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Lord Adonis: My Lords, the noble Baroness's points are well taken. As soon as she mentioned the word "car", I though she was going to ask me, yet again, about the dualling of the A1 north of Newcastle, which I know is a cause dear to her heart and to the heart of Sir Alan Beith. I entirely accept her point about seeing that we have adequate car parking at stations. If we want to get more people out of their cars and onto the train, which is a high priority of mine, we have to see that they can park their car at the
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Lord Foster of Bishop Auckland: My Lords, as a fellow lifelong learner but, more importantly, almost a lifelong traveller on the east coast line, I tell the Secretary of State that his Statement will be widely welcomed by passengers and staff on that line. Staff morale could not have been lower and the service was mediocre and deteriorating, so he has done the right thing. We hope that he will go on to achieve another, more successful, letting of the franchise.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend who has huge experience of the railway industry and the services to the north-east. I appreciate his remarks.
Lord Bates: My Lords, does the Secretary of State agree that transport links are particularly important to peripheral regions, such as the north-east of England, and their economy? Is he aware that with the loss of flights between Durham Tees Valley airport and London Heathrow, another major link between the capital and the north-east of England has gone and, therefore, there is a potential worrying over-reliance upon rail? Would he support efforts to re-establish that link to Heathrow? Would the Minister also agree with the view of many of us that the heyday of the north-east railway service was the Great North Eastern Railway company operating a franchise very successfully for 11 years from 1996 under the previous Conservative Government?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I know that GNER was widely admired for the services that it provided. I note that GNER put in a high bid in the last competition on the east coast main line. It is not correct to say that there was simply one operator that was way out ahead of the others, with them far behind. GNER was very anxious indeed to retain the franchise and bid hard to do so. Because, as the noble Lord so rightly says, of the excellent train service to the north-east and the view that operators had that it is possible to grow that market significantly, the market conditions of the time and growth projections have been attractive to many operators.
I am happy to look at the issue of air services further, but I am afraid that there is no simple or straightforward answer.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, the Minister referred to the future of the East Anglian franchise in his Statement. Can he say a little more about the timing of such a review? Those of us who use the service regularly have already seen a marked deterioration in the quality of customer services. I fear that if a review takes a long time, they will have even less interest in maintaining a decent service while it is going on.
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Lord Adonis: My Lords, my good friends, including noble Lords in the House, have made their views, particularly on the absence of the restaurant car on the line to Norwich, very clear to me. I know that there are concerns, although the punctuality of the service has been improving.
On cost default, I am under an obligation to take account of the full circumstances of the case before the Secretary of State makes any decision. National Express's statement was of course only made this morning. I need to consider that statement very carefully with my legal advisers before I am in a position to make a judgment on it.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, the course of action taken by Her Majesty's Government in this matter has been swift, prudent and practical. However, I raise a fairly narrow legal point. It has been said that the company is currently making an operational profit. It has also been said, of course, that insolvency looms large and will inevitably occur with the decision of the parent group not to give further financial sustenance. In those circumstances, does it not seem rather clear that fraudulent trading, a serious criminal offence under companies legislation, could well occur swiftly? Can the Government therefore give an undertaking that the pro tem successor authority will take over sooner rather than later?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am anxious on behalf of the Government to see that National Express's obligations are fulfilled. That is why we do not think that it would be prudent or in the public interest to seek to transfer the business from National Express East Coast to the public sector company until a point very close to the company ceasing to be solvent. However, I am mindful of the noble Lord's point, and we will be seeking to act co-operatively with the National Express group in deciding the precise date on which the transfer would take place.
Lord Snape: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman of the bus division of the National Express and, alas, a shareholder in that unfortunate company. Does my noble friend accept that the responsibility for today's announcement lies entirely with the board of the National Express Group, and particularly with the, thankfully, outgoing chief executive, Mr Richard Bowker, who made what was described at the time as a "heroic" bid-some of us thought it was frankly insane-to take over the east coast main line in the first place? Fresh from wrecking the Strategic Rail Authority, he now has a train wreck of his own so far as the east coast main line is concerned. At the risk of making myself even less popular with some of my colleagues, I urge my noble friend to resist the calls somehow to recreate the golden age that supposedly was British Rail. I remind him that under British Rail Eastern Region, the east coast main line had half as many trains as it has at present, that civil servants, or supposedly Ministers, made the decisions in those days about investment in that line, and that those Ministers, in a Conservative Government as it happened-but I do not think that the situation would have been vastly
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Lord Adonis: My Lords, my noble friend's remarks in respect of British Rail are well put. We all remember Jimmy Savile declaring in the 1970s that this was the age of the train, but, frankly, nobody really believed him at the time because the reality and the hype were so much at variance. However, rail services have improved dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. Objectively, it is true that the public have more confidence in the railways because so many more members of the public are using them than was the case even a few years ago. My noble friend's remarks about the increased volume of trains are absolutely right too. The number of services running on the network is now higher than at any time since Beeching, so we have indeed improved not only the quality of services but the volume of services too, alongside increases in passenger numbers. Although much is splendid about our history as a country in respect of railways, as a Minister I want a better future not a better past.
The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, I follow the previous question by pressing the Minister a little on whether it is necessarily in the public interest to let franchises to the highest bidder.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, a range of factors are taken into account in assessing the suitability of bidders to win franchises, including a necessary process of prequalification, under which prospective franchise operators need to demonstrate that they are fit to operate the railway and can meet the contract specifications, so it is not the case that only the price that they bid determines whether or not they are successful.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, those of us who live north of Berwick-on-Tweed, in Scotland, depend very much on this franchise-whatever it is called, Great GNER, or whatever. The noble Lord referred to rolling stock. Perhaps if he comes north of Edinburgh one day, he will find that in winter the scene on the trains is something akin to a scene in Dr Zhivago as sometimes the doors do not close and the windows are frozen. I hope that he will carry that in mind, but above all I am very gratified by what he said about staff pensions. I have always found the staff are extremely loyal. I spend 12 hours a week every week on this franchise. I hope that the noble Lord will keep supporting it and will see what he can do.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am glad to tell the noble Lord that on my great national rail tour I ventured north of Edinburgh and experienced the rail services there. That occurred at a very early hour of the morning. I am also glad to tell him that the windows were not unduly steamed up and that the doors were operating properly. I was impressed by the quality of service on offer. I entirely echo his remarks about the quality of the staff on the east coast main line who deliver the service day in, day out. I stand by them absolutely.
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Policing and Crime Bill
Committee (2nd Day)
4.18 pm
Clause 13 : Paying for sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force etc: England and Wales
45: Clause 13, page 15, line 32, leave out from beginning to end of line 7 on page 16 and insert-
"53A Paying for sexual services of a prostitute known to be trafficked or coerced: England and Wales
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if-
(a) A makes or promises payment for, or uses, the sexual services of prostitute (B), and
(b) A knows, or ought to know-
(i) that B is the victim of trafficking,
(ii) that the sexual services have been provided through coercion of B,
(iii) that B has provided sexual services in order to gain access to controlled drugs, or
(iv) that a third party has influenced the activity of B by direction or instruction in circumstances where B does not freely consent to such direction or instruction.
(2) It is irrelevant where the sexual services have been or will be provided.
(3) In this section, "trafficking" means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
(4) In this section, "coercion of B" includes-
(a) violence against B or another person,
(b) threats against B or another person, or
(c) intimidation of B.""
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: With this amendment we move to Part 2 of the Bill, which deals with sexual offences and sex establishments. Before I discuss the detail of the amendment, I wish to mention a few points about our general approach to Part 2 and what we are trying to achieve with these amendments.
The Government stated that their main aim in this part is to try to reform the law in this area to make it much more difficult to exploit trafficked women and much easier to catch the traffickers. However, we have worries that this part as drafted makes life much less safe for women sex workers, still allows child victims to be treated as criminals and puts clients in a position of automatic guilt. When we debated similar clauses under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 before the Government withdrew them, I urged the Government to assess New Zealand's approach of decriminalising prostitution. I am extremely dismayed that the Government have not examined that example in any detail, especially as the five-year evaluation of it shows so many positive outcomes. I feel that Her Majesty's Government have turned their back on that example and I would like to ask the Minister the reason for that.
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This part of the Bill could simply be seen as a moral crusade against sex workers and their clients. People have had these moral crusades for hundreds or even thousands of years. Meanwhile, the issues of the health of society and real routes out of prostitution for women who want that option remain unaddressed. We have amendments to address those issues. There have been those who claim that the Bill is a great move forward to stop women being treated as sex objects and to help rehabilitate prostitutes. Sadly, that is the view of some so-called feminists. I say "sadly" because normally I would be pleased to call myself a feminist, but in this case I believe that the approach is naive and takes no account of reality. It dangerously makes some women's lives less safe and more difficult.
With those few opening remarks, I will turn to our first amendments, which would replace subsections (1) and (2) of new Section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008. Government Amendments 55 and 64 will be consequential on our amendments. The effect would be to remove the strict liability offence for clients. We will come on to debate strict liability later under the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, so I will not go into the detail of that yet.
This amendment-whether we should have this clause at all is a question to which we will come later-would ensure that the definitions used are useful and accurate, and address what has made the woman behave against her will. I agree that the Government have clearly had doubts about their original drafting. Many doubts were expressed in the Commons, particularly by my honourable friend Evan Harris who campaigned very hard on this issue. I am pleased that the Government have tabled their own amendments to this clause, which attempts to move in some direction on definition.
I believe that our amendment is stronger. It changes the definition of the offence from one where a person has used force, deception or threats in the expectation of gain for themselves in order to induce or encourage a person to provide sexual services, and replaces it with an offence that stipulates that a prostitute must have been coerced, which it defines, does not freely consent or has been subject to the internationally recognised Palermo definition of trafficking.
We believe that getting the drafting right at this stage is critical. If this Bill is to serve any purpose in stopping trafficking, those definitions and their use in court will be extremely important. We are anxious to have something that is of use for when traffickers are being prosecuted and, if this clause is included, a considerably tightened up definition. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Ullswater): I must advise your Lordships that if Amendment 45 is agreed I will not be able to call Amendments 46 to 53 because of pre-emption.
Baroness Hanham: I thank the noble Baroness for tabling this amendment. It covers many of our concerns about this clause, and as she has said, there are many questions about it. I am also glad that the noble Baroness indicated that she is quite happy to confine
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I shall concentrate instead on whether a new offence of paying for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force adds anything to the Government's wider policy of reducing human trafficking and prosecuting those who engage in it. None of us would disagree that the trafficking of human beings is a grievous crime and that the Government need to do everything they can to ensure that the enforcement agencies engaged in tracking and prosecuting those who promote it can do so expeditiously, and that they do then take action, particularly when they believe or have reason to believe that people are being forced into prostitution as a result. We know that the figures for those being forced into prostitution are ridiculously high.
It is appalling that the United Kingdom remains classified by the United Nations as a high-level destination country for trafficking and that women and children are still being lured here, often under false pretences, in the belief that they are coming to do worthwhile work, but are ending up being exploited. Despite endless legislation to deal with the matter-we had the Serious Crime Bill just recently-only a small number of prosecutions takes place. It is also unfortunate that when faced with evidence that human trafficking is still growing, all the Government can do is to add an offence that would result in a level 3 fine.
We have been calling for a wholesale review of the legislation surrounding prostitution and the various associated offences, particularly that of trafficking, because there is a great deal of it. However, this Bill does not review it. Sadly, it represents yet another missed opportunity. Neither this offence nor the various other tweaks and adjustments in the clause will do anything much to help those trapped in prostitution to find a way out or to bring those profiting from it to justice. A wealth of offences dealing with trafficking and exploitative prostitution is already on the statute book, so the Government must look hard at the reasons why these offences are not working. The statistics on the number of women and children trafficked into this country provide damning evidence that not only have this Government lost control of immigration, but that much more must be done to catch traffickers and their victims at our borders. The prosecution figures are also extremely disheartening. Despite the thousands estimated to be trafficked for sexual exploitation, the number of convictions has never risen above 40 a year, and with the exception of a few notable cases, sentences have been far lower than the legislation allows for.
The challenges of bringing a case to a successful prosecution are considerable, and the international element often imposes long, frustrating delays and raises the costs. The offences we have in place are pretty clear, but the nature of the crime makes it hard for victims to come forward. This is important because they are isolated from the enforcement agencies not only as a result of their fear of reprisals from those who are pimping them, but because of their fear of
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The debates in another place suggest that the Government are hoping that by focusing on the demand side of the equation, more can be done to reduce the industry than is currently possible by attacking the supply. I am extremely sceptical of this assumption. For one thing, those who are trafficking these often young and extremely vulnerable women are perpetrating one of the worst crimes prevalent in our society, and I hope that this new offence does not in any way indicate that the Government have given up trying to catch and successfully prosecute the traffickers.
With scarce resources, enforcement of any new offence runs the risk of diverting attention away from the investigation of existing offences. As it is impossible that the new offence could be committed without the existence of the person referred to as person C in the legislation, I hope the Minister can assure me that it would, if agreed, be used only in conjunction with police efforts to track down, arrest and imprison the traffickers.
I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. As I say, we will come to the question of strict liability on my next amendment.
4.30 pm
The Earl of Onslow: I support the noble Baroness because of the failed version of the absolute offence produced in the original Bill. Obviously, prostitution has gone on for ever and ever. Herodotus talks about the temples of Babylon and there is a wonderful quote from Gibbon, which I shall not repeat because it might be regarded as offensive to those of the Roman Catholic faith; it refers to the activities of a rather early medieval Pope.
In the JCHR report on the Bill, we state:
"We welcome any initiative aimed at protecting the rights of those who are trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation, or who are otherwise engaged in sex work without their consent... However, we question whether the precise methods chosen by the Government meet its positive human rights obligations and we are concerned that they run the real risk of making those engaged in prostitution even more vulnerable".
In the human trafficking report we produced in 2005-06, we say of human trafficking that it is,
Therefore, above all, we have got to catch those who are indulging in it. That means, surely, that we have to be as tolerant as we possibly can be towards the women who are exploited by making sure that their life is made easy and that they can report it to the police without fear. The proposed new clause will make it easier for a client who may come to suspect that a woman is trafficked to go to the police.
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