Memorandum submitted by Douglas Fox (PC 37)

 

Dear members of the Scrutiny committee,

I am writing with regard to the policing and crime bill especially with relation to the proposals dealing with further criminalising sex work. In particular proposals section 20 and 13.

I am a sex gay male sex worker. We have been largely ignored in this discussion but we will of course be hurt equally with women by these proposals.

I work independently and also through an agency. I work sometimes from my own home and some times from a friends home who is also a female escort. Both of us sometimes work from each others homes. We do this for convenience and company and for security. She feels safer when I am around and likewise I always know that she knows (along with my partner) where I am and who I am seeing.

I have worked for nearly ten years. I love my work and I have never met one escort who has been coerced or trafficked. I have met foreign escorts or sex workers but all have been working because they wanted to and enjoyed their work.

Clause 20 could see my home being locked for 90 days and myself homeless and with no place to work simply on suspicion. It is now under the bad laws that already exist classed as a brothel. I could be charged with controlling myself or with running a brothel even under present laws with out more bad law being forced on me. I am not a criminal. I am a member of a union and pay my taxes and I enjoy my work.

Forcing sex workers out onto the streets and sealing their safe places to work means that sex workers will have no access to the protection of the law. Why should we be treated like this?

Clause 13. My clients are my friends. In ten years I have never had any problems and many of my clients have been visiting me for several years. I work with many disabled and elderly clients. If the committee thinks that it is right to criminalise the disabled for having consensual sex with some one who charges for a professional service and expects me to give evidence against my client they are wrong. It is an affront to our civil liberties and our human rights.

What evidence has the government produced to support these proposals other than from the Poppy project who have produced statistics which have been pulled to pieces by nearly every academic. The poppy project is London based and is financed almost solely by the government. This is what the government is listening to? Its own financed propaganda machine?

I am not a criminal. I deserve the protection of the law. Pleas do not allow these proposals to become law. Support our human rights to work safely in an industry we/I love. Support decriminalisation.

February 2009