- Conference
- 2008 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 22 October 2007
- Decision
- Carried
Conference was disappointed to see a motion on the 2007 Unison National Delegate Conference agenda calling for the setting up of legalized brothels in cities throughout the UK, and reaffirms its position that women’s bodies are not commodities to be bought and sold, and that prostitution is an infringement of human rights.
Conference is optimistic that recent reports of high-level informal discussions could lead to a change in Government’s prostitution strategy, with a number of senior women in Government, including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary; Patricia Scotland, the attorney general; Vera Baird, solicitor general; and Harriet Harman, leader of the house, thought to be sympathetic to the calls to criminalise the purchase, rather than the sale of sex, as Sweden has done successfully for a number of years.
Sweden criminalised buying sex but decriminalised selling it eight years ago. Supporters of the scheme say it has slashed the number of brothels and clients and cut the level of sex trafficking into the country to hundreds of women. Conference believes that it is time for the UK Government to adopt a similar policy, and recognise that for this to be effective there also needs to be increased investment in drug rehabilitation programmes, education programmes, and other support programmes to provide women with viable alternatives and a route out of the trade.
According to the government, 85% of women in brothels now come from outside the UK, however, while men have been convicted for trafficking women into Britain, none has so far been prosecuted for paying for sex with women or girls forced into the sex trade.
Prostitution is a serious social ill, which affects hundreds of thousands of women and children. Paying for sex hurts the women who sell it; it has a terrible effect on society, and it perpetuates the negative gender stereotype of women as sex objects. Conference believes that in 2008 it is time for men to get the message that women are not for sale. Conference believes that it is only by criminalising clients that women working in brothels as well as on the streets can be helped, and that this criminalization will send out a clear signal that paying for sex is not acceptable.
Conference instructs the National Women’s Committee to:
1)Liaise with the NEC and other Unison bodies to highlight this issue through out the union.
2)Liaise with Unison Labour Link and lobby the Unison Parliamentary group of MPs, to ensure their support for any Government proposals to adopt the Swedish Model of tackling prostitution.