Robson Matt: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
Robson Matt: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
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Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 To change slightly the word order of Mark Antony’s most famous piece the funeral oration in Shakespeare’s  
Julius Caesar 
: “I come to praise Tim Barnett not to bury him for he is an honourable man.” He seeks to remedy a set of social mischiefs that surround prostitution. In particular he is concerned about the health and safety of the women and men engaged in prostitution. But I have come to bury the bill not to praise it. It does not remedy the mischiefs around prostitution. On the contrary it will worsen those mischiefs. On the surface the bill is progressive and that is the intention of the author and many who support it—I know that. But on going deeper I believe that it entrenches practices that do enormous harm. 
There are some who say that prostitution will always be with us. I have heard those words said about the poor. I do not accept that. It is not some dictum handed down from on high. Many socialists and social democrats in this House if they follow that philosophy should realise that they should look for the material roots of prostitution and work out a strategy for its elimination. Mesopotamia was the source in slavery of prostitution. It flourished in Athens as a State system also under a slave system and it has come through to us under this present market system that we exist in today. Neither the present market system as we know it which goes to extremes which commodifies people nor sexual slavery has to continue to exist. 
Those who argue that prostitution is another form of work and that at least it is paid for do I believe a great injustice to the goal that they should in my opinion if they are on the left be aiming for and that is free relationships between people on an equal basis. I ask those who argue that prostitution is a career what sort of career it is if when one reaches old age—possibly 35 40 or 45—there is nowhere for one to go and those who run the industry do not want a bar of one. What sort of career is that? What sort of career for our children is it when it is put on the level of other productive work in society? None of that is an argument that people who are involved in prostitution are less worthy in any way than any other member of a community. But it is an argument that if we are serious about what we tell our children is productive work we should not use the euphemism “sex worker” to describe this work. It is a euphemism. It covers up a practice that none of us including those who are proponents of the bill say we want our children to enter. 
There is a need for an exit strategy in this industry and that is what we should be concentrating on. We should certainly not be concentrating on having the police or other agencies chase people involved in prostitution—either prostitutes or their clients. Let us as a House and a Parliament work on an exit strategy. 
I went to colleagues in the Dutch Parliament who voted for a similar law. Their party is called the Dutch Socialist Party and anybody can contact it at www.sp.nl which has an English section. It has written an article that states that now given the experience in Holland its members would not vote for that bill. Why? Because the very people they thought they were going to help—the most oppressed women particularly immigrant women and young women—are the ones who have been driven into the burgeoning legal industry. They have also seen the drug industry continue to climb and those people involved in prostitution continue to be exploited. And Holland has a reputation as a liberal society that looks after its people. 
To those who say that it is Victorian morality that entrenches prostitution I say “Nonsense!”. It is actually post-Victorian morality because those who are making this industry something that goes on the Stock Exchange long ago rejected the hypocrisy that did surround Victorian morality but they are the same sorts of people who if one gave them half the chance would bring back exploited child labour and longer hours for workers. They are the very people who opposed my member’s bill promoting 4-weeks’ annual leave that I know has massive support from my Labour colleagues as well as from the Green Party. 
The way forward is to have an exit strategy that deals with the needs of the people who are involved in prostitution and it should include anti-drug strategies counselling and vocational guidance for people. We need that. I do not believe that this matter should be dealt with in a member’s bill. These issues are ones on which the resources of the Government and Government policy should be brought to bear. The strategy should be to give people an exit; to allow resources and support to go to the agencies that keep our children out of prostitution and that give social support to the women and men in the industry to enable them to come out of it not enter it—those are the resources that the Government needs to supply. A centre-left Government will need to address this issue when this bill fails—as I believe it will—and to put in place a proper strategy to deal with prostitution and its elimination.