Legislating P4P

Paying for sex could become a criminal offence in England and Wales if parliament approves a new private menbers bill which has been put forward by Diana Johnson, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North. Johnson has put the bill forward in a bid to protect women from potential sexual exploitation and trafficking, but the proposal could have the opposite effect.

The bill is opposed by sex workers and groups including the Royal College of Nursing, Amnesty International and many harm reduction and women's rights charities. It's argued that those calling for criminalisation are driven by ideology and not evidence, and sadly sex workers are often removed from the conversation in the hallowed halls of parliament.

Currently in the UK a lot of the work is already criminalised. You can sell sex, but you can't solicit it in a public place, and you essentially have to work alone because of laws against running brothels -- two prostitutes working together constitute a brothel in the eyes of the law.

Johnson's bill would impose what is known as the Nordic model. Sweden's 1999 legislation -- which decriminalises the seller of sex and criminalises the client -- is often dubbed as a 'progressive' solution to prostitution and is built on a feminist definition of prostitution as a form of male violence against women. To radical liberal feminists, what's not to like -- punish the men who buy sex in this patriarchal world. The Nordic model is legislated in Norway, Iceland, Canada, France, Sweden and Northern Ireland in a bid to reduce demand and ultimately abolish the trade.

But the idea of the model is misleading and in fact evidence shows it has led to more violence against prostitutes in all of these countries. Attacks against sex workers in Ireland alone have risen by 92%, since the introduction of the model in March 2017.

The bill had its first reading in the House of Commons on 9th December 2020 and was originally given a 2nd reading date of 21st of January 2021 but this didn't occur. The wording of the bill hasn't been published and the only information published so far is the description:

A Bill to criminalise paying for sex; to decriminalise selling sex; to create offences relating to enabling or profiting from another person's sexual exploitation; to make associated provision about sexual exploitation online; to make provision for support services for victims of sexual exploitation; and for connected purposes.

Dian Johnson is the Labour MP for Hull. She is the latest of UK politicians to propose a nasty bill criminalising men for buying sex. The parliamentary gender items reads:

SEXUAL EXPLOITATION: TEN MINUTE RULE MOTION

Diana Johnson

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to criminalise paying for sex; to decriminalise selling sex; to create offences relating to enabling or profiting from another person's sexual exploitation; to make associated provision about sexual exploitation online; to make provision for support services for victims of sexual exploitation; and for connected purposes.

The English Collective of Prostitutes have responded:

BASIC FACTS

Of the approximately 72,800 sex workers in the UK -- at least 88% are women.

Prostitution has always been connected to women's poverty -- that's why overwhelmingly clients are men and sex workers are women.

Prostitution is increasing because poverty is increasing. 86% of austerity cuts have targeted women . Child poverty has gone up: 30% and in some London boroughs and areas of the North-East and Midlands 55% of children live in poverty . Government policies of benefit sanctions and the introduction of universal credit have deliberately caused destitution and pushed more women, particularly single mothers , [ii] into prostitution to feed themselves and their families.

Since the pandemic destitution has skyrocketed and women's organisations, including sex worker organisations like the English Collective of Prostitutes, report having to organise for food vouchers and donations to keep families afloat.

ISSUES RAISED IN PARLIAMENT

The Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated poverty, homelessness and debt. Thousands of sex workers are dependent on food banks to survive . Demands for the government to provide emergency payments for sex workers in crisis, worker status so that women could get wage relief, sick pay and the benefits that other workers can claim, healthcare regardless of immigration status, and a moratorium on arrests, were picked up by some MPs who tabled questions to the government about the lack of support.

These demands for emergency help were not supported by the proposer of this motion.

Evidence submitted to the 2019 Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into Universal Credit and Survival Sex focused on the impact of austerity on levels of prostitution in the UK. The Committee published its findings in November 2019. It recommended action against some of the worst injustices of the benefit system such as draconian sanctions and the five-week delay to get Universal Credit which have increased destitution and pushed many more women into "survival sex".

The former homelessness tsar recently raised the alarm about growing destitution in the pandemic, warning mothers could have to "go out and prostitute themselves, so that they could put food on the table."

Evidence from sex workers was also presented to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty who commented on "the harsh and arbitrary nature of some of the sanctions, as well as the devastating effects that resulted from being completely shut out of the benefits system for weeks or months at a time."

The Home Affairs Committee 2016 Inquiry recommended : "... the Home Office change existing legislation so that soliciting is no longer an offence and so that brothel-keeping provisions allow sex workers to share premises." It called for "previous convictions and cautions for prostitution [to be deleted] from the record of sex workers".

THIS 10-MINUTE RULE MOTION IS WRONG AND DANGEROUS

Police have arrested more than 400 people for allegedly 'keeping brothels' since 2017, according to figures obtained by Sky News.

Sky News sent freedom of information requests to 45 police forces asking for the number of arrests for suspected brothel-keeping offences from January 2017 to the end of August 2020.

The response was that police forces have detained at least 408 suspects in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since the start of 2017.

Although there has been an 11% drop in arrests so far this year compared with 2019, officers have still been targeting brothels during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a policy of callous disregard for the safety of sex workers, keeping a brothel is defined in the UK as more than one sex worker working from premises. So even just 2 sex workers working together for safety is then construed as a brothel. The English Collective of Prostitutes explains on its website:

If you work with someone else in a flat you can be done for running a brothel, even if you are not there at the same time.

Emily, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, commented:

How can we keep ourselves safe when we're on our own? It puts you in danger on a daily basis.

She called it draconian that she could end up with at least seven years in prison for running the flat if caught by police:

You live in fear of what can go wrong -- a knock on the door can mean that you're criminalised yet what you do is spend all day trying to make people happy. We're not actually doing anything that's criminal, she said. It's the laws that are criminal.

Sky's figures revealed that at least 64 people were arrested between January and August this year. Kent Police disclosed the highest number of arrests of any force, with 99 since 2017. Other hotspots included Thames Valley (45 arrests), Bedfordshire (32) and London (27).

Many of the arrests do not result in prosecutions, with figures from the Ministry of Justice revealing that only 48 people were put on trial from 2017 to 2019.