Clause 13
10:30 am
Paul Holmes (Chesterfield, Liberal Democrat)
The Minister is nodding. I know that it is the intention of the Bill, but I still want to put on record the fact that the Bill is designed to talk about all sex workers, whether or not they are exploited by any customer. Although the largest category is women being used by men, there is a fairly large category of men who sell their services to other men, and also a much smaller, but none the less existing category of men who sell services to women. I want to put on the record the fact that the Bill is intended to apply to all sex workers and customers, not exclusively to women who are used by men.
One of the points on strict liability, which has already been rehearsed, is that it may simply be unenforceable. In that case, it would be another example of a headline, grandstanding pursuit, rather than an effort to introduce measures that work in practice. We discussed a little on Second Reading—and during the evidence sessions—the fact that the policy is based on the experience in Finland, the only country in the world that has gone down the route of introducing a strict liability crime for the customers of sex workers. As far as we understand it, the example in Finland, after two to three years, is that either nobody has been prosecuted at all, or that a few prosecutions have taken place in very recent months, but we do not know with what degree of success. Considering the research done by the Government, including visits to a number of countries with different approaches, that does not seem a good argument for adopting a the strict liability approach that has caused so much concern to so many of the people involved.