Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, there are many aspects of the Bill on which I am tempted to speak, but I intend to confine myself this evening to Clauses 123, 124 and 125 in Part 7, those dealing with street offences. I start by expressing my disappointment that the Government have not taken this opportunity to carry out a comprehensive reform of the law on prostitution, which everyone who studies the subject agrees is long overdue. They are instead proceeding in what must be seen as a piecemeal way. The best government publication on the subject in recent years is Paying the Price, published in 2004, and it is worth reminding ourselves what it said about street-based prostitution. Paragraph 1.6 reads like this: "““A common pattern is for men and women to be trapped in street-based prostitution after having been coerced into it at a young age or to fund their own—and often their partner’s—problematic drug use. Those involved in this way rarely benefit, apart from ensuring their drug supply. The profits of the ‘trade’ go straight into the pockets of drug dealers. While some may become involved ‘to buy nice things’—and for some it is undoubtedly a highly lucrative business—for the 80-95% of those involved in street-based prostitution to feed a serious drug habit the reality is very different””." We have to bear in mind that the street-based sector represents only about 15 per cent of the total of perhaps 80,000 sex workers, a statistic which is either ignored or misunderstood by a number of politicians and others who comment on these matters. In Paying the Price, serious consideration was given to the possibility that local authorities would be allowed to sanction red-light toleration zones, with sex workers licensed and regular health checks introduced, an approach followed in a number of other countries, including Australia and Holland. These are worth looking at, as is the kind of decriminalisation introduced in New Zealand. Paying the Price was a real step forward, and it was the hope that legislation to implement its proposals would not be long in coming, but unfortunately we are still waiting, because this Bill is certainly nowhere near that. As your Lordships may be aware, I have raised some of these issues in the House on a number of occasions over the past seven years. I first did so during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which strengthened the law on carding—placing cards advertising sexual services in phone boxes. Sections 46 and 47 of that Act had the effect of making it harder for women working in the relative safety of their own flats to advertise for clients, with the consequence that many were tempted to resume soliciting on the streets, where the risk of serious assault is many times greater. I pointed out that research carried out by the Economic and Social Research Council among indoor and street-working prostitutes in three British cities found that women working on Glasgow’s streets were six times more likely to be violently attacked by clients than those working indoors in Edinburgh, and four times more likely than indoor workers in Leeds. In a debate on sentencing initiated by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in March 2004, I described for the House what happened when I was invited by the Metropolitan Police in January of that year to join its street offences and juvenile protection unit on patrol in Brixton. The officers were conducting a four-week intensive campaign on street soliciting. The evening started with a briefing at a police station in Camberwell, two walls of which were covered with photographs of prostitutes known to work in the area. I was told that it was certain that a number of those women would be arrested for soliciting during the night—and that was exactly how it turned out. One of them was a 23 year-old woman known as Judy. As a known prostitute, she was arrested walking down a side street in a red-light district of Brixton. She had a string of convictions for soliciting and a reputation for never appearing in court unless taken straight there from a police cell. She worked in the sex industry to fund her cocaine habit. I found it particularly disturbing that no one appeared to make any attempt to get her off drugs. Instead, she was in a cycle of soliciting, arrest, a court appearance, a fine, and then more soliciting to pay the fine and buy the drugs. That evening made a profound impression on me, and since then I have tried to judge the various proposals that have emanated from the Government and other well meaning bodies for dealing with street prostitution on whether they are likely to be of any real value or help to women like Judy. I have read with great care the Hansard reports of proceedings in another place on this Bill, and particularly the debates in Committee on the clauses dealing with street offences. On Second Reading on 8 October, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, articulated the concerns of the Safety First Coalition, which is a remarkable group of individuals and organisations including religious groups such as Zacchaeus 2000, as well as the Royal College of Nursing, the National Association of Probation Officers and the English Collective of Prostitutes. Their stance is supported by medical consultants and the British Psychological Society, using practitioner knowledge and evidence from the top medical and legal journals. The coalition came together following the murders of the five young women in Ipswich, to put forward the point of view that everyone deserves to be safe, regardless of gender, race, occupation or lifestyle. This received widespread support from the people of Ipswich, who rather than blaming such women themselves believe that everything possible should be done to ensure their safety in future. The coalition organised a well attended meeting in Committee Room 10 last Wednesday. A number of Members of your Lordships’ House were there to hear unanimous criticism of the clause, which, to quote from its briefing, "““introduces compulsory rehabilitation under threat of imprisonment””." On the surface, Clause 124 may appear a well meaning effort to get people out of the sex industry. I respect my noble friend Lord Hunt for putting forward that point of view in his opening speech. Indeed, it is linked to a proposal in Clause 123 to do away with the term ““common prostitute””, which dates back to the Vagrancy Act 1824. That is long overdue. Yet what chance is there that women such as Judy, to whom I referred a moment ago, would ever turn up for these rehabilitation sessions? The answer is almost none at all. Have we forgotten what we know about addiction? Compulsion does not work, and the person must be willing and supported in order to be able to change her life. The Safety First Coalition believes that a failure to appear would lead to a summons back to court, possible imprisonment for 72 hours and that, "““women could end up on a treadmill of broken supervision meetings, court orders and imprisonment””." This is clearly a view with which the Joint Committee on Human Rights concurs, in its paragraph 155 on page 117, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, pointed out in her brilliant speech a little earlier. In other words, this measure could increase the criminalisation of consensual sex with the effect that, instead of seeking help to get out of the sex industry or deal with a drug dependency, it would be driven further underground. Driving prostitution underground is guaranteed to increase sex workers’ vulnerability to rape and other violence, as violent men would know that the risk of arrest deters sex workers from reporting assaults. The truth is that recent piecemeal legislative changes mean that we now have some of the most punitive laws on prostitution anywhere in the world, particularly given the increasing numbers of anti-social behaviour orders being directed at women working in the sex industry who then end up in prison for breach of the orders. The female prison population has doubled in the past 10 years and, while we do not know exactly how many women are there for offences relating to prostitution—via the breach of an ASBO or the non-payment of a fine which would have originated from soliciting—the number seems substantial. This is a grave situation, especially when we consider that many are young and in need of support, and may be mothers who are then separated from their children. At the same time, we are doing little to ““design out”” the vulnerability of sex workers, which criminologists show we can, or to tackle the influence of pimps on those women. I also regret that this Bill does little to address the fundamental reasons why young women—some young men, too—go into prostitution in the first place. We undoubtedly need extra resources to address practical needs such as housing, debt, a viable income and drug addiction treatment. I would like to be able to say that these clauses were extensively debated in the other place, before they came up to us here. Sadly, that was not the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, pointed out in his opening speech. The longest debate in the other place was whether Britain should adopt the practice adopted in Sweden of criminalising the purchase of sexual services but not their sale. I do not intend to take up the House’s time tonight by debating what has been happening in Sweden, but I counsel my noble friend that there are as many or more powerful arguments against doing what Sweden has attempted as there are for trying it. I for one will certainly oppose such a proposition if it comes before us during the later stages of this Bill. Finally, bearing in mind that we are promised a substantive piece of legislation reforming the law on prostitution in the next Session—David Hanson, the Prisons Minister, is on record as saying this—it would be better to drop Clauses 123 to 125 and Schedule 25 from this Bill now. I hope that there will be substantial support for this point of view in all parts of the House, and I intend to table amendments in Committee which will do that.