UK may criminalise use of prostitutes 

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A coalition of women's rights campaigners backed government plans to criminalise men who go to prostitutes, urging the House of Lords to pass a proposed new law.
   
The plans would make it an offence for anyone to buy, or try to buy, sexual services from a prostitute who has been subjected to violence, threats or coercion.
   
Campaigners call clause 13 in the Policing and Crime Bill revolutionary because it shifts the burden of criminal responsibility away from prostitutes and onto people who use their services.
   
"What we hope with clause 13 is that we will see the traffickers in the dock and also a couple of the punters too," Catherine Briddick, Senior Legal Office at the group Rights of Women said.
   
The proposal has been approved by the House of Commons and needs to be passed by the Lords before it can become law.

The vote is due towards the end of October or early November.
   
The plans are opposed by the English Collective of Prostitutes which argues the law would force prostitution underground and put women at greater risk of violence.
   
Fiona Mactaggart MP, who chairs the Commons All-Party Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade, said there had also been some opposition from peers who believed the strict liability offence was unfair.
   
"A number of members of the House of Lords whose imaginations put themselves more easily into the shoes of a buyer of sexual services than in the shoes of exploited women, do see it as controversial," Mactaggart said.
   
"If we can show them the reality of life for women who have been exploited in this way I think they will support the clause," she said.
   
Campaigners acknowledged that clause 13 would be difficult to enforce but hoped it would serve to deter people from using prostitutes in the first place.
   
"There is a reasonable chance that there will be a substantial change in behaviour, which will mean women will become less marketable commodities," said Mactaggart.
   
She believes the law would change public attitudes to prostitutes like attitudes to wearing seat belts dramatically changed when the law came in enforcing them, despite there having been very few actual prosecutions.
   
The coalition of groups supporting clause 13 includes leading women's rights organisations, those working with trafficked women and children and asylum seekers.
   
In a statement, they equated prostitution with violence against women; saying that 71% of prostitutes had been physically attacked, 63% raped and 68% had suffered post traumatic stress disorder.