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UK Government Job Centres Advertising for Prostitutes

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.

To contact the secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Rt. Hon. James Purnell MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
e-mail 

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 Sex Slavery
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05100304.html

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