Men can “order a woman as easily as a takeaway” and then rate her out of five stars, campaigners have warned. Now, former Tory MP Caroline Ansell is leading calls for Britain to follow Northern Ireland and prosecute those who buy sex, not those who sell it.
Campaigners and Tory politicians want the law changed so buyers face the courts, with more help for women trying to escape the trade. Ms Ansell, who now works for the pressure group Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), was joined by Conservative MP Rebecca Smith and former Enfield Southgate MP David Burrowes, who likened the fight to William Wilberforce’s battle against the slave trade.
Online sex trade 'like a takeaway'
Speaking at an event during the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, Ms Ansell lifted the lid on the online sex trade, saying websites let men “look at prices and order a woman as easily as a takeaway”. Buyers can even leave reviews of up to five stars, commenting on “value for money, overall experience, physical appearance”.
Ms Ansell said: “While some say prostitution is about female empowerment, choice, my body my choice, the reality is nine in 10 women would choose to leave if only they could.” She said those drawn into prostitution came “overwhelmingly” from backgrounds of childhood abuse and addiction, and may have been “trafficked, duped, coerced”.
Comparison to Wilberforce's fight
Mr Burrowes asked: “What would Wilberforce do if he were here, and seeing around this social injustice? In his day, it was slavery. In this day, it could well be the issue of prostitution, another form of enslavement.” He said women exploited in sex work “desperately wanted to get out”, but ended up “back on the streets, severely traumatised, severely addicted, with no one looking after them”.
Ms Ansell said the Northern Ireland law “moves the emphasis from the seller to the buyer”, adding it “represents protection for women and girls ... compelled and brought about support for exiting”. She said the law in the rest of Britain was outdated, pointing out it was illegal to “advertise prostitution services in telephone boxes”. She added: “Now, when was the last time you went to make a call at your local telephone box?”
Calls for legal change
She said her former seat of Eastbourne had been blighted by the sex trade, warning that England, Wales and Scotland “are an attractive proposition to pimps and traffickers”.
Ms Smith said: “The key word that comes out for me is exploitation. Why do we live in a world, not just our country, it’s the world, where we still have this view that people can exploit other people in this way? Because underneath all of [the work in Parliament] there is a huge cohort of people who want to speak up for people who cannot speak up for themselves. The key thing to remember is that exploitation is wrong, disregard for women is wrong.”
A Conservative Party spokesperson said: “Women selling sex are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the ones being exploited. It was a Conservative government that passed the Modern Slavery Act and gave police the powers to pursue those who traffic and exploit women. Any change to the law will be judged on one test – whether it protects those women.”
