Home Affairs and Justice

I am glad to hear that. None the less, the matter raises the issue of the accountability of the Metropolitan police. I shall say more about police accountability because, with respect to the Justice Secretary, it sounds to me as though we have just been experiencing a bit of brinkmanship. The Metropolitan police decided they wanted to up the ante and get a bit more money from the Home Office, so they did what people do when they want more money from their paymasters, and threatened to shut something they really cared about. It sounds to me as if that is what happened, and I am concerned about some of the police accountability proposals in the Queen's Speech, because I think we shall see more of that kind of stuff. Under the proposed new methods for police accountability, there will be real concern and argument about operational matters—as we saw in the House today—and the police will be constantly looking over their shoulder. There will also be more of the brinkmanship that I described—and I should be grateful for reassurance that that will not happen. On the general issue of people trafficking, the other group who are most at risk are women trafficked for sexual purposes. One of the reasons why that becomes more possible is the commodification of sex, which has become quite common in a number of areas, two of which the Queen's Speech proposes to deal with—and both of which I profoundly welcome. The first area is lap dancing. It is extraordinary that the lap-dancing industry can claim that it does not represent sexual encounter establishments. In my understanding, there is more sexual encounter in a lap-dancing club than in any of the bookshops and sex toy shops that require such a licence. I am very glad indeed that—this is rather late, but it is very welcome—it is proposed to require such premises to be licensed as sexual encounter establishments. Although quite legal, those establishments profoundly exploit young women, who usually have to pay for the right to work in them, pay for their uniforms and pay for their drinks. As a result, they can end up out of pocket after an evening's work, and their managers deliberately ensure that there are more dancers than customers, in a way that creates gross exploitation of women. The same kind of context creates the exploitation of women who are being sold for sexual services through prostitution. I am glad that the proposal in the Queen's Speech is to focus not on those women, who are so often victimised, but much more on their customers, and to create a strict liability offence that is parallel to a number of other offences in Britain. If someone is driving with bald tyres, they are committing a strict liability offence. Even if someone did not know that their tyres were bald, it need only be proved that were driving the car, and that the tyres were bald, to show that they were responsible. Again, if someone employs someone who does not have the right to work, the employer is committing a strict liability offence. In my view, it should be exactly the same, at the least, for prostitution. I hope that in this case, we do not fall into the trap that some other European countries, such as Finland, have fallen into, where prosecutions have not taken place. I feel that targeting the purchaser is the best way to protect women. I hold that view not because of any piousness about selling sexual services, but because I believe that prostitution, as it is practised, represents a gross example of violence against women. Between 1996 and 2003, 72 women prostitutes were murdered in Britain. Most of them were selling themselves on the street. More have been murdered since. If we enforce the new proposals, it will be a fitting memorial to Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell, all of whom were murdered so recently in Ipswich. We should follow those other countries that have ensured that the target is the purchaser. That is the trend now. Some Opposition Members would suggest that we need to regularise and legalise the whole trade. But in countries that have done that, such as the Netherlands, the trade has grown, and more women are subjected to violence as a consequence. It is no accident that Nevada, which has the most legal prostitution of any state in the United States of America, also has the highest homicide rate for women. But I urge the Home Office, while targeting the punter, to remove the legal offences that women who are in prostitution are prosecuted for. The Government should get rid of the term, ““common prostitute””. They should get rid of criminal sanctions for soliciting. Women should not be fined or jailed for soliciting, because many of them are controlled. Arguably, they should get rid of the practice of prosecuting two women who work together for brothel-keeping, because in those circumstances, we could put the responsibility where it truly lies. If the logic of the Home Secretary's position is that the responsibility is the client's, exploited women should not be criminalised. If they were not, they would be much more likely to report the violent punters who are every day, in every town, raping, hitting and damaging women in prostitution. Until we can make those women safe, the steps that have been announced are insufficient.