As a life-long Labour voter and campaigner against Tory policies, particularly when it comes to issues relating to violence against women and girls, I find it odd to be writing this sentence. But today, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission published a report into prostitution that is so progressive, so comprehensive, and so practical that it leaves the other parties with egg on their faces.
Reports into prostitution tend to fall into two categories: either products of unbridled ideology dressed up as research, or a dull sifting of evidence from other countries. Home Office work on the issue falls squarely into the latter. Unenlightening and inconclusive, the tiny proportion of readers who stagger to the end, begging for mercy, tend to be more confused than when they started.
In contrast, this report makes clear something that should be blindingly obvious: yes, of course we need to weigh the evidence from countries who have tried different legal models, but the public policy response to prostitution can never be determined by data alone.
Men brokering and renting access to the inside of women’s bodies for one-sided sexual pleasure is an ethical question on which we should be able to take a view without first having read a dozen War-and-Peace sized reports.
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