UK Parliament Watch

There is a steady stream of mostly Labour politicians who put forward law proposals to criminalise men for buying sex.

A private members bill from Labour MP Diana Johnson titled the Sexual Exploitation Bill sought to criminalise buying sex ran out of parliamentary time this year and has therefore been abandoned.

The latest attempt this week was by another miserable Labour MP, Sarah Champion. She sought add a clause criminalising men for buying sex to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

But the Conservative Government have bravely rejected the clause explaining that similar legislation in other countries has tended towards making sex workers lives more dangerous.

Victoria Atkins The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department explained in her speech:

I am grateful to the hon. Lady [Sarah Champion] for putting the case for new clauses 76 to 82 on behalf of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North [Diana Johnson], who in the last Parliament had a ten-minute rule Bill on the issue.

The Government's long-standing policy towards sex work and prostitution has been focused on tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with prostitution, as well as ensuring that those wishing to exit sex work are appropriately supported. These six new clauses seek to make significant changes to the legislative regime governing prostitution and sex work. In summary, they would impose what is known as the sex buyer law, or Nordic model, which would criminalise the buying but not the selling of sexual services, the profiting by third parties from sexual services and the advertising of sexual services.

Under English and Welsh law currently, the buying and selling of sexual services are not necessarily unlawful in themselves. In other jurisdictions where the buying of sex has been criminalised, such as France, Northern Ireland and Sweden, there has been no conclusive evidence to show that the criminalisation of the demand for sex has either led to a significant decrease in the demand for sexual services or improved the conditions in which sex workers operate. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that criminalising the purchasing of sexual services worsens the conditions in which prostitutes and sex workers operate. It may change the profile of buyers of sexual services, distilling the demand down only to those willing to break the law to purchase such acts and forcing prostitutes and sex workers to engage in forms of prostitution associated with higher levels of harm. In the absence of unequivocal evidence, the Government have therefore maintained their line that we are focusing on trying to exit people and trying to reduce the harm and exploitation that they face.

Atkins then pointed out there are already laws against any sex work involving trafficking and Sarah Champion went on to withdraw her proposed clause.

Rhoda Grant is a campaigning MSP with a long and miserable history of calling for bans on sex work and lap dancing. She has now tabled a motion for consideration by the Scottish Parliament expressing concern the UK government's reported failure to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 seeking to impose age verification for porn but without any consideration for the dangers to porn users of having their personal data hacked or abused.

Grant's motion has received the backing of Labour and SNP MSPs and notes that a coalition of women's organisations, headteachers, children's charities and parliamentarians want the government to enforce Part 3 without further delay. Grant said:

How we keep our children safe online should be an absolute priority, so the failure to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 is a terrible reflection on the UK government.

Members of the House of Lords are clamouring for more red tape and censorship in the name of protecting children from the dangers of the internet. Of course these people don't seem to give a shit about the safety of adults using the internet.

Maurice Morrow is attempting to revive the failed age verification for porn in his bill, Digital Economy Act 2017 (Commencement of Part 3) Bill [HL]. The original bill failed firstly because it failed to consider data protection for porn user's identity data. The original authors of the bill couldn't even be bothered to consider such security implications as porn users handing over identity data and porn browsing data directly to Russian porn sites, possibly acting as fronts for the Russian government dirty tricks dept.

Perhaps the bill also failed because the likes of GCHQ don't fancy half the porn using population of the UK using VPNs and Tor to work around age verification and ISP porn blocking.

See Morrow's bill progress from bills.parliament.uk and the bill text from bills.parliament.uk . The bill had its first reading on 9th June.

Meanwhile Beeban Kidron has proposed a bill demanding accurate age assurance. Age assurance is generally an attempt to determine age without the nightmare of dangerously handing over full identity identity data. Eg estimating the age of soical media users from the age of their friends.

See Kidron's bill progress from bills.parliament.uk and the bill text is at bill text from bills.parliament.uk . The bill had its first reading on 27th May

The Digital Policy Alliance is a campaign group most notably lobbying parliament in support of the age and identity verification trade.

The group has just published a lobbying paper sent to parliamentarians calling for full identity verification requirements to use any internet service offering open interaction with other users.

The group writes:

Neither banning anonymity nor absolute anonymity are fit for purpose. The risks posed by anonymity, and requirements for verification, are different for different use cases. Different types of online activity require different levels of accountability and/or different attributes to be verified.

Regulation therefore shouldn't impose a one size fits all approach on all businesses. Instead, it should set minimum standards to ensure that platforms can't just wash their hands of the challenges of ensuring accountability or the risks associated with anonymity. If a platform fails to take an effective know your user approach, or ensure that its users can be held accountable for their behaviour or their content, then the platform should be held accountable instead.