Policing and Crime Bill

With this amendment we move to Part 2 of the Bill, which deals with sexual offences and sex establishments. Before I discuss the detail of the amendment, I wish to mention a few points about our general approach to Part 2 and what we are trying to achieve with these amendments. The Government stated that their main aim in this part is to try to reform the law in this area to make it much more difficult to exploit trafficked women and much easier to catch the traffickers. However, we have worries that this part as drafted makes life much less safe for women sex workers, still allows child victims to be treated as criminals and puts clients in a position of automatic guilt. When we debated similar clauses under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 before the Government withdrew them, I urged the Government to assess New Zealand’s approach of decriminalising prostitution. I am extremely dismayed that the Government have not examined that example in any detail, especially as the five-year evaluation of it shows so many positive outcomes. I feel that Her Majesty’s Government have turned their back on that example and I would like to ask the Minister the reason for that. This part of the Bill could simply be seen as a moral crusade against sex workers and their clients. People have had these moral crusades for hundreds or even thousands of years. Meanwhile, the issues of the health of society and real routes out of prostitution for women who want that option remain unaddressed. We have amendments to address those issues. There have been those who claim that the Bill is a great move forward to stop women being treated as sex objects and to help rehabilitate prostitutes. Sadly, that is the view of some so-called feminists. I say "sadly" because normally I would be pleased to call myself a feminist, but in this case I believe that the approach is naive and takes no account of reality. It dangerously makes some women’s lives less safe and more difficult. With those few opening remarks, I will turn to our first amendments, which would replace subsections (1) and (2) of new Section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008. Government Amendments 55 and 64 will be consequential on our amendments. The effect would be to remove the strict liability offence for clients. We will come on to debate strict liability later under the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, so I will not go into the detail of that yet. This amendment—whether we should have this clause at all is a question to which we will come later—would ensure that the definitions used are useful and accurate, and address what has made the woman behave against her will. I agree that the Government have clearly had doubts about their original drafting. Many doubts were expressed in the Commons, particularly by my noble friend Evan Harris who campaigned very hard on this issue. I am pleased that the Government have tabled their own amendments to this clause, which attempts to move in some direction on definition. I believe that our amendment is stronger. It changes the definition of the offence from one where a person has used force, deception or threats in the expectation of gain for themselves in order to induce or encourage a person to provide sexual services, and replaces it with an offence that stipulates that a prostitute must have been coerced, which it defines, does not freely consent or has been subject to the internationally recognised Palermo definition of trafficking. We believe that getting the drafting right at this stage is critical. If this Bill is to serve any purpose in stopping trafficking, those definitions and their use in court will be extremely important. We are anxious to have something that is of use for when traffickers are being prosecuted and, if this clause is included, a considerably tightened up definition. I beg to move.