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SEX WORKERS NEED SAFETY AND RIGHTS, NOT CRIMINALISATIONDemonstration Against the Policing and Crime Bill12-2pm, Tuesday 3 November, Parliament SquareBring placards and red umbrellas and join the demonstration to demand:an end to the criminalisation of sex worksafety and other rights for all workers in the sex industry, including the right to unionisethe right to stay and not […]
A opinion poll released today shows that three in five people would support a change in the law. It is currently legal for a person to work as a prostitute in the UK provided that they work from premises and that they work alone. It has been suggested on the grounds of safety and security […]
We who insist that a distinction be made between trafficking (coercion and rape) and prostitution (consenting sexual services) are charged with siding with pimps and clients against women. How about that for “nasty personal tone”?Yet no one is more concerned with women’s safety than we are. We campaign for decriminalisation so women don’t have to […]
Policing & Crime Bill: Prostitution proposals detrimental to safetyAs measures on prostitution in the Policing and Crime Bill are discussed this week, we respectfully ask Members of the House of Lords to consider our arguments on women’s safety and why we oppose Clauses 16 (loitering), 17 (‘rehabilitation’) and 21 (closure orders), as well as Clause […]
UPDATE 02/11/2012: Denis MacShane resigns over false invoices Denis MacShane pleads guilty to expenses fraud. Ex-Labour minister admits making false claims to fund trips, during court hearing Rajeev Syal The former Labour minister Denis MacShane has admitted filing nearly £13,000 of bogus parliamentary expenses. The ex-MP pleaded guilty on Monday to false accounting by entering fake receipts for […]
The “war” with Denis MacShane on Newsnight was not about statistics but about the policies the statistics were invented to justify. New Labour legislation would increase police powers against both sex workers and clients. Now that the figures have been discredited, MacShane calls them ‘futile’.Paxman was not “hostile”; he was Paxman. But MacShane was confronted […]
Nick DaviesThere is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein’s weapons.In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been […]
The UK’s biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests […]