Policing and Crime Bill
12:00 pm
Vernon Coaker (Minister of State (Policing, Crime & Security), Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
I just want briefly to clarify something. I am sorry if my body language was so obvious.
In response to one of the points made in answer to Nadine Dorries, the Government’s intention is not to ban prostitution. It is important to put that on the record. We have never said that a ban was a policy intention. We looked in Sweden at the idea of a full offence of paying for sex, and making any payment for sex illegal, and we thought that was not appropriate; we also looked at other models. It is not our intention to bring about a ban in a back-door way.
Our intention, which I know everyone on the Committee shares, as has been demonstrated by this morning’s evidence-taking session, which has explored where we are rather than being confrontational, has been about how to end exploitation and the exploitative elements, where there is no free choice. Julie and others raised the question of “controlled for gain”, and we have lawyers who say—I am not trying to be funny about it, because Mr. Lodder has said something on that point—that “controlled for gain” as defined in case law means what one would regard as the common-sense definition. It would not be where somebody is helping somebody else: organising, protecting, looking after them and so on. I am not a lawyer; that is the legal advice that I have had. Certainly, it is something that we are looking at. “Controlled for gain” is a key part of ensuring that we have absolute clarity of meaning. As the Bill goes through Committee and beyond, we will take up the points that Julie and others have made and look at them to give certainty, which will help if the Bill should be passed by Parliament.