We are at a crucial moment for sex workers’ rights within the UK. Last week’s modern slavery debate in Parliament saw three MPs sound a clarion call for introduction of the ‘sex buyer law’ to the UK. This built on the recent final report of the government-commissioned Modern Slavery Act Review, which stated that the reviewers will undertake “a scoping review into laws surrounding prostitution in England and Wales and the extent to which they help or hinder police action against trafficking for sexual exploitation.” It is clear where the MPs who spoke on this topic stand: Maria Miller MP described our current prostitution laws as “acting as a magnet” for traffickers, with Sarah Champion MP stating that “modern slavery for sexual exploitation is happening right here in the UK on an industrial scale.” She went on to call for the UK to introduce the sex buyer law which criminalises clients of sex workers but – allegedly – not the workers themselves. If the reviewers do their job thoroughly, they will find that the evidence on this model does not support the assertions made in this debate. But whether they will report in line with the facts or with a misguided ideology remains to be seen.
Despite working with many anti-trafficking organisers and experts through my professional role, I’ve chosen to publish this article anonymously because of how contentious this debate is. If you speak out in favour of decriminalisation of sex work as a member of the UK anti-trafficking sector, you risk losing partnerships, allies and funding. But the stakes are too high to continue to shy away from this topic. Unless the sector comes to a united understanding on sex work and the laws surrounding it, we risk trafficking being used as a rhetorical tool which harms some of the most marginalised women in our communities.
The major divide on this battlefield is between those promoting decriminalisation of sex work and those pushing the ‘sex buyer law’. Tackling trafficking for sexual exploitation is often used as the reason to support this law: criminalise the clients, reduce demand, and then you’ll reduce the supply of trafficked women. Or, as Champion put it on Wednesday last week, “the basic principles of supply and demand underpin the phenomenon of trafficking and modern slavery for sexual exploitation. Without demand from sex buyers, there would be no supply of women and girls through sexual exploitation.” This approach can feel instinctively right because it punishes the buyers. I don’t know a single sex worker who likes their clients. I’m sure there are some, but they are few and far between. It also makes instinctive sense in terms of ideas about the economy and the interplay of supply and demand. But instinct is not a good basis for policymaking. Instead, the anti-trafficking sector needs to look at the evidence.
