Target men who pay for sex, not prostitutes, says adviser

PROSTITUTION should be decriminalised and customers who pay for sex should be targeted instead, the Government’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women has said.

Nimco Ali, a close friend of Carrie Johnson, told a fringe event at the Conservative conference that the UK should adopt a “Nordic approach” to tackling sex work.

“Ultimately, if we are in a society where women are commodified then we can’t respect women,” Ms Ali told the Conservative Young Women’s event on Sunday.

In Norway, the government tries to tackle demand rather than supply of prostitution, by making it an offence to buy sex rather than sell it. In the UK it is not illegal to pay for sex acts.

She said people need to feel the same shame about using prostitutes as they do drink-driving. “Twenty or 30 years ago nobody was embarrassed to be caught drink-driving but now they are. Men should be embarrassed by buying sex,” she said.

She added: “I really do think that we need a more direct approach when it comes to prostitution in this country.”

Ms Ali, who acts as the government’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, said she was not speaking in an official capacity.

The FGM survivor has previously described prostitution as rape and has been vocal about her support for sex workers’ rights.

“It’s a well-known fact that ‘us’ feminists are very much against rape which prostitution is,” she wrote on Twitter in 2019. “And I nor any feminist I know attack women or girls in the sex industry. We fight for their rights and all our rights not to be forced to sell our bodies to men.”