Policing and Crime Bill

Amendment 65 concerns an extremely important issue in relation to the offence of loitering and soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, which Clause 15 will amend. The amendment changes the law so that children cannot be prosecuted for the offence of loitering and soliciting. It clearly concerns not only the noble Baroness but a number of noble Lords and many people outside this House. Many favour changing the law in the way suggested in the amendment. We take seriously the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and children’s organisations, among others, who argue for decriminalising children in relation to this offence. We have considered this matter fully and taken account of the full range of views. Having done so, on balance, we have decided to retain the current law. I should start by emphasising that we accept the principle that children who become involved in prostitution are victims of a sexual offence and should be offered appropriate support. We set out our approach in our guidance Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution, which was originally issued in 2000, and we maintain that position in the latest version of the guidance, which was published earlier this month. As a consequence of this guidance and the approach it sets out, this offence is used against children very rarely. Between 2004 and 2007, a period of four years, five convictions and five cautions were given to under-18s for this offence. The noble Baroness said that in 2000, the latest year for which statistics are available, there was one conviction and two cautions. My brief states that there was one conviction and one caution. It is clear that, in practice, this offence is used extremely rarely in relation to under-18s. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they are treated solely as victims of a crime. Nevertheless, we believe there are reasons in favour of retaining this offence. Alan Campbell, the Minister in the other place who has been cited, made the point that decriminalising under-18s could risk sending out a message that we do not think it is acceptable for adults to be involved in street prostitution, but we consider it acceptable for a child or young person to loiter or solicit for the purposes of prostitution. Retaining the offence may therefore deter some children from engaging in street prostitution in the first place. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, spoke about children being targeted on leaving care. One of the things we are concerned about is that abolishing the offence would risk encouraging pimps to target those children in order to take advantage of the fact that children engaged in prostitution could not be arrested by police if they were found loitering or soliciting. Noble Baronesses made the point that in exceptional cases support from other agencies has been made available but has not been accessed or has not been effective in helping the child exit street prostitution. In some cases, we believe the intervention of the criminal justice agencies may be vital in ensuring the removal of that child or young person from a situation of danger and initiating engagement with support services. It may be that this intervention is the most effective in leading the child to engage with the appropriate support agencies, given the failure. It is not necessarily failure on the part of the agencies; it may simply be that the child has decided that it does not want to co-operate. This is an opportunity to give a boost to the rehabilitation that we are seeking to achieve with the new rehabilitation penalties that we are creating in Clause 16.