Written and oral evidence from the ECP to the Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into Universal Credit and Survival Sex focused on the impact of austerity on levels of prostitution in the UK. The Committee published its findings in November 2019 and recommended action against some of the worst injustices of the benefit system such as draconian […]
As a follow up to the Government commissioned review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the APPG launched its call for evidence on whether the legal framework of Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) “makes it a more attractive destination for those involved in trafficking adults for the purpose of sexual exploitation”. The ECP’s evidence detailed […]
The ECP’s written and oral evidence focused on the intolerable poverty and increase in prostitution faced by women as a direct result of Conservative austerity cuts, as well as highlighting how destitution and criminalisation makes women and young people more vulnerable to exploitation and violence. In 2019, the CHRC published its report ‘The Limits of Consent’ recommending […]
The UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights reports on UN member states’ ‘initiatives taken to promote and protect the rights of those living in extreme poverty’. The ECP’s submission to the Rapporteur points to the way austerity cuts have targeted women, with special note of single mothers, women who are carers, and EU […]
The Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) draft shadow report to CEDAW initially included the recommendation to criminalise sex workers’ clients through adopting a “sex-buyer law” in England and Wales. The ECP alerted its network and coordinated complaints en masse from sex workers who argued they had been ignored. While the recommendation for the criminalisation of […]
In 2018, the Government commissioned an independent review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The ECP submitted evidence of how despite millions of pounds of funding, victims of trafficking get little or no help from the authorities. Instead, anti-trafficking is used as a justification for police raids and arrests. This isolates sex workers and makes […]
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution, a self-appointed group of MPs, launched an inquiry into the claimed increase of ‘pop-up brothels’. The ECP response points out how this APPG was deeply biased from the start as it was set up specifically to “tackle the demand for the sex trade”, that is promote legislation to criminalise clients. […]
The ECP welcomed the Home Affairs Select Committee recommendation in 2016 that the law be changed ” “so that soliciting [a charge used against street-based sex workers] is no longer an offence and so that brothel-keeping provisions allow sex workers to share premises”. Crucially the Committee also calls for a law to delete “previous convictions and cautions […]
The ECP objected to the APPG inquiry into the operation of the current legal settlement on prostitution in England and Wales, and its report ‘Shifting the Burden’, on the grounds that it was inherently biased as its stated aim was to ‘end demand for the sex trade’. Blatant inaccuracies in both the methodology and the […]
In 2012 Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart proposed an amendment to the Modern Slavery Bill to make the purchase of sex illegal. Initially she had cross party support but after a campaign spearheaded by the ECP which saw thousands of sex workers lobby their MP, she was forced to withdraw the proposal. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP […]