For quite some time now, many UK politicians have been seeking to institute the Nordic Model. The latest attempt to criminalize the purchase of sex and all third party involvement in prostitution (including running escorting advertisement websites) comes in the form of amendments to the Police & Crime Bill.
Some of the relevant suggested amendments, in the words of the members who proposed them, can be summarized as follows:
NC1 – “This new clause would make it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the prostitution of another person, including by operating a website hosting adverts for prostitution.”
NC2 – “This new clause makes it an offence to pay for, or attempt to, pay for sex either for themselves or on behalf of others.”
There is also the (welcome and positive) amendment suggestion NC3 – “This new clause decriminalises victims of commercial sexual exploitation by repealing the offence of “Loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution” and relevant related parts of the Street Offences Act 1959.”
The damage that amendments NC1 and NC2 would do to sex workers is extensive. National Ugly Mugs has detailed their objections to these amendments, explaining the harms.
If you’d like to know how to help oppose these amendments, please refer to the information at the bottom of this article!
A summary of the harms of NC1 and NC2:
- With the closure of websites that sex workers can advertise on, we will be forced to rely on third parties to find clients for us, meaning we are at higher risk of exploitation than when we control our advertising and arrange clients ourselves.
- Sex workers’ relationships, both platonic and romantic, are criminalized when no-one is allowed to profit from our sex work in any way. If we share bills or get a friend to help us with managing being self-employed, suddenly they’re guilty of a crime.
- Criminalized clients are less likely to agree to screening or to share any personal information, meaning sex workers are less able to protect ourselves from the most dangerous clients or learn information about them if we’re victimized.
- Clients who are violent or abusive are unlikely to be put off by the criminalization of paying for sex, because rape and other forms of abuse are already illegal and they are content to break those laws. This means that the client pool, though it may shrink, has a higher percentage of violent or abusive clients and that the work becomes less safe.
If these laws were to pass, we would see sex workers struggling more for money just as we did during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and we would see a sharp increase in violence just as we have in France and Northern Ireland. Sex workers would be forced to hide our work even more than we already do, making it harder for us access help when we need it.
The criminalization of clients also forces sex workers into proximity with police when they seek to catch our clients in the act or want our statements to use as evidence of our clients’ law-breaking. This pushes sex workers to have to disclose personal details to police which they may not wish to share, as well as putting us at further risk of mistreatment from police who have a history of harassing sex workers.
During a period of time where benefits cuts are being made by the government, particularly impacting disabled people, disabled sex workers may be put in a position where they cannot access government support to make up for the loss of income caused by these legal changes, forcing them into poverty.
Paying for sex is also incredibly common in the UK and police are not equipped to charge even a small fraction of the actual number of clients. In practice, this will lead to profiling and the most marginalized of those who pay for sex being targeted. Whilst sex workers ourselves should always be the priority concern, the clients who would be arrested for these offences also do not deserve to be criminally punished.
Full decriminalization is what keeps sex workers safest. That is what the UK government should be working towards, removing brothel-keeping laws and decriminalizing street sex work rather than seeking to criminalize clients and removing our ability to safely advertise.
How can I help?
If you are a sex worker or someone else who ill be impacted by these amendments in the UK, you can submit written evidence! I suggest you read through the guide on doing this here and the government page on the call for evidence submissions for this specific bill here, and then create a document entitled “Written evidence submitted by [your name]” (this can be a fake name). Please include a bullet pointed summary, introduction, your general thoughts, recommendations, and a conclusion! If you can also link sources for claims you make, this would be very helpful.
This evidence should be sent to: scrutiny@parliament.uk
Deadline is May 13th!
If you are not someone who will be impacted, or you want something else to do in addition to giving written evidence, you can:
- Contact the MPs involved, as well as your own MP, to express your displeasure about NC1 and NC2.
- Share your anger about these amendments and your opposition to the Nordic Model on social media. Include the responses of groups like NUM, SWU (sex workers’ union) and Decrim Now in your support for sex workers.
- Donate to organisations like SWARM, Decrim Now, the ECP and other sex worker led groups which support sex workers in the UK and will be campaigning against these legal changes.
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