By Hilary
White
LONDON, May
7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - MPs of the Commons Home Select Committee were said
to be shocked last week to learn that poor women and girls in the UK are being
lured into the sex trade by job advertisements at job centres run by the
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Denise Marshall, director of a
government funded anti-trafficking organization, the Poppy Project, told the
House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that the government was acting
as a "pimp" for the sex trade.
The jobs listed
include stripper, webcam stripper, adult show hostess, lap dancing and work
with an escort agency. Some vacancies listed the ability to "discuss
sexual fantasies" as a useful skill. One ad, called "admin work"
by the Jobcentre Plus website, said successful applicants would earn £10 an
hour to "talk dirty" and perform sex acts live in front of a webcam.
"When
you are offering £20 an hour to be a webcam stripper to a 17-year-old, the
chances are they may be naive," Marshall said.
Outside the
hearing, Marshall said, "It's the government as pimp. It's just dreadful. I'm
appalled that the government is giving women entree into the commercial sex
industry."
Despite
claims by the job centres of "safeguards" to prevent young people
from being drawn into prostitution, the database system does not ask applicants
to confirm their age before displaying the vacancies. The jobs are offered to
women on the government's jobseekers allowance of less than £4,000 a year.
The
Department for Work and Pensions, however, said it is obliged to carry the ads
because of a High Court decision in 2003. A spokesman for the department said,
"Jobcentre Plus has a duty to advertise any legal job. Legal vacancies
within the adult industry come within this." The spokesman said Jobcentres
Plus was required to carry such ads after the High Court overturned their
previous policy "which did not accept certain types of adverts connected
with the sex and personal services industries".
"We
have safeguards in place to ensure customers are fully aware of the nature of
these jobs. Our advisers always check on the full details of any vacancies
notified to us. Jobcentre Plus customers can choose whether or not to pursue
these vacancies." The department's spokesman said that customers do not
risk the loss of benefits if they do not apply for such positions.
"I am
not happy at the government promoting this sort of inappropriate work for
women," said Labour MP Ann Cryer. "I did not know this was happening
and I hope the job centres will rethink it."
Anna Bowden
from the Poppy Project told LifeSiteNews.com, "This issue has been going
on for quite some time; at least a year." She said that MPs had only
recently learned of it.
In Britain,
Poppy Project research shows that "off street" prostitution goes on
in all of the 33 London boroughs, with an estimated 80 per cent of the women
being non-British nationals working in brothels, saunas and massage parlours.
Bowden said
that despite a push from outside government to legalize prostitution, those who
work directly to stop trafficking know that such a move would be disastrous for
vulnerable women. This is coming to be so widely acknowledged, she said, that
even countries like the Netherlands that has had legal brothels for years, is
"scaling back their red light districts" to combat the problem.
Traffickers,
the project says, are being encouraged to move into Britain because of a
"piecemeal" approach to the problem by law enforcement and the
expansion of the sex industry into areas such as lap dancing clubs and
pornography that "has created a climate of tolerance of commercial
sex".
The Poppy
Project supports efforts to make buying sex a crime in Britain, saying that
this approach has worked well in Sweden where it has all but halted the trade
in women for prostitution.
Read
related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Britain
Awakens to New Slave Trade in Bordellos
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011109.html
Critics
Condemn UK Proposal to Legalize Northern Ireland Brothels
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06112401.html
Young Women
Forced into Prostitution in the UK - More Evidence that Prostitution Leads to
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http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05100304.html