Policing and Crime Bill
12:00 pm
Shami Chakrabarti: I have little to add to the Bar Council. We are concerned about prostitution. If you are a human rights advocate, you take no joy in the idea that people should be bought and sold for money, but one has to take great care in this area to ensure that use of the criminal law is helping the problem and not making it worse. We share the concerns about an offence that is unclear as to whether it is an offence that is banning prostitution, or whether—as it would appear on its face—it is about attempting, laudably, to tackle the pimps, the traffickers and the controllers of women. If that is what you seek to do, strict liability is difficult. I do not just mean from the point of view of the punters. It is not just about fairness and arbitrary results against the customer. If you seek to protect women from pimps, traffickers and controllers, you need to impose some kind of obligation on punters to take some care as to who the woman is and what the circumstances are. If it is strict liability, you do not do that.
We also have real concerns about the closure orders, and the dangers of making women and their children and families more vulnerable, rather than protecting them.