Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I shall be brief because many of the points that I would have made have already been made. I support the Government’s position and shall speak against the amendment. Yesterday evening, I was the only Peer who went to a meeting in this House that was packed with organisations that support women caught up in the sex trade and the young women themselves. They asked me to bring their message, which is why I am speaking. Before I do that, I shall comment on the ideas about evidence expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. Those of us who have worked in this field for many years know that there are all sorts of difficulties about evidence on numbers in the sex trade. I have been a social worker for—shall I admit it?—30-plus years and, for all those years, I have worked with women in various places. They have never been able to come forward. They would never have won a case in court. We know that many women who are raped or children who are abused never go to court because they know that they would not win their case. We also know that there are all sorts of figures about sex trafficking. Hillary Clinton launched the State Department annual report on human trafficking this year. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime produced its own assessment. It stated that more than 21,400 victims were identified in 111 countries in 2006, but the number of convictions for trafficking was just not proportionate: two out of five countries covered by the report had not recorded a single conviction. There are real issues about the evidential base on trafficking and about numbers. I am not an expert in strict liability, but when I met the women last evening I said that there would be two arguments on the Floor of this House. One would be the legal argument about whether the law would be enforceable. We have heard the pros and cons on that. The other would be that prostitution would be driven underground, which would be worse for women. They asked me to bring the message that they thought that the law needs to set a marker. I think that it should be a stronger marker, but at least this is a marker. The second message is that they feel that, if the law was there, prostitution would not be driven underground because they would be able to come forward. Many organisations would be able to come forward with more evidence than feel able to do so in the present position. We should remind ourselves what "subject to force" means. Most of us use that phrase thinking of subject to force during the act, but it is about youngsters who have been brought into this trade by their boyfriends. Let me remind the House about numbers. The average age in Europe for entry into prostitution is 14. I have never understood why the law of strict liability stops at 13. That is something that the Government might look at. Youngsters are young until they are 18. Think of your own daughters, your nieces, the children you care for at the age of 14 or 15. At 14, these youngsters come in, often from care. They certainly do not come, on the whole, from posh backgrounds. Those few women who do, and think that they control their own lives, are not typical of the young women, the prostitutes, whom I have met. Seventy-five per cent enter before their 18th birthday. That is child abuse. Once in the sex industry, they are pretty much lost. Ninety-five per cent become hooked on class A drugs. Getting out is almost impossible unless they are fortunate enough to be helped by one of the excellent organisations working in this field. Being subject to force means that they will have a boyfriend whom they thought they could trust but who becomes their pimp, they find themselves caught up in organised crime to get the drugs on which they have become dependent, or they are poor and are doing it to support their children. What kind of society allows the degradation of a mother, with all the social and health issues involved, to support her children? We can do better than that. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, that we need to do more about health, education and supporting the groups that can help these young women to come out of the sex trade, but last night I listened to the stories of these women, who are all hoping desperately that noble Lords will support Clause 14. It will stop providers enslaving women, or at least deter them, because even if you are a user and not the pimp you are complicit; there is no other way of looking at it. If you see some of the young women whom I have seen, there is no way in which you could not know, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop implied, that they are damaged goods. They need to get out of that damage and live a life. I hope that noble Lords will go into the Lobby not sorry for the users but with the words in their mind of a young woman who said, "I had to say I enjoyed it, and I didn’t—I had to say I chose it. It’s what the Johns want to hear. As a prostitute, I existed for their pleasure. My body and words were for their pleasure. The real me was effectively mute". I support Clause 14 in the hope that it will set down a marker and get away from the idea that men are entitled to sex whenever they want it. There are good men who will stand instead for the rights of women and children so that they can live decent lives that are free from coercion and the slavery of the sex trade. I hope that noble Lords will support the Government.