February 2, 2006

A licensing system would help ensure that children were not employed in brothels and sex workers were not harassed, writes David Batty

The editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) recently suggested that prostitution should be legalised in order to protect sex workers from assault, exploitation and drug dependency. “Allowing prostitutes to work in licensed premises would help prevent child prostitution, human trafficking and slavery,” said Fiona Godlee, the journal's editor.

She welcomed the British government's plan to allow three prostitutes to work legally in so-called "mini-brothels", but said this did not go far enough to make sex work safe. The Prime Minister's official spokesman last week insisted that allowing three prostitutes to work together did not equate to legalising brothels.

Dr Godlee also backed research, published in the latest edition of the BMJ, which warned that the government's new plans to cut street prostitution would threaten the health of sex workers.

The researchers said that the sex workers would be reluctant to report abuses or seek help to tackle drug problems as long as prostitution was illegal. Children are sexually abused, vulnerable individuals, including those with drug dependency or mental health conditions, are coerced and controlled, often by organised criminal gangs. Neither adult sex workers nor clients dare to report these abuses for fear of exposing their own involvement in sex work.

A licensing system would help ensure that children were not employed in brothels, sex workers were not harassed and foreign nationals had work permits. They added that the government's proposed crackdown on street prostitution and kerb crawling would displace sex work to less safer locations where women would have to solicit more directly and would spend more time on the streets. —Dawn/ Guardian Service

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