Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Picking up what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said about licensing sex workers, I wonder whether the Minister knows what goes on in Holland, where each individual woman is licensed as an individual business. I walked through the red-light district of a small town and saw women in all the windows, and I was told by a local Dutch councillor that all of them had pimps. They were either on the phone to their pimp or the curtains were pulled. So I suggest that licensing does not stop pimping.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for that. As I said, the Home Office has examined and looked at a range of alternative methods of regulation and legislation from other countries. The issue of licensing is outside these amendments and the legislative proposals in the Bill, so I do not wish to go down that route today. But obviously we look at all experiences. Our main objective is to ensure that we support, and protect the safety of, individuals who choose to involve themselves in this work, and at the same time to ensure that no harm comes to wider society as a result of those actions. I am grateful to the noble Earl for raising this today, but it is not an issue that I can explore at this moment, for the reasons I have outlined.