26 March in Parliament, Stop the Criminalisation of Sex Work

From The English Collective of Prostitutes

PEOPLE’S PARLIAMENT MEETING, HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Stop the criminalisation of sex work – safety first!

26 March 2014, 6.30-8.30pm

Committee Room 12

Host: John McDonnell MP

Chair: English Collective of Prostitutes

International speakers:

Carina Edlund, Rose Alliance, Sweden

Boglárka Fedorkó, SZEXE, Hungary – tbc

Ariane G, sex worker, Germany

Jenny O, Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland

Morgane Merteuil, STRASS, France

Molly Smith, Scotpep, Scotland

Luca Stevenson, International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe

Plus:

Lori Bora, Soho Working Girls

Candy Hutton, won court case against breach of ASBO

Jean Johnson, Hampshire Women’s Institute

Clayton Littlewood, author

Lisa Longstaff, Women Against Rape

Toni Mac, Sex Worker Open University

Nigel Richardson, Hodge, Jones and Allen

Vera Rodriguez, dancer, x:talk

Didi Rossi, Queer Strike

Robert Jappie, Release

Paula Yanev, English Collective of Prostitutes

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An All-Party Parliamentary Group has just recommended changing the prostitution laws to criminalise clients.

Criminalising clients will not stop prostitution, nor will it stop the criminalisation of women. But it will make it more dangerous and stigmatising for sex workers.

Sex workers from Sweden – who know first-hand the disastrous impact of such a law – and from a number of other European countries, including the UK, will be speaking against this proposal.

There is widespread anger that MPs are promoting increased criminalisation when unemployment, benefit cuts & sanctions, lowering wages, and homelessness are driving more women, particularly mothers, into prostitution. These proposals will further divert police time and resources from investigating rape, trafficking and other violent crimes, to policing consenting sex.

The existing prostitution laws force sex workers to work in isolation and danger. Of the two women murdered in London in the last few months, one was working on the street and one was working indoors alone. Senior police officers recently acknowledged that “operations to tackle the trade are ‘counterproductive’ and likely to put the lives of women at risk”. Despite this mass raids against sex workers in Soho, London, have thrown scores of women out of the relative safety of their flats. Arrests continue against sex workers on the street.

REPORTS FROM: New Zealand which decriminalised sex work 11 years ago. Canada’s Supreme Court which ruled that criminalisation is in breach of sex workers’ human rights.