Charities and sex workers condemn Scottish Labour’s ‘rapists’ charter’
By Katie Grant
26 April 2016
Charities and sex workers have denounced plans unveiled by Scottish Labour to make the purchase of sex illegal, branding the party’s election manifesto pledge a “rapists’ charter”.
Currently the exchange of sexual services for money is technically legal in the UK, but related activities, such as soliciting in a public place, kerb-crawling, owning or managing a brothel and pimping are outlawed.
“Contrary to the spin, these proposals do not ‘decriminalise the seller’”
The manifesto, to be published on Wednesday, outlines a “three-pronged framework” for tackling sexual exploitation: criminalising the buying of sex, decriminalising people involved in prostitution and providing long-term support and exiting services for those exploited through prostitution.
‘Harmful and wrongheaded’ policy
But the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project (ScotPep), which advocates for sex workers’ rights, and the UK-wide sex worker safety charity National Ugly Mugs expressed “profound disappointment” over the “harmful and wrongheaded” policy.
“Contrary to the spin, these proposals do not ‘decriminalise the seller’”, the charities said in a joint statement.
“If Scottish Labour were to implement their policy, sex workers would still face criminal sanctions,” they said, pointing to brothel-keeping laws which they argued are used to prosecute sex workers who share a flat for safety. “These proposals retain that criminalisation,” the charities said.
“The criminalisation of clients makes sex workers more vulnerable to violence and exploitation,” they added.
“Scottish Labour’s disastrous proposals would mean clients refusing to give any identifying information about themselves for fear of prosecution – and sex workers having to accept completely ‘unscreened’ clients, about whom they have no identifying information which they could use to hold an aggressor to account.”
‘Rapists’ charter’
Nadine Stott, ScotPep co-chair, said: “Everywhere that these laws have been tried, they have led to an increase in sex workers’ vulnerability to violence.”
Ms Stott added: “Their proposals are nothing more than a rapists’ charter.”
Alex Feis-Bryce, CEO of National Ugly Mugs, described Scottish Labour’s claim that the proposals would decriminalise sex workers as “totally disingenuous” and accused the party of attempting to eradicate sex work for ideological reasons.
The manifesto pledge is “a PR stunt” designed to disguise the real objective of the party’s “moral crusade” to “eradicate sex work for ideological reasons irrespective of the harm to sex workers”, Ms Feis-Byce said.
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news...lth-secretary-likely-last-major-job-politics/
Normally i would post this n the ongoing thread about sex workers' rights, but with it baring directly on the election i thought it should go in here on this occasion.
Infuriatingly, people seems to be both blind and death to the failures of the Swedish model, so certainly there is an ideological strand to this. I am concerned that we'll see the possibility of criminalisation raise its head again in England soon too.
Do you think Labour will gain much from this?
