Anyone see the ding-dong between Jeremy Paxman and Denis MacShane on Newsnight? I was there. It was an utterly weird experience to be in the dock, under Paxo's hostile interrogation, because I have spent some time in the House of Commons campaigning against the sex slave trade.
I honestly don't know how many girls are trafficked into Britain. I once quoted a Daily Mirror report in the Commons. Its headline talked of 25,000 women and was based, so the paper reported, on Home Office and Amnesty International statistics.
This week the Guardian front-paged a report that came to close to arguing trafficking does not exist. The Mirror and the Guardian are both good papers with good journalists. Which is correct?
Rahila Gupta demolished the Guardian report on Comment is free. She also drew attention to an outfit of former prostitutes called Esso, which believes only 2% of women freely chose prostitution. Esso is new to me, and I hope the BBC and other media turn to it instead of always to the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP). I mean no discourtesy to this organisation, which grew out of the Wages for Housework campaign started by the International Marxist Group in the 1970s, but I cannot find on the web any details of its constitution, internal democracy, funding, or membership. The ECP spokeswoman said on Newsnight that only two trafficked women had come to her attention. This sounds far-fetched.
The Newsnight report managed its investigation without talking to a single prostituted woman or a single trafficked victim. Instead we had self-appointed "experts" indulging in a futile war of statistics in which the victims are voiceless. But to say that the reports of every international outfit that has highlighted sex slave trafficking do not apply to our blessed isles is silly.
Regional newspapers publish advertisements from brothels offering "new girls every week", and the web is awash with offers of paid-for sex from young women brought into Britain to service male needs. The Poppy project, which seeks to help trafficked girls and other prostituted women who try to flee from their pimps and controllers, can house a few dozen at its refuge, but it turns away hundreds more who seek to escape from the slavery of offering themselves to dozens of men a day in massage parlours and brothels. Perhaps Newsnight might go and interview these victims instead of "experts" pooh-poohing the problem.
The real debate turns on what is to be done. Male politicians rarely challenge the conventional wisdom of the Belle de Jour or Happy Hooker books and articles that becoming a prostitute is a voluntary business of pleasure and profit – and just another profession. I pushed the House of Commons and Tony Blair to sign the Council of Europe convention on trafficking, despite opposition from Whitehall and some boy members of the cabinet. Now Labour women like Harriet Harman, Vera Baird, Fiona Mactaggart, Jacqui Smith and others who suffer unspeakable condescension from the media – and, if truth be told, too many patriarchical masculinist Labour MPs and current and former ministers – have edged the debate into new territory.
They are seeking to switch the focus of responsibility from women to men in the debate over how to deal with trafficking and sex slavery. The idea is simple. Instead of penalising women, make men accept that paying for sex with a trafficked woman or under-age girl is a criminal activity. If that means more appearances in front of magistrates and naming and shaming, so be it.
The rough analogy is with kerb-crawling. It was commonplace until police and councils started photographing and publishing the number plates of the kerb-crawling cars. Nothing eliminates the willingness of some men to pay for sex, but there is no need to use this desire as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the tragic exploitation of women, often with murderous consequences, that the sex industry entails.
These amendments are now in the House of Lords. Will they be supported or defeated by these venerable gentlemen? Sadly, in the Commons Tory MPs have indicated that they do not want to support a move to curbing the demand side of the sex slave industry. It is not clear if David Cameron has taken an official position. Of course, all measures to tackle the supply side by interdicting trafficking and punishing pimps and traffickers should be undertaken. As a minister and then serving on the Council of Europe, I have examined such measures but came to conclusion that unless the demand side was also tackled by placing men in front of their responsibility, little progress would be made.
Last night's Newsnight debate showed how difficult it is to get a serious discussion on this important issue. Perhaps it is time to ask middle-aged male grandees from the Guardian and Newsnight to step aside and allow a different journalism to examine the problem.
That goes for me as well. I pondered hard before accepting an invitation to go on what I knew would be a shouting, point-scoring exchange, not a serious discussion of human evil and individual tragedies that shame our time and our politics. Now attention should turn to those other grandees who sit in the House of Lords. Will they defend men or their victims? We shall see.
