Clause
20
Closure
orders Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman: I call Mr. David
Ruffley.
Mr.
Ruffley: May I say, Sir Nicholas, that although
your voice might be slightly more hoarse than normal, it remains a very
distinguished one here in Parliament and this Committee? I am sure that
I speak for all Members on both sides of the
Committee. Clause
20 is important. It and schedule 2 insert a new provision in the Sexual
Offences Act 2003 granting the courts the power to close
temporarily
“premises used
for activities related to certain sexual
offences”. A
closure notice can be served by the police preventing anyone from
entering or remaining on said premises, unless they regularly reside in
or own the premises, until a magistrates court decides whether to make
a closure order. If the court is satisfied that the relevant conditions
have been met, it can make a closure order for up to three months. An
application can be made to extend the closure order, but the total
period for which an order has effect cannot exceed six months. That is
the nub of the
clause. I
know that all of us—not least you, Sir Nicholas—wish to
make progress, but I have one very simple question: has the Minister
made any estimate of the number of establishments that could be the
subject of a closure, and if so what evidence does he have to support
it? Before he shakes his head—he might wonder how that can
possibly be known—I should add that the point is worth
exploring, because it goes to the heart of the interests of many of the
vulnerable people, overwhelmingly women, who might be affected by the
clause, no matter how well intentioned.
This question
is one that we have heard before—it is almost a leitmotif in our
discussions of this part of the Bill. Will vulnerable women be driven
underground? In other words, will they be moved from a place of
relative safety—perhaps a brothel with some semblance of
oversight—out on to the streets and into places with no
oversight of any description? In shorthand, will the abuse, degradation
and coercion of such women, some of them trafficked, be shoved
underground? That is the simple question that I pose to the Minister.
There is no question that the clause is well intentioned. It is a tough
measure that, on the face of it, will clamp down on criminality; that
is the result that we all want. However, has much thought been given to
the question whether such activity will be driven underground,
resulting in some of these vulnerable women having an even harder time
of
it? Nadine
Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): I shall be brief,
because I know that we are running out of time, but I want to pick up
on the point just made. There is no such evidence, because we have not
passed any legislation like this before that would inform us of what
the consequences will be. One can only guess, assume and speak to those
working in this field, not as prostitutes, but as outreach workers,
social workers and nurses.
The big
concern is that girls working as prostitutes will not stop working just
because their brothel is closed down. That is the place where they are
warm, where they work in relative safety and away from the view of
residents and people on the streets, including children. They work
there in seclusion almost; their business is kept indoors and behind
closed doors. However, if their brothel is closed down, the girls will
not stop working. They will go straight back out on the streets, but it
will not just be the streets; it will also be wasteland, cars and
secluded areas. I have heard it said that the girls will go
“underground”. They will go on to waste ground. They will
go on to the streets. The girls who were protected by being indoors and
out of the public eye will suddenly be at risk of being prosecuted for
loitering. Whereas before they were not criminalised, so that if they
wanted to remove themselves from prostitution and go into another form
of work, they could do so, now, as a result of being turfed out on to
the streets, they will be more likely to have a criminal record around
their neck. They will be more exposed and more liable to being
prosecuted than they were
before. There
are issues of safety. We all said after the events in Ipswich,
“This will never happen again; it must not happen again.”
I cannot see how anyone can say that when we are about to close down
many brothels and put the girls into dangerous situations. They do not
need prosecuting; they need help and assistance. If they want to leave
prostitution, we need to provide a framework of assistance to get them
out of that line of work. We do not need to put them in danger.
Whatever the Minister says in his comeback, there is no evidence to
show the results of this measure; we can only guess. However, the
events in Ipswich, so fresh in our minds, show us that putting the
girls out on the streets can only mean that they will be in
danger. A
number of other points have been raised with me by the English
Collective of Prostitutes, the Royal College of Nursing and the Safety
First coalition. We heard someone say that the overwhelming body of
evidence is against a particular argument. The RCN—I will admit
that I was a member of the RCN, so I listen to what it has to
say—is hugely opposed to closure orders. At least when the girls
are working in brothels, they are easier for the outreach workers to
get to; they are easier to make contact with. Even simple things, such
as telephoning them and making appointments to see them, are easier to
do when the workers know where they are than when the girls are on the
streets. The
only advantage to the measure that I imagine the Government perceive is
that it will crack down on those who are controlling for gain and on
trafficking. As I said, the aims are laudable, but it is like a using a
big hammer to smash a very small nut. There will also be many girls
back out on the streets who have not been trafficked and are not being
controlled for gain. There will be girls out on the streets who are
there because they want to do that work, not just those who were driven
into it as a result of need or drug
abuse. The
girls will be on the streets, but they are not there at the moment. In
the present difficult economic circumstances, young girls who see the
girls working on the streets may be tempted to follow that line of
work, whereas before—when the girls were not so
visible—it would not have come to their attention so much. This
is almost a recruitment campaign—turning the girls out
on the streets, where other vulnerable young girls can see them working.
Residents who do not want the girls on the streets—who would
prefer them to be indoors—will have them on their streets. I
cannot see one argument to back closure orders that does not put the
girls in
danger. If
I could wave a magic wand and stop prostitution tomorrow, I would. No
woman should have to sell her body to make money to live, to keep her
family or to do anything else. I abhor prostitution for those women who
are forced into it and do not want to be in that line of work, but by
the same token those women should not be exposed to danger. I cannot
see any outcome of closure orders other than the girls being put in
danger. I
heard the priest from Soho at the meeting involving the English
Collective of Prostitutes the other night. These were his
words: “It
will not be long before I have to officiate at a funeral of one of
these girls as a result of being turned out on to the streets, and when
I do, I will point my finger at the Government and say, ‘This
was your
fault.’” Do
we really want that to be the consequence of the closure order? That
could really
happen.
5
pm Lynda
Waltho (Stourbridge) (Lab): I do not recognise the
description that the hon. Lady is giving. She has almost made brothels
sound like homely, inviting places to go. That may be the case in the
brothels that she has visited in Soho or wherever, but in Walsall or
Wolverhampton and the area that I represent, we are talking about seedy
places that are sometimes just as dangerous as the streets. They are
sometimes in dilapidated flats on council estates. The Julia Roberts
“Pretty Woman”, happy hooker description is not what I
find when I talk to prostitutes and sexual outreach workers in my
region.
Nadine
Dorries: There was a brothel in a council flat in the
block opposite my bedroom window in the council maisonette in which I
grew up. I know exactly what they are like. I have been to the flats in
Soho, and I am not saying that they are homely, comfortable
places—that is not my point. They are not homely, and we would
not want to live in them, but they are indoors, and the girls are off
the streets. None of the girls in the brothels I visited was controlled
for gain or trafficked.
The
Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing
(Mr. Vernon Coaker): They would not be
closing.
Nadine
Dorries: Well, let us go back to the raid in December on
the flats that I visited. The police went in and wanted to arrest the
receptionist for “controlled for gain”. Where did the
police get the words “controlled for gain” from? Was that
a dummy or practice run before the Bill is
enforced?
Lynda
Waltho: The hon. Lady does not have a monopoly on council
estate upbringing—I was brought up on a council estate in
Bermondsey, and I know exactly the type of area that she is talking
about. Those places can be as dangerous as the streets. Women get
attacked and are subject to all sorts of violent approaches. She was
describing what sounded like a homely environment, but the flats I am
talking about are not like that—they can be just as dangerous as
the streets. I hope she accepts that.
Nadine
Dorries: The hon. Lady has made that point twice, but it
is not the point I am making, which is this: no one wants to see girls
attacked, but if one is attacked, all the women in a flat will be out
on the streets. Six girls were working out of one flat that I saw. I am
not saying that it was a homely environment—frankly, it was
seedy—but the girls were at least safe. They were indoors and
off the streets.
I simply
think that there is another way to go to achieve what the Government
want to achieve, other than via closure orders. The worst-case scenario
of the closure orders is not good, and I am not sure that the
Government want to go there. I wonder whether there is another way to
deal with the problem that does not involve closing brothels down and
putting the girls out on the streets. The residents do not want it, and
a lot of the girls do not want it, so what are the Government trying to
achieve? The worst-case scenario is not good, and I do not think that
the Government want such an outcome.
Dr.
Harris: I am in something of a dilemma because some of the
points that have been raised are the subject of amendments to schedule
2 that I have tabled, so I need to hold my fire until we discuss it.
However, we are discussing a clause that introduces the schedule, so it
is right for the Government to reflect on some of the cases in which
closure orders will be
used. There
is no argument, at least from me and my hon. Friend the Member for
Chesterfield, about the use of closure orders against establishments
where child prostitution takes place or where child pornography is
used, which is the bulk of the reason why the orders might be used,
even if the bulk of the orders will be used for something else. We also
do not have an argument against using the orders against establishments
where there are trafficked women or women who are being brutalised,
coerced or enslaved. There is no disagreement on that, although we
wonder whether there are other offences for which someone might be
locked up that we could use. The question is whether, in the remaining
case scenarios, the use of an order will be dangerous for a
woman’s health and
safety. The
key question for the Minister to answer, either now or in response to a
point that I will raise when we discuss the amendments to the schedule,
is that of what the Government’s attitude is to women who set up
together in a profit-making organisation with a madam. That would be a
consensual arrangement, even though someone would gain from it. The
point has been raised before and the Minister said that he would
reflect on it—I understand if he cannot respond now—but
it must be dealt with.
It is
important to listen to the Royal College of Nursing and NHS projects
that need to keep in touch with women and can do that if the women are
in an organised place. It is always wise to take the advice of the RCN,
rather than picking and choosing, as I believe some have done, over
when it represents the truth and when it does not.
[Interruption.] The hon. Member for
Mid-Bedfordshire speaks from a sedentary position. I am not saying who
that comment was directed at. However, I welcome the fact that the view
of medical professionals is becoming increasingly respected in this
matter, if not in others.
Mr.
Campbell: We must be aware of the risks that hon. Members
are talking about, but it is worth reflecting on the kinds of
establishment that would be closed under these orders. The hon. Member
for Bury St. Edmunds asked a specific question about how
many establishments would be subject to the orders and how many orders
would be made per year. The impact assessment, which we brought
forward, gave a best estimate of between 780 and 1,200 orders. That
appears to be high, but we suggest that it is the maximum possible
impact; we do not think that that number of orders will be
made. The
hon. Gentleman will understand why we brought such figures forward, and
in my brief remarks I shall return to the point that such orders will
be used in a targeted way in accordance with
guidance. Let
me respond to a couple of issues that have been raised. We should be
clear about the nature of the establishments that the orders are
designed to tackle. The orders will be used only for prostitution and
pornography offences that are particularly exploitative. That includes
those involving children. The orders will give the police the
opportunity to disrupt criminal activity and exploitation. We will work
with the Association of Chief Police Officers to ensure that the
guidance reflects that, that the orders are not used disproportionately
and that we minimise
disruption. I
take the point about people being caught up in these closure orders. It
is important for victims and vulnerable people to be identified so that
the police can, as they do, link up with local authorities and
community projects and ensure that appropriate support is provided. We
heard from the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon about a
scenario in which two or more women set up together, where there is no
control for gain although there is a madam. In my earlier remarks, I
made it clear that we do not believe that such a situation would fall
foul of this legislation. Therefore, it would not be reasonable or
proportionate to impose a closure order on such premises.
The hon.
Member for Mid-Bedfordshire talked about women being better
off—that was the phrase she used—working in these
brothels. I understand what she means, but I do not agree with her.
This legislation should be used proportionately in those instances
where women might have been trafficked and are subject to exploitation
and control for gain, or where there is child pornography or
prostitution involving children. There can be no excuse for keeping
such premises open, and there cannot be any reason for not using the
orders and disrupting the activity of those who would continue this
hideous
crime. The
hon. Lady also talked about the pointing of fingers: what would happen
if—she believes this to be a possible scenario under the
legislation—heaven forbid, a woman was pushed out on to the
streets, became the subject of horrendous violence and was even
murdered. It is possible for women who are exploited, or perhaps
trafficked, in such brothels to be the victims of such violence on an
ongoing, daily basis—and even to be the victims of murder.
Therefore, we are not talking about one solution being without risk and
the other being entirely full of
risk. I
simply refer to the purpose of the orders, which is to apply to a
limited number of premises where some of the worst exploitation is
taking place. We will do our utmost, working with the police, to ensure
that the
orders are targeted and that the guidance is in line with what we want
to achieve under the
Bill. | 
