Policing and Crime Bill

The Government made one positive move in the other place, when they removed the term "common prostitute" from the Street Offences Act 1959 as amended by Clause 15. I think that that was generally welcomed. However, what the Government have given with one hand, they have rather taken away with the other, because upping the incidence of persistence makes criminalisation more likely. Our amendment suggests that "persistent", if it needs to be defined at all, should be defined only as conduct which takes place on two or more occasions within any three-month period. As "persistent" is defined in the Bill at the moment, someone could be charged within a short period of a day, several days or over a week, and up to a three-month period. While the Bill creates a three-month deadline after which the person would have to be seen again by police officers soliciting on two or more occasions, it does not provide a meaningful deceleration of the criminal process in the context of work patterns of the majority of people involved in street sex work. Working patterns vary—we have heard in debate today of the wide variety of people involved in prostitution—yet the reality for the majority of women involved in street sex work is that the factors that lead to their entry into and continued involvement in it mean that most have to solicit regularly, often every day, hence most could still become very easily and quickly caught up in the criminal justice system under the proposed change. As the Minister will know, we have argued for progressive decriminalisation. We feel that this change goes in the opposite direction. There is also a danger that such legislation could encourage intensive, short-term policing operations which criminalised large numbers of women. Unsurprisingly, the Government’s proposition has no support from the Safety First Coalition, which believes that it would be a step in the wrong direction. Given that the Government’s declared intention is that the Bill should make life safer for women, I am sure that they would not want to take a step that made it more criminal and less safe. I beg to move.