Britain is preparing to launch a crackdown on prostitution in the New Year because the trade harms communities and supports drug dealers and abusers, the Home Office said on Wednesday.
A prostitutes’ group warned, however, that the new zero-tolerance campaign would put the girls and women involved in even greater danger by pushing the age-old industry further underground.
”The strategy is due to appear some time in the New Year,” said a Home Office spokesperson.
”We have taken a zero-tolerance approach to this kind of activity,” she said, referring to prostitution and kerb crawlers — people who drive around the streets looking for sex.
”The aim of our approach will be to reduce street prostitution and the harm that it does.”
The spokesperson was commenting after The Guardian newspaper revealed that the government would announce the plan next month in a U-turn from an earlier proposal to introduce licensed red light districts.
Kerb crawlers will risk having their driving licences taken away and being named and shamed in the local press, it reported.
Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart told the newspaper that tough measures were needed to tackle the problem.
”I’m not tolerant of the view that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and there’s nothing we can do to reduce it,” she said.
”Prostitution blights communities. We will take a zero-tolerance approach to kerb crawling. Men who choose to use prostitutes are indirectly supporting drug dealers and abusers.”
Under the scheme, police will likely help set-up safe houses and other schemes to enable prostitutes to find another way of life.
They will also work at closing down brothels that masquerade as massage parlours and saunas, the newspaper said.
But Niki Adams, a spokesperson for the English Prostitutes’ Collective, told the newspaper that the scheme would force women into more dangerous conditions.
”It’s going to have an absolutely devastating impact. The government is just using the promise of access to more services as a cover for their very repressive policies,” she was quoted as saying.
The Home Office estimates 80 000 people are involved in the vice trade and 95% of those working on the streets are using heroin or crack.
Its national plan to tackle trafficking, to be published in the next few weeks, would look at prevention and providing help to victims as well as the prosecution of traffickers, The Guardian said.
Ministers also want better access for women to health checks, drug treatment and housing to make them safer from violent attacks.
The Home Office spokesperson refused to discuss the details of the plan before it is published. – Sapa-AFP