, or at least at the
same time as others, when we will be debating the measure, as that is
only polite. Secondly, I raised with the Deputy Leader of the House the
matter of whether there would be adequate time for scrutiny of Bills
such as the one under discussion both in Committee and on Report. He
said that the Government would do their utmost to ensure that the only
new clauses tabled on Report would be responses to the Committee and
not extra chunks to be added to the Bill. Sometimes the Government have
to do what they have to do, but I hope that the message is understood
that we need adequate time on Report to discuss such matters,
especially when new clauses are tabled late in
Committee.
Mr.
Coaker: The new provision to which the hon. Member
for Hornchurch referred related to gangs, and the Government intend to
table such a new clause for discussion in Committee, not on Report. It
is the Governments intentionit is certainly
mineto ensure that, as far as possible, we adhere to the
commitment that the Home Secretary and I gave on the Floor of the House
and here in Committee that we will have adequate time to discuss the
various measures in the Bill and that we will have sufficient time to
prepare for them.
The
Chairman: That was useful. I am grateful to the hon.
Members for Oxford, West and Abingdon and for Hornchurch for raising
those points of order, and to the Minister for informing us of his
intentions. Dr.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab): I decided
on Thursday to contribute to discussions on the clause. I listened
carefully and necessarily patiently to the detailed argument made by
the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, but I thought that we
were in danger of omitting from the debateexcept for a passing
reference to it when we reached clause stand partthe policy
objective behind the
clause. I
acknowledge that much of the discussion on Thursday afternoon was
helpful in identifying ways in which the Bill can be improved, but I
consider that those who were arguing for greater evidence to back up
the basic approach of the Bill seemed to be quite happy to assert that
the Bill was completely wrong, that it would be counter-productive and
that there was no point in reducing demand for trafficked women who are
prostitutes, without giving any evidence themselves to back up their
assertions. I therefore want to spend a minute or two looking at the
policy
focus. I
admit that when I first discovered the Governments approach I
too was a little sceptical, but once I read the Home Office
publication, Tackling the Demand for Prostitution: A
Review, in November 2008a very useful document that
contains much of the evidence that the Member for Oxford, West and
Abingdon thought was missingit helps our understanding of the
Governments position. It is very clear from information already
in the public domain that almost every approach to reduce prostitution
has weaknesses. However, on the evidence available it is reasonable to
attempt to reduce demand for prostitution by operating a strict
liability rule that will hopefully dampen demand, and in
particularI will say more about this in a minutemake
men think very seriously about the nature of the prostitution services
that they are buying.
Nadine
Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): Will the hon. Lady
explain how the information will be imparted to men who pay for sexual
services? Will there be a national advertising campaign to let men know
that they are subject to strict liability when they use the services of
a prostitute? If there is to be a campaign, that funding would be
better channelled elsewhere. Men do not know what the law is now when
they pay for sexual services, and I do not believe that they will know
should the Bill be
enacted.
Dr.
Blackman-Woods: If the hon. Lady had been here for the
extensive debate that we had on the clause on Thursday, she would have
known that that matter was dealt with by the
Minister.
Dr.
Harris: The hon. Lady would accept that I was here last
Thursday. She talks about the evidence in the Home Office review, but
the academic evidenceif something is published and
peer-reviewed it is evidence, otherwise it is opinion, which is
valuable but different from evidenceis not in the Home Office
review. In so far as it exists, there is a review of that academic
evidence that has not even been published yet, let alone at the time
the review was published, so would the hon. Lady accept that in strict
terms the evidence is not there on either side in the Home Office
review?
Dr.
Blackman-Woods: I thought the hon. Gentleman might make
that point. A great deal of the academic evidence is referred to in the
report. My point is that it explains to some extent the logic behind
the Governments thinking on why they opted for reducing the
demand for the prostitution services of a woman who had been
trafficked.
If we are
serious about reducing demand, it is essential to make the purchasers
of prostitution services responsible for their actions. The critical
point is vigilance and circumspection about the women who are involved.
The best way for purchasers of ensuring that they do not fall foul of
the legislation is to either not use the services of prostitutes, or to
significantly reduce that risk by being very careful, and perhaps using
prostitutes who are in a collective or another setting where women are
clearly not being controlled for gain, and where some aspects of
womens safety can be
guaranteed. This
deals very effectively with the criticism from the English Collective
of Prostitutes. Useful criticisms were raised on its behalf by the GMB,
but the union and the English collective have taken their eye off the
policy direction in the clause, which is to try to reduce the number of
women who are either trafficked into this country for prostitution or
are forced into prostitution and controlled for
gain. The
Bill will not further criminalise prostitutes, but it will criminalise
the men who buy services from prostitutes who are controlled for
gainwe took our eye off that particular policy focus on
Thursday. It therefore is essential that we keep the strict liability
clause, because if we start to alter it, we give men a number of
possible defencesI am not suggesting for a minute that people
should not be able to defend their actions, but we do not want to make
it too complicated, have too many possible defences, or be too
mealy-mouthed about it, because otherwise, the policy objective will
simply be lost. The clause and the direction of the Bill can work only
if we keep our eye on strict liability, because it is by making men
very careful, responsible and circumspect about who they are buying
services from that we will achieve reduction in demand for the services
of women who are controlled for
gain.
Nadine
Dorries: On a point of order, Mr. Bayley. We
have been a well-mannered and polite Committee up until this point, but
I am afraid that I feel obliged to put on the record the reasons for my
absence on Thursday, as they were pointed out in such an ill-mannered
way by the hon. Member for City of
Durham.
The
Chairman: That is not a point for debate. The hon. Lady
can contribute to the debate, but she cannot make that a point of
order.
Paul
Holmes (Chesterfield) (LD): As we have heard, both in the
debate on Tuesday and this morning, there are major concerns about the
general intent of the clause. Many people believe that the introduction
of a strict liability offence, together with the issue of controlling
someone for gain, threatens to make the situation for sex workers in
this country much worse, rather than better, even though the intention
of the Bill is to improve the situation. Most people who are connected
with the issue out on the street feel that, whatever the intention of
the Bill, it will make matters worse.
I want to go
into some detail on that. To put it on the record, I know that the
language used in the Bill is gender neutral, and that the intention is
not to talk purely about women as sex workers who are used by men as
punters or customers. None the less, throughout the entire debate on
Second Reading, and so far in Committee, the only terms that have been
used throughout concern women being exploited by menwomen as
sex workers, men as
customers.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Alan Campbell) indicated
assent.
Paul
Holmes: The Minister is nodding. I know that it is the
intention of the Bill, but I still want to put on record the fact that
the Bill is designed to talk about all sex workers, whether or not they
are exploited by any customer. Although the largest category is women
being used by men, there is a fairly large category of men who sell
their services to other men, and also a much smaller, but none the less
existing category of men who sell services to women. I want to put on
the record the fact that the Bill is intended to apply to all sex
workers and customers, not exclusively to women who are used by
men. One
of the points on strict liability, which has already been rehearsed, is
that it may simply be unenforceable. In that case, it would be another
example of a headline, grandstanding pursuit, rather than an effort to
introduce measures that work in practice. We discussed a little on
Second Readingand during the evidence sessionsthe fact
that the policy is based on the experience in Finland, the only country
in the world that has gone down the route of introducing a strict
liability crime for the customers of sex workers. As far as we
understand it, the example in Finland, after two to three years, is
that either nobody has been prosecuted at all, or that a few
prosecutions have taken place in very recent months, but we do not know
with what degree of success. Considering the research done by the
Government, including visits to a number of countries with different
approaches, that does not seem a good argument for adopting a the
strict liability approach that has caused so much concern to so many of
the people
involved.
Dr.
Harris: In a sense I am answering the intervention of the
hon. Member for City of Durham, who asked about what the evidence is on
either side. The Government are introducing a strict liability test,
which might make matters worse and criminalise thousands of people. Is
the onus not on the Government to provide the evidence of
effectiveness, rather on than on the Opposition to prove that it does
not work, given that such a test has hardly been tried
anywhere?
10.45
am
Paul
Holmes: Absolutely. The same issue, which has been
discussed a little in Committee and on Second Reading, arises with
respect to the evidence for how bad the problem of sex trafficking is,
for example. Likewise, the issue arises with regard to how many women
are involved in prostitutionI apologise, I meant sex workers in
general, including menpurely to pay for a drug habit, rather
than for other reasons. The evidence in both cases, it has been argued,
is quite flimsy. Certainly the figures put forward for the percentage
of sex workers who are trafficked have been demolished by lots of the
evidence submitted to the Committee, suggesting that the figures are
grossly
exaggerated. I
do not underestimate the problem. About seven years ago, a year after I
was first elected, I went on a visit with UNICEF to Thailand and Laos
to look at the issue of trafficked sex workers and, indeed, that of
industrial slaves in some Thai factories. Children mainly came from
Laos to Thailand to become sex workers, but some of them travelled on
to the UK. For example, in Operation Pentameter, the biggest single
category of people who were discovered as trafficked sex
workerscertainly in the top six categoriescame from
Thailand. Some other Members of Parliament and I looked at that seven
years ago with UNICEF, so I certainly understand the problem, but a lot
of evidence has been submitted to the Committee to suggest that there
is considerable exaggeration about the percentage of sex workers who
are trafficked
women. We
have heard the arguments. While it may be true in London that there is
a higher proportion of foreign sex workersthat does not
necessarily mean that they are trafficked forcibly, or controlled
against their willthat may not be the case elsewhere. I went
with the BBC to do a programme on a project in Derby that works with
sex workers on the street, offering support. That organisation said it
had never once come across a trafficked sex worker in Derby, for
example. We have heard other evidence for that case from other parts of
the
country.
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©Parliamentary copyright 2009 | Prepared 11 February 2009 |