Policing and Crime Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, suggested that some of those who support the Government on this matter are engaged on a moral crusade, which I hope cannot be necessarily rejected outright. However, I do not think that those who, like me, start out by supporting the Government do so primarily out of a sense of moral crusade, although moral issues are raised even where money is paid for sex where there is consent on both sides. Where the law intrudes into moral issues of this kind is always a difficult issue. However, in the background is the inexorable growth in prostitution in our country, for which the figures are alarming. Also in the background is the increased sexualisation of our culture and of children in particular at an ever younger age. The difficulty with that is not only that children are involved but that the sexualisation of our culture is very much in male terms. At the end of the day, it is very much a male view of prostitution that tends to be in the frame, in the background. There are figures for sexually transmitted diseases, for births to teenage mothers, on the level of abortion and so on. That is a difficult background, and it is understandable that the Government want to bear down on a particular aspect of prostitution, which has grown in an alarming way. As I understand it, about 80 per cent of active prostitutes in London come from abroad; not all of them are trafficked, of course, but a significant proportion are. We heard a horrific story about that from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—and we think of the absolute trauma involved. I approach this matter not on the basis of a moral view that I have but simply on the basis of how you protect women in our society. A key issue is how we frame the law around prostitution to give the maximum protection to women in our society. I suspect that there will be other aspects of this that will have to come back to this House in future. This Bill deals with a particular aspect—the issue of trafficking—because there has been a growth in that crime, and a growth in the number of young women has been instanced to us. If we are to change the law in this area, it must be kept as simple as possible, and we should not allow too many other issues to come in. Therefore, I am slightly concerned with Amendment 45, partly because of the link made with drug-taking. I am told that 95 per cent of street prostitutes do what they do to fund a drug habit, so in one sense anyone engaging a prostitute for money should know that there is likely to be a link with drugs. However, that is a separate issue from the one that the Government want to bring forth. I say that this matter should be as simple as possible—and that will be the issue to discuss in the next set of debates on strict liability—so I shall not say any more now, other than that there are real issues of the protection of women in our society.