Local charity says the Government's Sexual Exploitation Bill would "make matters worse"

In a paper which outlines its opposition to The Sexual Exploitation Bill 2019-21, local charity Fulfilling Lives Lambeth Southwark Lewisham (Fulfilling Lives LSL) argues The Nordic Model 'puts women involved in sex work at greater risk of harm and exploitation' and 'exacerbates the power imbalance between those selling and those purchasing sex'.

A local charity has spoken out against a new Bill which would make paying for sex a criminal offence in England and Wales.

At present, the exchange of sexual services for money is legal in the UK, but organisational aspects of sex work, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, pimping and pandering, and owning or managing a brothel, are crimes. The Sexual Exploitation Bill 2019-21 put forward by Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson would criminalise buying sex and decriminalise selling sex, introducing the so-called Nordic model of sex industry regulation to the UK.

In its paper In Opposition to the Sexual Exploitation Bill local charity Fulfilling Lives LSL sets out the heightened risks posed to sex workers in England and Wales should The Sexual Exploitation Bill 2019-21 become law.

It says: "Criminalising the purchase of sex gives more bargaining power to the buyer as they are already committing a criminal act, which could result in those involved in sex work having less agency to choose and making it more difficult for those involved in sex work to stick to their boundaries such as condom use and pay rates."

Proponents of The Nordic Model point to the 50 per cent reduction in street prostitution seen in Sweden after the legislation was introduced in 1999.

Opponents say such statistics disguise the fact demand is simply displaced further underground – as research by the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation shows, the number of Thai massage parlours in Stockholm nearly tripled after the Swedish sex buyer law was introduced, from 90 to 250.

The evidence of this is born out in France, Sweden, Ireland and Norway. After the latter adopted The Nordic Model in 2009, outreach workers told Amnesty International in 2016 that sex workers had become fearful of carrying condoms. The CEO of Pro Sentret said: "We've been doing outreach for 15 years with Thai women [in massage parlours]. They are now very reluctant to take condoms – they don't want to have them lying around because they become evidence."

Alongside increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases – the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2018 compared sex work laws from 33 countries around the world and determined sex workers in countries with repressive policing of the profession were twice as likely to contract HIV or an STI – is the heightened risk of violence.

The year after the Nordic Model was introduced in Ireland in 2017, reports of violent attacks on sex workers increased by almost 50 per cent.

"People who are doing the worst of the crimes are not deterred at all by this law," said Kate McGrew, director of the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland, to the New Statesman in 2018. "People see as us even more outside society, as vulnerable, as even less likely to call gardai [police] or draw attention."

While a group of 80 experts in Ireland that includes doctors, lawyers, academics and criminologists is calling for the law to be repealed, the Sexual Exploitation Bill 2019-21 is on its second reading in Parliament to introduce the same law in England and Wales.

Fulfilling Lives LSL fears the bill, which Ms Johnson said is intended "to bust the business model of sex trafficking", will bust already precarious safeties for women involved in sex work.

Diane Elizabeth Smith MBE, Head of Programme for Fulfilling Lives LSL said: "We believe the proposed Nordic Model would make matters worse, potentially increasing violence and pushing sex work further underground making it more dangerous for women involved in the sex industry."

"We need to find new ways to keep street-based sex workers safe and we must ensure that women with lived experience, are consulted. The voices of women involved in sex work should be at the heart of policy development and given an equal voice in legislative change."

With this core tenet of the charity being that women involved in sex work should be at the heart of policy development, Fulfilling Lives LSL placed them at the heart of its opposition paper accordingly.

"The ones [people who purchase sex] who want to abuse women will do it anyway," said one woman who is now, or once was, a sex worker.

Another, also anonymised, said: "Already there is desperation and violence – what's going to happen [with The Nordic Model] – it's going to get worse. There would be more deaths, more unreported crimes."

Several women in turn shared the terror of near misses, and the facts of horrific experiences. "I got raped – I had to get out the car and this guy was taking me the wrong way and he had all these surgical knives on him, I was kidnapped on a couple of occasions."

Fulfilling Lives LSL have recommended alternative steps be taken to protect those involved in sex work from abuse and exploitation, including access to trauma support, drug and alcohol treatment and safe routes for reporting incidents. You can read the position paper in full here.

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