British men may soon be prosecuted if they solicit prostitutes. A change in the law, which at present makes it legal to send for a call girl or visit a brothel, is in the offing.
According to The Mirror, British parliamentarians want to end the misery of girls forced into selling themselves, the spiral of drugs and violence - and the huge profits raked in by criminal gangs.Former Home Office minister Fiona MacTaggart said: "The only way to protect women from gross sexual exploitation, violence and degradation is to focus enforcement on their customers.
Taggart is proposing an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill barring men from buying sex. The Bill will be voted on in Parliament early next year.
The Criminal Justice Bill already includes plans to remove the words "common prostitute" from the statute books and to stop automatic fines for soliciting. Instead, the Bill says magistrates should be able to order vice girls to attend rehabilitation schemes.
Campaigners also want the Government to ban newspaper call girl ads.
There are believed to be 80,000 prostitutes on the streets. Seventy per cent joined the trade as children. Kerb-crawling for sex was banned four years ago. But police rarely use the new powers available to them.
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