Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I intend to concentrate on Part 2, but first I welcome Clauses 104 to 108 relating to the football banning orders. I do not think that anyone has mentioned them so far, apart from my noble friend the Minister in opening the debate. They will ensure that those people who are banned from attending matches in England and Wales will also be banned from attending all regulated football matches in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This puts right an anomaly that has existed since the banning orders were first introduced in England and Wales in 2000. I commend the Government for including the proposal in this Bill. It is a most desirable change and will mean that the police will no longer have to obtain a banning order in more than one jurisdiction against any one individual. I give notice that I intend to speak in Committee about Part 7, which deals with airport security. I shall argue in Committee—I shall not do so today—that the Bill provides an opportunity to extend the jurisdiction of the British Transport Police to operate within airports. The BTP is our only national police force which deals exclusively with the transport industry and I plan to table amendments which will allow your Lordships to consider this. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is vigorously nodding his head in approval. Turning to Part 2, there has been no shortage of attempts over the years to reform the law on prostitution and sexual offences. I have raised these issues in the House on a number of occasions over the past eight years. I first did so during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which imposed new restrictions on "carding", the practice of placing cards advertising sexual services in phone boxes. That Act, I am afraid, had the effect of making it harder for women working in the relative safety of their own flats to receive clients safely, with the consequence that many were tempted to resume soliciting on the streets where the risk of serious assault is 10 times greater. I shall come back to that theme in a moment as I develop my argument. That Act was followed in 2004 by the publication of the Government’s consultation paper, Paying the Price, which, on looking back, is probably the most thoughtful contribution we have had as an attempt to look at the law on prostitution and to reform it sensibly. That consultation paper gave serious consideration to the possibility that local authorities would be allowed to sanction red light toleration zones, with sex workers licensed and regular health checks introduced. This approach is followed in a number of other countries, including Australia and Holland. Paying the Price was followed by a White Paper in January 2006 and then, in 2008, by the criminal justice Bill which, in its original form, would have introduced compulsory rehabilitation under threat of imprisonment. On the surface, this appeared as a well-meaning effort to try to get people out of the sex industry. It was, however, opposed vigorously by a body called the Safety First coalition, which came into being after the dreadful murders in Ipswich. It is a remarkable collection of individuals and organisations, including religious groups such as Zacchaeus 2000, the Royal College of Nursing, the National Association of Probation Officers, Women Against Rape and the English Collective of Prostitutes. The purpose of the coalition was to win support for the view that everyone deserves to be safe, regardless of gender, race, occupation or lifestyle. There was general agreement that tackling rape and violent crime are the real priorities and that decriminalising prostitution will assist with that. I spoke against the inclusion of the supervision orders at the Second Reading of the Bill in 2008, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, and happily, after a number of meetings with my noble friends who were then Ministers in the Home Office, it was decided to remove those clauses from that Bill and we saw no more of the proposal. However, I am baffled that that provision is now back in this Bill. It means that anyone arrested for loitering or soliciting would have to attend three meetings with a supervisor approved by the court. It is not an alternative to a fine as failure to comply may result in a summons back to court and 72 hours in gaol. So you can envisage a situation where women could end up on a treadmill of broken supervision meetings, court orders and imprisonment. We must bear in mind that the sort of women who are working on the streets and are likely to be picked up are leading dysfunctional and disorganised lives. We are talking not about a regulated sex industry but about a very dysfunctional group of people. Imprisoning women for this sort of offence goes totally against the recommendations contained in the report written by my noble friend Lady Corston in March 2007. I am sorry that she has not stayed for the debate; she made an interesting intervention early on and I want to answer the point that she made about Ipswich. If she reads this report, she will have the opportunity to see what I said, which is that the Safety First coalition was an Ipswich-based initiative and its approach is widely supported by the people of that town. Clause 16 is being introduced with Clause 15, which widens the definition of "soliciting". It will make it easier for the police to arrest street workers and at the same time—this is the one welcome aspect of the clause—will abolish the definition "common prostitute". The other aspects of these two clauses, however, are undesirable. I do not see how the Government can justify defining soliciting as "persistent" when it takes place twice in three months, which is the provision in the Bill. "Occasional" would be a more accurate definition. The question that we should always be asking ourselves, when looking at any legislative proposals on this subject, is: do they increase or diminish the safety of the women who are involved in the sex industry? To say that we want sex workers to be safe is not to condone their way of life, still less to express approval of it. But who are we to cast the first stone? What do we know of the considerations that make a mother or a young woman take such a step, especially during a recession? Is it not better to acknowledge that, whatever these considerations may be, sex workers are entitled, like the rest of us, to receive the security that the law can give them? It is in that context that I ask my noble friend to look again at the "controlled for gain" provisions in Clauses 13 and 14 and the penalties contained within them. These clauses were significantly amended by the Government just prior to Report in the other place. Originally, it was to be an absolute criminal offence for a man to have sex with a person "controlled for gain" whether he knew it or not. This was based on a wholly misguided attempt to criminalise the clients of prostitutes, and drew heavily on the experience of Sweden, which has attempted something similar and where the results are far less successful than some people have claimed. Many commentators and academics, as well as police officers, take the view, and I agree with them, that criminalising clients drives prostitution underground and increases the dangers that women sex workers face. In the new versions of these clauses, "controlled for gain" is replaced with "force, deception or threats", which is certainly an improvement. That is intended to help women who are trafficked or coerced into prostitution. I support what the Government are attempting to achieve here, because tackling the exploitation and trafficking of women and children is extremely important. I am concerned, however, that the offence will not help to tackle the problem of trafficking, and that it may diminish the responsibility of those who knowingly have sex with a trafficked woman. One of the main priorities in tackling human trafficking is targeting those people who orchestrate, control and coerce and, in doing so, profit from what is modern-day slavery. The clauses as they stand provide for a person guilty of the proposed new offence only to be fined up to £1,000. Knowingly having sex with a woman who has been trafficked, and who is acting under coercion and not truly consenting, is akin to rape. The difficulty is—this was very much the view in debates in the other place—that a prosecution for rape in the circumstances where a prostitute is the victim, whether she is trafficked or coerced or not, would be most unlikely to succeed. It is extremely important not to treat trafficked women as a "no-go zone" for rape prosecutions simply because investigating the offence may be difficult. What is indisputable, though, is that a £1,000 fine is a wholly inadequate penalty for an offence where a third person is forcing a prostitute to have sex with a client. It is not a minor offence. I support the view that has been expressed to a number of your Lordships by Liberty: that Clauses 13 and 14 should be withdrawn and the Government should consult on whether a new offence is necessary, which would have a more appropriate and proportionate penalty attached to it, and look at what is needed to enable successful prosecutions for rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment or any other relevant charges to be brought in against those who take advantage of vulnerable women. There is a huge difference between consensual situations where sex workers are working voluntarily and situations where women are being coerced and suffer violence. Clause 20 and Schedule 2 amend the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to give police the power to issue a temporary closure notice in respect of any premises if the officer reasonably believes that within the previous three months the premises had been used for activities related to particular offences and the closure is believed to be necessary. I am concerned that here the Bill is strengthening the proceeds of crime powers without any consideration for the vested interest it promotes, since the police get to keep 25 per cent of any money seized during raids and prosecutions. This establishes the possibility of conflicts of interest that will be very difficult to resolve. Safe premises are already being targeted. In December police raided premises in Soho, threatening receptionists with being charged with "controlling prostitution for gain". Receptionists are sex workers’ first line of defence against violent attacks and exploitation, and if they are prosecuted, women will be left to work alone. This is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and I saw together when we visited premises in Soho earlier this year. That would take us into the opposite direction to that where we should be heading. I would much prefer us to follow New Zealand’s example and decriminalise all prostitution, both indoors and on the street. In the six years that their law has been in operation, women are safer and there is little evidence that I have seen which suggests that there has been an increase in prostitution. I conclude on the question of premises with some words sent to me by a branch secretary from the Royal College of Nursing. She is called Carol Watts and is from Cambridgeshire, and she has given me permission to quote from the e-mail she sent to me and to a number of your Lordships last week: ""I am writing to you following our meeting of RCN Congress last week at Harrogate. During Congress I proposed a motion on behalf of Cambridgeshire branch ‘that this meeting of RCN Congress would urge RCN council to lobby local government to allow up to 4 sex workers to work together legally before requiring a licence’. The proposal was for members to consider the impact that de-criminalising prostitution would have on these workers’ access to healthcare and personal safety. The resolution was passed by 93.46 per cent to 6.54 per cent of all voting members, representing the whole of the UK"." I agree with her, and if amendments are tabled in Committee that would give effect to what this lady has written to me about, I shall support them.