Clause 18
4:15 pm
James Brokenshire (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Hornchurch, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 18, page 17, line 12, at end insert
‘and the platform, concourse or any part of a railway station shall be considered to a be public place for the purposes of this section.’.
This is a testing amendment to enable us to understand clearly what the Government mean by “public place”. The clause creates an offence of soliciting a person for sexual services as a prostitute in a
“vehicle in a street or public place.”
From my discussions with the British Transport police and having been out on patrol with them on several occasions, I have learned that they have always sought to make a distinction whereby the area around a station is a private place, not a public place. Although the amendment may seen a little obtuse, highlighting as it does a station, the area around a station or a concourse, it was tabled to test the Government’s thinking and to find out what they mean by “a public place”. Do they envisage that the phrase will cover such areas?
It is not inconceivable that in stations that are unmanned or perhaps unlit in the late evening, there might be the potential for soliciting to take place, but I want to understand clearly the Government’s intention and whether they accept that a distinction can be drawn, with an area of a station being a private place not a public place, and the extent to which that phrase is intended to capture both types of area. That point has been made to me by the British Transport police, so I thought that it was appropriate to test the wording and find out the Government’s intentions.