Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill

If you pay for it, you are now a criminal

Robert Campbell on June 1, 2015, 9:22 am

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Clause 15 of Lord Morrow’s Anti-Trafficking Act came into force a few hours ago, here. This makes it a criminal offence to pay by money, goods or services, for sexual services in N Ireland. It remains legal to sell such services. Previously, it was illegal to buy sexual services from a trafficked person; now there is blanket criminalisation. The expressed intent behind the Act is to reduce or eliminate the trafficking of women into prostitution. Human trafficking is a complex …

Talking without listening and victory without annihilation

Turgon on February 2, 2014, 3:40 pm

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Mick has covered the criminalisation of users of prostitution debate and the spat between Dr. Graham Ellison and Jim Wells ain the Stormont committee below. I thought there might be some merit in looking at what this shows about the DUP’s view of itself, others views of it and how the DUP deals with these sorts of issues. This episode seems to be a case of two sides talking without listening. I am not going to enter into the merits …

[Updated] Queens academic taught a hard lesson at the hands of ‘that lot in the DUP’

Mick Fealty on January 31, 2014, 4:39 pm

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This is odd. Well intentioned or not, a Queens academic has managed to get himself on the poor end of the argument over Maurice Morrow’s private members bill which contains a maximalist clause that would criminalise prostitution. Rather ill-advisedly Dr Graham Ellison decided to lobby a Swedish witness, Gunilla Ekberg, an ex-special adviser with the Swedish Government, who had previously given evidence in favour of Lord Morrow’s bill. The trouble is the email contained rather a lot of man playing …

#Borgen: Dramatic lessons on prostitution for Northern Ireland’s lawmakers?

Mick Fealty on December 5, 2013, 12:48 pm

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Theatre and democracy had grown up together and were inextricably linked in the Athenian mind. Dr Michael Scott, The Greatest Show on Earth So human trafficking, and making prostitution illegal. Such are the maximalist ambitions behind Lord Morrow’s private members bill. The French lower house has just passed such a law up to the Senate. But it was also part of a fictional treatment on the Danish political drama last weekend. The Swedish research that’s been cited in the Northern …

Human Trafficking: No one is helped by a fevered moral crusade that promises the earth and delivers nothing

Mick Fealty on September 24, 2013, 10:50 am

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Whatever the liberal media think of the Assembly, it looks like it may be about to score a first and produce its very own indigenous piece of legislation, intriguingly for an Executive of all the parties, through the means of a private members bill. Perhaps that’s because the Minister for Justice shares a concern with the police that the result of Lord Morrow’s human trafficking legislation will be to dilute police resources and drive the problem of trafficked individuals further from …