By James Chapman for the Daily Mail. Britain will today take a significant step towards reforming prostitution laws as the first cross-party report for almost 20 years recommends that only pimps and punters should be jailed or fined. The MPs and peers will recommend that the UK adopts a system whereby soliciting is no longer a punishable offence, but anyone who pays for sex is committing a crime.
Prostitutes who are caught loitering on streets plying their trade should be given anti-social behaviour orders rather than being prosecuted, the group will say. Sleazy: Targeting customers could help protect vulnerable women say MPs, who want paying for sex to be made a crime. Criminalising those who use prostitutes β known as the Nordic Model after the system used in Sweden, Norway and Iceland β is currently under consideration in France and Northern Ireland.
Following a year-long inquiry, the group concludes that the current law on selling sex is hopelessly confused, with 16 offences listed under five Acts of Parliament spanning 53 years. Gavin Shuker said the the cross-party inquiry will kick-start what for too long has remained an off-limits debate. The last change in the law was in , when the Government tried to protect victims of pimps and traffickers.
And loopholes in the laws still allow men to escape prosecution for abusing girls as young as 13 and women trafficked into the country, the report will say. The reforms aim to close all loopholes by making it an offence to pay any sex worker for their services, whether they are on the streets, in massage parlours or working as escorts. The group argues that the apprehension and prosecution of prostitutes thwarts efforts to prevent women being drawn into the trade or support their exit from it.
The report will call for all existing statutes to be wrapped into a single Act of Parliament, aimed at prosecuting those who purchase sex, not those who sell it. Soliciting β which currently means that women who loiter on streets trying to sell their bodies can be prosecuted β should no longer be a punishable offence. Proposals: The law changes will mean that soliciting - which currently means that women who loiter on streets trying to sell their bodies can be prosecuted - should no longer be a punishable offence posed by model.
