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Humfrey Malins, Member of Parliament for Woking, has described new Government plans to tackle prostitution as "bad law"

20 January 2009

In a speech during the second reading of the Policing and Crime Bill, Humfrey Malins, who also sits as a District Judge and a Crown recorder across the South East, criticised the proposed measure to make illegal the payment of sexual service of a controlled prostitute, "For all the Minister's talk about consulting widely on the provision, I can tell him that those to whom I have spoken, in the police and the judiciary, think that clause 13 as drafted will be bad law. They think there will be a huge problem with evidential matters….My forecast is that in the first year of the provisions being on the statute book, there will be few if any prosecutions, and all this at a time when the plight of prostitutes in this country is dire, because of other matters, such as pimping and drugs, to which we should give much more attention."

Humfrey also spoke out against proposed measures to tackle alcohol related crime. Concerning the raise in the maximum fine from £500 to £2500 for drinking in a designated public place he said "All the Home Secretary could say to me was that the proposal sends out a message. But what on earth is the use of that, when in the past four years nobody has been fined more than £250?...under the fines system, which, by the Government's own strictures, now means that fines have to be within certain confines relating to the defendant's means, it will be practically impossible to fine anybody more than £100 for that offence …. We are blessed with Home Office Ministers who, frankly, thrive on the Oxygen of a good headline and who pass more and more laws, each of them meaningless and not enforced, and with a Government who gloss over the truth of what is happening on the streets. Until we get a Government who enforce the existing law, our crime and disorder problems will continue to escalate."