26th March People's Parliament meeting, House of Commons

[sweet jane]

Is anyone else going to this? I booked (free) tickets on eventbrite as it was recommended to help estimate the amount of space needed to accommodate the meeting.

It is possible to just turn up but it is recommended to allow 20 minutes to clear house of commons security.

*from the ECP website*
An All-Party Parliamentary Group has just recommended changing the prostitution laws to criminalise clients.  They are doing without even releasing any analysis of the evidence they collected.

Criminalising clients will not stop prostitution, nor will it stop the criminalisation of women.  But it will make it more dangerous and stigmatising for sex workers.  ASBOs would continue to be used against sex workers who didn't 'rehabilitate'; they have already massively increased women's imprisonment.

Sex workers from Sweden ? who know first-hand the disastrous impact of such a law ? and from a number of other European countries as well as England, Ireland and Scotland, will be speaking against this proposal.

26 March 2014, 6.30-8.30pm
Committee Room 12
Host: John McDonnell MP
Chair: Niki Adams




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[amy]

I would have like to have been there but I'm away (I never find out about these things until a week or so before when I'm already all organised), so if whoever does go can report back that would be great .

[Nikitamids]

I'm going to be there with other sex workers! If anyone wants to PM me to meet up beforehand that'd be most welcome. For anyone else who wants to attend free tickets can be registered for here.

inboxed you

[tvhappiness]

Any updates?

[sweet jane]

Hi there,
yes I went along to the event. I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand I think it's GREAT that there was some sort of representation in the house of commons, the range of speakers invited was good and gave a broad overview of issues and also of the variety of people willing to fight criminalisation of clients and to work for complete decriminalisation of sex work.

Speakers ranged from some one with personal experience of the Swedish model talking about how it definately hasn't improved things, speaker from Germany talking about how decriminalisation has worked there and what problems still exist with corruption, UK based sex worker organisations talking about who they are/what they do/what the direct effects of criminalising clients could be.

On the down side, at the event I felt very uncomfortable that other members of the audience were taking pictures of other people there, for example: random dude taking panorama type shots and working his way around the room. I wanted to go and challenge him on this but then everyone needed to move to another room which was bigger and I didn't see him again.

BUT - before the speakers restarted there was a really odd and half arsed statement about filming from ECP. Something along the lines of 'that we will be filming and taking photos of the audience and if you don't want to be filmed/photographed then go and sit over there' ....*vague gesture to another bit of the room*. At this point myself and my partner both verbally objected but were told rather sharply by an ECP member 'being here doesn't mean you are a sex worker' and 'we need to document the success of the event'.

I don't know, that stuff felt really off to me, I know obviously entering the house of commons IS a high surveillance area, but I think there is a difference between this and allowing basically anyone in the audience to photograph who is there. Alongside this it was mentioned how none of the local women involved in Soho demos has felt OK to attend (at least out as such) and that no London workers had felt OK to sit on the panel openly as such. Like GO FIGURE!!
Yet I've never heard so much repetition of the phrase 'we must listen to the voices of actual sex workers'.

Like I said some good, some just plain weird stuff.