Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I wish to express opposition to Amendments 20 to 25, particularly to Amendments 23, 24 and 25, as they impact directly on Northern Ireland. I wish to express my support for Clause 15 of the Policing and Crime Bill, which makes it an offence in Northern Ireland for someone to buy sex or try to buy sex from someone subjected to force. Increasing demand for paid sex is a matter of national shame. Not only does it result in more women being drawn into forced prostitution from within these islands but also in women being trafficked and, yes, trafficked into Northern Ireland. In March this year, the Police Service of Northern Ireland announced that 11 trafficked women had been rescued from sexual slavery in the previous 12 months and since then another six had been rescued in Belfast and Londonderry. In March, the assistant chief constable, Drew Harris, explained that traffickers were targeting females from sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe or the Far East with the promise of a far better life. He said: ""When they are actually brought here they are forced into prostitution … We can expect that this will be a continuing problem for us because the profits involved and the criminal networks that are involved see this as a very lucrative business … People could have a brothel quite close to them and they should be aware of that, that it could actually be one of these brothels with women in it in the most awful circumstances in sexual servitude"." We must confront the fact that forced prostitution exists only because there is a demand for it. If it was not for that demand, there would not be women languishing in forced prostitution in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the UK today. Crucially, the fact that there are women in such deplorable circumstances is not helped one bit by the fact that buying sex from someone who is subjected to force is completely legal. There is a terrible sense in which anyone who buys sex from women subjected to force can do so in good conscience, going to bed at night knowing they are a good citizen who has broken no law. How can we celebrate, first, in 2007 the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, passed by an Act of Parliament, and then this year, the 175th anniversary of the release of all British colonial slaves that was again the result of an Act of Parliament, saying to ourselves, "Never again", and yet take no action in relation to the sexual slavery that is in our own midst, sustained not by an evil foreign power, but by British men? This is a matter of great shame for our nation and I very much welcome the Government’s attempt to use the law to make it illegal to buy sex from women subject to force, thereby combating contemporary slavery. I am of course aware of the argument that says if you make it an offence to buy sex from someone subjected to force, you will push forced prostitution underground and women will suffer more. I do not believe, however, that this stands up to close scrutiny. If we do not make it an offence to buy sex from people subject to force, women will continue to be drawn into forced prostitution and more and more will suffer. If, on the other hand, we do make it an offence to buy sex from women subject to force, some men will think again, mindful of the fact that the shame of being caught buying sex from someone subject to force will be considerable, and fewer women will suffer. Moreover, we must not forget what the Swedish police have told us; namely, that making buying sex an offence does not push prostitution underground in the sense of being beyond the law’s protection. Pimps have to advertise to their punters and reel them in, and it is in doing this that they give themselves away and the police can move in and take action. Then there are others who question the wisdom of Clause 15 on the grounds that strict liability infringes the civil rights of those buying sex, if they are deemed to have committed an offence regardless of whether they knew the person from whom they purchased sex was subject to force. While I do not have very much sympathy for anyone buying sex in any context, I have no desire to set unhelpful precedents in relation to strict liability generally, and am persuaded that we must take very great care before applying it. In this case, however, it seems to me that the two tests set out by Lord Reid in Sweet v Parsley, the leading judgment on the creation of strict liability offences, and elaborated on by Lord Scarman in Gammon v Attorney-General of Hong Kong, have been passed. The first is that there is a clear public interest and public safety imperative, not least because forced prostitution is umbilically attached to organised crime in the form of drug and people trafficking, although there are numerous other reasons, such as its association with a very much higher than average mortality rate. The second is that without the strict liability component, the offence would be rendered very much less effective. As in Finland, where such a law exists, punters and pimps would know that if caught they could always say, "I’m very sorry, I didn’t know the person from whom I purchased sex was subject to force". And so long as they were not subject to very obvious duress, it would be fairly impossible for the authorities to demonstrate otherwise. Clause 15 is very welcome in Northern Ireland. It makes sense, while the arguments advanced against it do not hold together. Not only that, but it is supported by some 64 NGOs, many of which, like Beyond the Streets, have considerable expertise of working with women in prostitution, helping them to find routes out and a fresh start. Thus I would call on noble Lords here tonight to support Clause 15—and indeed Clause 14 —and to reject Amendments 20 to 25. Let us use this opportunity to take decisive action, making it plain, in this the 175th anniversary of the release of all British colonial slaves, that there is no room for the sexual slavery in the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.