Advertising of Prostitution (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McColl, not only on the Bill but on the enormous amount of hard work and campaigning he has done over many years in his efforts to combat modern slavery and the trafficking of all people, including women, into this country. I am co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and a trustee and vice-chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation. In those capacities and personally, I very much support closing the loophole in the law and the purpose of the Bill.

As the noble Lord said, the sex industry includes many victims of sexual exploitation, including many who are trafficked to this country. I have a vivid recollection of going to a Romanian prison where I met a number of traffickers who were serving long sentences. One of them was very proud of what he had done. He ran a very big network across the whole of western Europe, mainly in Spain, but he was happy to tell us that he had brought a lot of women—from Romania, mainly, but also from Bulgaria and other eastern European countries—to the United Kingdom for the purpose of prostitution. He said, and it was quite patently untrue, that they were all very glad to be doing it. But I knew from going to Romania on several occasions that many of them were in fact victims of trafficking working in this country and other parts of western Europe.

I support any measure that will reduce the opportunity for those who are sexually exploited to be identified and to be working. But I had a very interesting email from the opposite point of view. In fairness to the people who sent it, I thought I should spend a moment or two on it. The National Ugly Mugs, or NUM, and the UK Network of Sex Work Projects, or UKNSWP, are opposing the Bill. One of their main reasons is that the impact would be the criminalisation of legally working sex workers, mainly in the escort industry. This, they say, is very unfair. They say it will give additional work to the police but they also say it is not enforceable. They say that there are benefits from advertising because it gives them the opportunity to identify and give support to sex workers. They also make the fascinating point that there is a danger that what they call responsible owners of escort advertising will be warned off and less responsible people will take over the advertising for sex workers. My example of the Romanian in the prison in Romania, working the whole of western Europe, makes me think that there are pretty irresponsible and very well-heeled workers running escort agencies—I have no doubt about that. I do not accept what those organisations have said but thought that, in fairness to them, since they have taken the trouble to email me, I ought to give your Lordships at least some of their point of view.

I very much support the Bill. I had not appreciated that advertising for sex workers was still legal. I hope the Government will listen to what the noble Lord has said and support the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord has brought forward a Bill which is a bit of a false prospectus. If he had talked about advertising, we would all understand that we were simply limited to talking about advertising. In actual fact, every economic activity involves advertising, because every supplier has to have some way of communicating with his customers or potential customers. So you could say that if you ban advertising you ban the activity that is advertised, anyway. We did not get into any of that at all, and I think that—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I shall give way in just one second, after I finish my sentence. The noble Lord has brought forward a bill of goods that is not exactly, when you open up the content, what you find on the label outside.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may calm this a little. I have absolutely no intention of supporting the abolition of prostitution for a number of practical reasons. It is one of the oldest businesses in the world, and it is likely to go on regardless of what Parliament might say. I am here today, when I would much rather be at home, to support a Bill which deals exclusively with advertising. I did not really hear a word in what the noble Lord said about advertising and its evils in relation to victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. That is my line, but the noble Lord, for some reason—and I found it very difficult to understand what he was saying—seems to think that support for the Bill is support for the abolition of prostitution. They are separate subjects in today’s debate.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

When I read the Bill, I thought that it was slightly curious because, for the reasons I have just set out, if you succeed in abolishing the right to advertise, you kill the economic activity underlying it—and therefore, surreptitiously, there might be an intention to abolish prostitution, not directly by coming to the House with an explicit Bill to do that but indirectly as a result of the Bill before us.

I have to say in all honesty that the introductory speech of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, confirmed me in my suspicion that that is his long-term agenda—but we shall all have to read Hansard and make our own judgment on the matter.