Clause 72
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
11:45 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I entirely accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I agree that we should not employ stereotypes, but it worried me slightly that he dismissed the drugs argument, whereas I think that it is a major factor.
The last driver that makes people wish to work as prostitutes is economic. That covers a wide range of people, from those who simply cannot subsist without an additional or main source of income and find themselves driven into prostitution as a consequence, perhaps but not necessarily to pay for a drug habit, to those at the other end of the scale who see it as an effective way of earning rather a lot of money. It would be hard to argue that such people had been coerced in any way; they see it as an attractive career option in which they wish to engage.
A wide range of issues push people into prostitution. That is why it is important to deal with the real mischief and ills of the system, which are principally to do with children, trafficking and violence. In a different way, the problems are about the availability of drugs and the ability to rehabilitate those on drugs. It would be unhelpful to generalise and say, “It is bad that this sort of thing happens and we want it to stop.” I do not think that that would be an effective solution.
There are other problems with street prostitution with respect to people’s behaviour, either when they are soliciting, or when their pimps are soliciting and advertising their activities, or on the part of clients. We should be aware of that behaviour. Legislation to deal with curb crawling and soliciting is in place, but it is not particularly effective. The legislation demands a great deal of police time and activity, sometimes in ways that move the police officer close to the role of agent provocateur—they might arrange for inappropriate behaviour to take place to make an arrest. We should be firmer on such behaviour because it causes the most offence to the general public. More generalised rules on harassment and a more vigorous prosecution of harassment cases would be entirely appropriate.
We should deal with another ill—the risk presented to prostitutes. If we need an illustration of that, we need look no further than the incidents in Ipswich to which the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead referred. We should be aware that prostitutes take high and sometimes lethal risks. They certainly risk becoming victims of violent behaviour, rape, and assault and battery. If we arrange our legal system to isolate prostitutes from support—the support could be mutual or institutional—we will increase the risks of such crimes. We need to have great regard to that. The more we remove the activity from view, the more we put people’s physical safety and, indeed, their lives, at risk. It is currently visible to an extent, and people are not afraid to go to the authorities, which are accountable, to report their suspicions or actual incidents of alleged criminality.