Policing and Crime Bill

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, in her opposition to Clause 13. Although I accept her proposal that we should look forward to some changes, together with the fact that we have discussed most of this issue, I should be very much happier if I were able briefly to put on the record some of the research findings on this matter. There have been moments when we have not seemed entirely clear what we are talking about when we have discussed the difference between people who have been forcibly trafficked and held against their will—for example, in the sort of conditions suffered by the young woman from the Czech Republic, as described by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—and women who do not have British nationality, who are perhaps in London, either legally or illegally, and who have chosen to make their money by working in the sex industry rather than in some other low-paid job that might be available. Therefore, I want briefly to put on the record the findings of the ESRC project on migrants in the UK sex industry. Those findings are to be published shortly and are based on in-depth interviews with 100 individuals without British nationality working in the sex industry in this country. The conclusions are that, for many of them, working in the sex industry is preferable to other very low-paid jobs that they might be able to do, mainly working in restaurants. Many of them are able to earn substantial amounts of money in this country, which helps them to keep their families alive in their own countries. In Soho, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and I met some people who work in the sex industry. It was clear that the amount of money that they could earn in the sex industry in Soho would make the standard of living of their families in the countries from which they came very much higher. That is an important point. All the people interviewed in this study felt that they were very vulnerable and that plans to criminalise sex work would make them more vulnerable. Another piece of research, with which I am sure the Home Office is familiar, was carried out by Teela Sanders and Rosie Campbell. Their report, "Designing out vulnerability, building in respect: violence, safety and sex work policy", is based on extensive fieldwork in two cities in the UK outside London. They make the point that the people most at risk of violence are those working on the street and that those working on the street are those who already come from backgrounds of violence and abuse. They also found that, ""zero tolerance style policing and policies against sex workers and men who buy sex"," lead to an increase in violence. There is considerably more research available than that, but it seemed that it might be helpful to the Committee if some of the information were at least on the record so that we could be clear that it exists and that it is helpful to use research when it is available.