Prostitution

Baroness Stern Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Stern]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review current policies on prostitution.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, the Government are looking at the approaches taken towards prostitution in different localities throughout England and Wales in order to identify effective practice in terms of policing, minimising harm, multiagency working and enabling people involved in prostitution to leave it. Practical guidance for local areas will be published later in the spring. As the noble Baroness will be aware, the Government have accepted 21 of the 23 recommendations of her recent review. I should like to thank the noble Baroness, particularly on behalf of the Home Secretary, for the wisdom and hard work that she has brought to this issue.

[Baroness Stern]

I thank the Minister for that extremely encouraging reply and for her very kind remarks about the rape review. Does she recall that after the conviction following the horrible murders of three street prostitutes in Bradford, the Association of Chief Police Officers called for a review of the laws on prostitution and for a dialogue on better ways to manage the problem? Does she accept that the current law is far from ideal? It does not protect prostitutes from danger, it does not help—as it should—those who want to exit prostitution, and it does not help the police to manage the problem. Does she intend to have a dialogue with the Association of Chief Police Officers about this?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My understanding is that it was one particular member of ACPO who commented recently on the subject and that his remarks focused more on management issues—in particular, the establishment of the database, how we fund it, how we get at information about how people are led into prostitution and what we then do about it—than on changing the law. The Government’s attitude to the legal situation is that given that there has been a recent change in the law, about which my party had some misgivings, we should now let the change settle down and see how it operates. However, we are doing that on the basis of very close evaluation of its effectiveness.