Criminal Justice Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

Before 2003, the offence was discriminatory on the basis of sex, such that only women could be convicted. Even after the offence was made sex-neutral, women continued to be disproportionately affected. The policy of retention of criminal records therefore continues to have a hugely disproportionate and discriminatory impact on women. Just as the post office workers have had their convictions cleared, these women deserve to move on with their lives. The new clause presents an opportunity to address this ongoing miscarriage of justice.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 44, which enacts a recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee, which I am a member of, and is supported by its Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). The clause is very simple. It outlaws pimping, and we need it to combat sex trafficking.

Members might be surprised to learn that some forms of pimping are still legal in this country. Take pimping websites, which the Home Affairs Committee looked at during our inquiry on human trafficking. These websites are dedicated solely or partly to advertising people for prostitution. The operators of the sites knowingly pimp people for prostitution, and the biggest sites make millions of pounds from it. Despite it being illegal to place a prostitution advert in a phone box, our laws are failing to keep up with technological change; that same advert can be hosted on a website with complete impunity. As a result, pimping websites make it as easy to order a woman to sexually exploit as it is to order a takeaway. This has been a total boon for sex traffickers.

The Home Affairs Committee concluded:

“Websites advertising prostitution significantly facilitate trafficking for sexual exploitation.”

The websites make it quick and easy for traffickers to advertise their victims and connect with their customers nationwide. As a result, pimping websites are now a core component of the standard business model of sex trafficking in the UK. Shockingly, one of these websites admitted to the Home Affairs Committee that it allows single individuals to advertise multiple women for prostitution at the same time on its site and allows the same contact phone number to be used across multiple different adverts. These are both obvious red flags for sex trafficking.

We also know that one trafficker convicted of sexually exploiting women in the UK spent an astonishing £25,000 advertising his gang’s victims on the same pimping website. The group exploited at least 11 young Romanian women, trafficking them from across the north-west of England and Northern Ireland. Chillingly, law enforcement revealed that the website operators responded to the fact that one man was spending thousands of pounds advertising women for prostitution not by calling the police but by allocating him his own account manager to make sure he could spend more. It is an absolute scandal that these pimping websites have been allowed to operate in plain sight. To combat trafficking in this country, we must update our laws so that it is illegal to pimp online as well as offline.

New clause 44 would enact the recommendation of the cross-party Home Affairs Committee to make it a criminal offence to facilitate or profit from the prostitution of another person online or offline. I hope we can come together across the House to make that recommendation law.

[Alex Cunningham]

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East and for Birmingham, Yardley, and of others who do so much to advance women’s rights through their work in and out of this House. That is, of course, across parties.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned her work with the STAGE project. One of the members of that group is A Way Out, a fantastic charity based in Stockton with which I am very familiar. It does hugely important work supporting vulnerable and excluded women, families and young people to live lives free from harm, abuse and exploitation. I know that many of us on this Committee have civil society groups and charities in or near our constituencies that dedicate themselves to tackling abuse and exploitation in our communities, and I am sure that we would all like to put our thanks to them on the record this afternoon.

As my hon. Friend has just outlined, new clause 23 replaces the term “controlling prostitution for gain” in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 with

“sexual exploitation of an adult”.

That would follow more closely the terminology introduced into English law in 2015 in relation to the sexual exploitation of children, which my hon. Friend has outlined in detail. The new clause may help to address some of the cliff-edge differences in treatment that those subject to such exploitation experience when they turn 18.

I am sure that the Minister recognises the need for continuity of support for those subject to or at risk of exploitation, and agrees that simply turning 18 should not provide a reason for changing perceptions of and treatment for victims of sexual exploitation. Is the Minister aware of any discussions in the Department, following the changing of the terminology around sexual exploitation of children, about the way that the law refers to such exploitation when perpetrated against adults? If so, could she share them with the Committee?

New clause 23 also aims to provide a definition of adult sexual exploitation through the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The STAGE project’s access-to-justice work has identified that women who have experienced sexual exploitation can face barriers to accessing justice at all points in the criminal justice system. One of the contributing factors to the barriers that many victims face when accessing justice is that some may not even initially recognise that they have experienced sexual exploitation —partly on account of the fact that there is no statutory definition of adult sexual exploitation.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts about the potential benefits of introducing a statutory definition in relation to this type of offending. That may be of help not only to victims, in understanding their experiences as adult sexual exploitation, but to criminal justice professionals, such as the police, in identifying cases of this horrific offending.

I turn briefly to new clauses 26 and 30, which would respectively repeal soliciting and loitering as an offence and provide for a process allowing the Secretary of State to disregard convictions and cautions related to soliciting. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has outlined, this offence has been dispro-portionately used to criminalise vulnerable and exploited women, after which the offence stays on their criminal record for decades—I think I heard my hon. Friend say “up to the age of 100”, but I do not know how many people get to 100.

The retention of those records can be distressing and degrading, and can interfere with the ability of the women to move on with their lives. It can prevent them from getting access to certain jobs and may make accessing certain types of support more difficult. Even when the women are trying to move forward with their lives, they are confronted by yet more challenges because they have been criminalised, while many of those actually perpetrating such exploitation have not.

The Centre for Women’s Justice has been challenging this regime in the courts in recent years through its HOPE—history of prostitution expunged—campaign, with some notable successes. One of the women involved in the campaign, whose name has been changed to Martha to maintain anonymity, said:

“I have a sheer panic when I see a job and then see ‘DBS required’. I feel the reaction I experience is a form of trauma—anxiety, anger and rage. I also feel disgust that people are so judgmental when to me the perpetrator, who experiences none of this, is the one who should feel shame”.

Clearly, more needs to be done to ensure that criminal records do not compound trauma for these victims and prevent these women from moving forward with their lives.

The Government have made some reforms to criminal records recently, most notably in the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was being debated in Parliament around the same time as one of the Centre for Women’s Justice cases was being heard. The Government were not minded to expand the provision of criminal record reform further at that time. Can the Minister tell me whether anything has changed in the interim? Has the Department considered any other mechanisms through which the impact that criminal record disclosure can have on those women may be reduced?

Finally, on new clause 44, which creates a new offence of facilitating or profiting from the prostitution of another person, will the Minister share her views on measures to combat such exploitation? Overall, I hope we can have an update on the work of the Government to ensure that exploitation offences criminalise the exploiters rather than those being exploited.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)]

The Opposition Members are all correct: how the Government approach prostitution, and the way society views it, has changed and developed significantly in the last decades. Our policy towards sex work and prostitution is now much more focused on the harm associated with it and appropriately supporting people who wish to exit that industry. We are sympathetic to the new clauses and are considering them carefully.

The acts of buying and selling sex are not illegal in England and Wales, but many of the associated offences are: controlling prostitution and the kinds of offences that present a public nuisance, for example. New clause 23 amends the wordings of sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act, which concern, respectively, the offences of causing or inciting another person to become a prostitute and controlling prostitution for gain. New clause 23 seeks to make more real the nature of the offence, which is to sexually exploit. The section 52 offence is designed to punish individuals who coerce others into sexual activity from which they or a third party profits. The section 53 offence punishes offenders who coerce or force others into sexual activity from which they or a third party profit. As a matter of law, the Government consider those offences fit for purpose. They enable the police to take enforcement action against the range of relevant offending that arises from an individual controlling the behaviour of an intimate partner or an organised criminal gang trafficking victims internationally. But wherever it sits on that spectrum, all such conduct is inherently exploitative.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s sex work guidance was updated in June 2003. At its core are five principles that recognise the complexity of the sex industry and the risks that sex workers face, and emphasise the imperatives to build mutual trust to improve sex workers’ safety and tackle exploitation by taking enforcement action against criminal exploiters.

[Carolyn Harris]

As someone who has done a lot of work on this, and as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley would agree, the terms “sex work” and “industry” are extremely offensive. We are talking about victims of prostitution, and this is not an industry—it is an exploitative environment.

[Laura Farris]

I am happy to take that correction—sorry, I was just speaking informally when I should not have been.

On new clauses 26 and 30, section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 enables the police to divert individuals engaged in on-street sex work to alternative interventions. I will reference some of the points made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, because we did some research into what is happening. First, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s guidance, which advises officers, makes clear that it will not be commonplace to prosecute individuals who sell sex in public, and that every effort should be made to refer them to partner agencies and seek a diversionary route where possible. I have looked at the most recent data, which I will share with the Committee. In the year to March 2023, 301 soliciting crimes were recorded, of which 32—around 10%—resulted in either a charge or a summons. Of those that were charged, there has been on average less than one conviction a year from 2010 until today.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley also raised the issue of criminal convictions staying on people’s records. If someone is trying to exit enforced prostitution and rebuild their life, that is profoundly unhelpful—I agree with her without reservation. She will be aware of the announcement that spent convictions are now being removed from criminal records; that was in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, but has been reinforced by the Lord Chancellor a number of times. I have already said that I will write to her about something, but I will just update her on that. We are working to try to get criminal records off people’s profiles, so that they can move on with their lives. That applies for all offences, because we think it is important that rehabilitation should have a serious meaning, whatever the offence.

Where we have this offence at the moment, we are principally seeing the police using it as a tool for diversion—that can be interpreted in a number of ways, but that is what we are principally seeing. The police have a challenging role, balancing the need to safeguard vulnerable on-street women who are selling sex from the harm they face, with the need to protect neighbourhoods from the negative consequences of that type of activity. Obviously, other crimes can often be concomitant to prostitution, particularly on the part of the people who control the women. There is also the issue of children being able to witness stuff like that. The police have to strike a balance there. Careful consideration of the law in this area is warranted, even when such considerations are placed in the balance. At the moment, the law in this area gives the police the flexibility to balance the different priorities, but we are thinking hard.

New clause 44 was tabled by the hon. Member for Swansea East, who raised interesting points that intersect with modern slavery. She made an interesting observation about something that I have seen in some of my other work, about where numbers all link to one person, or whether the same number is being duplicated across different sites. That goes right to the heart of modern slavery, and is a pressing issue for the Home Office.

I want to flag to the hon. Lady one of the difficulties that cuts across her new clause. It would effectively put an end to online services where individuals selling sex advertise lawfully. The research that the Home Office commissioned from Bristol University, which we published in 2019, showed that some people prefer to use technology to advertise because they feel safer doing so. The Government’s priority is to keep people engaged in this kind of work safe from harm, so we have to tread a difficult balance. We do not want to do something antithetical to protecting people from harm, which might happen if individuals selling sex were deprived of using technology and somehow diverted on to the street, forced underground or forced into an inherently more dangerous practice. It is reasonable for us to consider all the outcomes that could result, although I am not disagreeing with the force of the hon. Lady’s argument.

The Online Safety Act 2023, which is going through various stages of commencement now, should ensure that online platforms for individuals advertising are responsible and accountable for the content on their sites. They are required in law to take proactive steps to prevent those sites from being used by criminals. The commencement of the Online Safety Act is happening currently, so it is difficult to give an assessment, but all of this was covered in it. That includes a requirement for sites to proactively identify and remove content that is linked to priority offences, including controlling and inciting prostitution for gain, and human trafficking and modern slavery. As I have said, this cuts across these issues. With all due respect to the arguments advanced, I invite hon. Members not to press their new clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

I thank the shadow Minister for tabling the new clause and for his introduction. The Government certainly share the Opposition’s concern. Whereas crime as a whole has been declining over the last 13 years, the last four years and the last year, the past year or two have seen an increase in both shoplifting and assaults on retail workers. That has been seen not only in the UK, but around the world, including in Europe, Australia and the United States of America, and that is of deep concern to us all. I have repeatedly met retailers, including the Co-op, and I met Paddy Lillis, the USDAW general secretary, and some of his members who work in shops, including Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores in various parts of London, at the Home Office just a week or two ago, so we are engaging on this matter.

I will say a word or two about the action the Government are taking and then talk about the specifics of the new clause. Last autumn, working together with policing, we published the retail crime action plan. That contained several important commitments from the police, including a reaffirmation of their commitment always to investigate retail crime, in common with other crime, where there are reasonable lines of inquiry to pursue—not sometimes, not maybe, but always. That includes always retrieving CCTV footage and running it through the facial recognition database we discussed a few weeks ago. Most stores have CCTV and where there is even a partial image of an offender—perhaps it is fuzzy, or there is shade, or they are wearing a hat—it should always be run through the various databases. The algorithm is now very good, and matches can often be obtained even when a visual inspection would suggest that would be difficult. I have seen some extraordinary examples.

We expect police always to do that facial recognition matching. We also expect them always to physically attend a scene where there has been an assault on a retail worker, if attendance is necessary to secure evidence. If it is just CCTV evidence, it can be emailed, but they should attend to secure evidence if they need to. Where store staff, including security staff, have detained an offender, we expect the police to attend as a matter of urgency to pick up that offender.

[Carolyn Harris]

When the Minister has deliberations with retailers, would he include the charity shop sector and the wholesale industry? They too are experiencing high numbers of thefts.

[Chris Philp]

Yes, I would. In fact, I think both those sectors have been invited to the larger six-monthly meetings of the retail crime steering group. I should have added that my first job in south London was in a Sainsbury’s very close to what is now my constituency —I must have been about 16 or 17—and the first business I ran was a wholesale distribution business whose main warehouse was on the Lichfield Road industrial estate in Tamworth. I recall on one occasion someone trying to drive a JCB through the wall to steal cigarettes and alcohol. That was 20-odd years ago, so I am very apprised of the dangers posed to the wholesale sector as well as the retail sector.

As I was saying, more police attendance is the second element of the retail crime action plan. The third element is targeting prolific and repeat offenders using facial recognition and analysis of data so that we can go after organised criminal gangs. The fourth element is Operation Pegasus, a nationwide project funded partly by about 16 retailers and run by police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne from Sussex. Again, its aim is to identify criminal gangs and go after them specifically.

The police made a lot of commitments in the retail crime action plan, published two or three months ago, and we will have meetings every three months of the retail crime steering group, which consists of leading retailers, the British Retail Consortium and many others, to hold the police to account for delivering the action plan that they have signed up to. I think the next meeting is in a week or two—it is relatively soon. Those are the operational steps being taken. We are working very closely with unions, retailers and representative groups, as I said.

Turning to new clause 41, I have a lot of sympathy for where the shadow Minister is coming from. I understand the desire to strengthen the law in this area, but I will make one or two observations. First, passing laws is the easy bit. The hard bit is creating change on the ground. That applies to a lot of the things we have talked about today, including this issue.

Of course, it is already a criminal offence to assault a retail worker, just as it is an offence to assault anybody. The proposed new offence would replace only common assault—all assault is serious, but that is the lowest level of assault—where the victim is a retail worker. It would not make any difference to or replace other, more serious forms of assault. Those include assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which causes a temporary injury such as a bruise; assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, which causes a lasting injury such as a broken bone; and grievous bodily harm with intent to cause serious injury. The maximum sentences for those other forms of assault are five years for ABH and GBH, and life for GBH with intent. The new clause would not affect those maximum sentences, which are much higher than its proposed maximum.