UK Parliament / Open data

Policing and Crime Bill

Proceeding contribution from Alan Campbell (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 19 May 2009. It occurred during Debate on bills on Policing and Crime Bill.
Of course, CEOP plays a vital part in tackling this hideous crime. It is important that police officers in forces across the country are aware of this criminality and are able to spot it and know what to do with it. We will bring forward guidance in due course. I want to move now to the issue of "controlled for gain", which took a great deal of time to debate in Committee. The debate in Committee was positive and constructive, even though we did not always agree. Amendments 142 and 143 would remove clause 13 and clause 14 respectively and replace those clauses with a new offence that seeks to address some of the concerns that have been raised about those clauses as the Bill has progressed. First, they seek to clarify the scope of the offence. In Committee, there were concerns that that the phrase "controlled for gain" was too wide and not sufficiently clear. We have tabled our own amendments in response to those concerns. We believe that our amendments are preferable to the approach taken by new clauses 25 and 26 and a number of amendments that have been tabled that relate to the definition of "controlled for gain" or the scope of this offence. First, we have used the terms "force", "threats" or "deception" as we consider them to be more precise than the word "coercion". Secondly, although there appears to be consensus that the offence should cover those who pay for sex with someone who has been trafficked, we do not feel that it would be appropriate to adopt the approach followed by using the term "trafficked" in the legislation. For that reason, we also have reservations about amendment 211. Using the term "trafficked" would mean that if someone had been trafficked and escaped from their traffickers, but still chose to work as a prostitute, it would still be an offence to have sex with that person if the payer knew or ought to know about the prostitute's past. Instead, our amendment focuses on the conduct that is likely to have induced or encouraged the person to provide the sexual services to the payer.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
492 c1401-2 
Session
2008-09
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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