Paris Lees: ‘Vaz may be a hypocrite if the claims are true, but that does not change the committee’s findings’

Who do you think pays for prostitutes? Men (and women) from all walks of life. I don’t like the thought of it any more than you probably do, but I don’t have the luxury of pretending it doesn’t happen. It does. As a former escort, I’ve lived it. I’ve entertained men who, when the fun has ended, call their wives to tell them they’re off to pick the kids up from school. It’s depressing and I hope that I don’t know anyone who pays for sex, but the odds are I do. And so will you. Maybe your MP. Maybe your doctor. Maybe even your dad.

I don’t have a rose-tinted view of people who pay for sex, but nor do I think they should be criminalised. What two consenting adults agree to do together is up to them. Trying to “end demand” – which is never going to work anyway – only puts sex workers at greater risk. Anxious clients are not good news for sex workers. Trust me.

Keith Vaz: one scandal too many for the publicity-seeking MP Read more

Also, I can do whatever I want with my own body. I haven’t been exploited or abused and I resent middle-class know-it-alls trying to define my life choices. Back in May I spoke at the home affairs select committee on Britain’s sex work laws, where Keith Vaz rather condescendingly told me he “couldn’t believe” I’d never met a sex worker who had been forced in to it. I haven’t. For most people it’s just a job. I know people who’ve done it once or twice when they needed a bit of extra cash, and others purely for the thrill. That’s right. Sex work can be fun. Exciting. Lucrative. And, believe it or not, sane adults can and do choose to do it of their own free will.

Banning all sex work because of sexual exploitation is like banning all factories because of a handful of sweatshops. The difference between a willing sex worker and someone who has been forced to do it is the difference between a cleaner and a slave. We managed to explain this important distinction to the committee, but it wasn’t easy. Let me be clear: from start to finish, the committee was heavily skewed towards the Nordic model of criminalising those who buy sex rather than those who sell it. Yes, Vaz is a hypocrite if the claims about him are true, but that does not change the committee’s important findings that criminalising sex work puts sex workers in danger.

Peter Tatchell: ‘There is no contradiction between Vaz’s public pronouncements and private behaviour’

Keith Vaz may have behaved recklessly and said some ill-advised things. I don’t think he’s blameless. But as far as we know he has not committed any crime and is not guilty of hypocrisy.

Buying sex is not an offence, the men were consenting adults, there was no use of cocaine and poppers are legal. Vaz has supported gay equality and the decriminalisation of sex work. There is no contradiction between his public pronouncements and his private behaviour.

So where is the public interest in outing him? This looks like a classic tabloid sting perpetrated by the Sunday Mirror for sensationalist motives in order to boost sales. The whole scenario may have been set up by the newspaper in collusion with the escorts, in order to entrap the MP. This could even include the paper assisting with the recording equipment and laying in wait outside the flat where the rendezvous with Vaz took place (although the paper denies this). It may even have prompted the escorts to ask Vaz leading questions about drugs. The Sunday Mirror allegedly paid the escorts £30,000.

This was not about defending the public interest. It looks like a sordid money-making conspiracy by the newspaper and the escorts – a throwback to the squalid tabloid excesses of the 1980s. To establish the truth, the Sunday Mirror must come clean about whether it knew in advance about the escorts meeting Vaz and whether it collaborated with them. How much did the paper pay the escorts for their story? Was there a signed contract? If so will the paper now publish it?

Given the absence of any public interest justification, there is prima facie evidence that the Sunday Mirror has broken the press regulation code prohibiting unwarranted intrusion into privacy.

It said that Vaz failed to declare an interest when his home affairs committee was investigating a ban on poppers and sex work criminalisation (he opposed both). Perhaps he should have declared an interest, but I am not sure that his failure to do so is a major lapse. After all, we don’t demand that MPs who drink and smoke declare an interest when they discuss legislation affecting the alcohol and cigarette industries. There is never any insistence that MPs who have pension plans step aside from committees discussing pension regulation or that gay MPs must come out and declare themselves before voting on gay issues. I sense a whiff of double standards.

Finally, I sympathise with Vaz’s wife and children. Perhaps they never knew. But we must also remember how difficult it is for gay and bisexual people to come out in some sections (not all) of the Asian community. Homophobia kept Keith Vaz in the closet and we should be angry about that.

Julie Bindel: ‘If Vaz is a sex buyer, how can he not have a stake in the committee’s findings?’

As predicted, the boys are out to defend Keith Vaz. Jeremy Corbyn has said that the scandal is a “private matter”. The disgraced Simon Danczuk tweeted: “I’m right in saying Keith Vaz hasn’t done anything illegal, aren’t I?” According to gay rights activist Peter Tatchell there is no public interest element in this story.

If Vaz’s role as chair of the House of Commons select committee on prostitution does not constitute a conflict of interest, I don’t know what does.

Vaz clearly has a vested interest in rejecting the reams of evidence submitted to the committee that show how successful criminalising demand has been in countries that have adopted this law in tackling harms within the sex trade. In its recent interim report, the committee stated that it is “not yet persuaded that the sex buyer law is effective in reducing, rather than simply displacing, demand for prostitution”. If the Nordic model was applied in England and Wales, those engaged in activities such as those Vaz is alleged to have partaken in would face criminal sanctions. If Vaz is himself a sex buyer, how can he not have a stake in these findings?

The current law is that criminal charges can be brought if a person pays for sex with somebody who is “controlled for another person’s gain”. Significant numbers of women and smaller numbers of men in the UK have been coerced into the sex trade, including those from poor and developing countries. To argue that Vaz, if he has paid for sex, can continue as chair of the very committee that will soon decide whether or not sex buyers should be criminalised is ludicrous. Vaz should step down now, and the interim report be scrapped and rewritten once the new chair is appointed.

Margaret Corvid: ‘Prurient interest must not derail the chance for sex workers to live free from fear and stigma’

I’m no fan of Keith Vaz, but when I read that he’d been accused of hiring male sex workers, I knew that defending him isn’t about him – it’s about our right as sex workers to work without threat of violence and arrest.

The papers call him a hypocrite for alleged gay sex and for hiring sex workers when he’s chaired a parliamentary committee investigating the sex work laws. But we must temper accusations of hypocrisy with realism. When the Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith calls himself “normal” in contrast to Angela Eagle, a lesbian, I understand why a prominent man might want to stay closeted. For the closeted, sex workers provide discretion: that discretion may have been violated by a newspaper sting, and disclosure rains down hurt upon Vaz’s family, party and the essential work of the home affairs select committee. And if there was a sting, it makes sex workers less safe, because potential clients are less likely to go through our screening procedures when they fear exposure.

Why the Sunday Mirror was justified in exposing Keith Vaz Read more

The committee has been investigating whether sex work should be fully decriminalised, as in New Zealand. Its groundbreaking inquiry heard testimony from current and former sex workers, receiving written submissions from hundreds of us, who asserted, in accord with the most rigorous research, that decriminalisation would drastically improve our safety and health, letting us work together and letting us go to police when we’re robbed or assaulted, rather than fearing they will mock, arrest or deport us.

The committee recommended the decriminalisation of sex workers working together for safety; those recommendations were not the result of Vaz’s alleged lusts. They emerged from a multi-party inquiry based on scientific evidence and the testimony of those affected most by criminalisation. Whether Vaz stays or goes, we must not let prurient interest in his personal life derail this precious moment – this chance for sex workers in the UK to live a life free from fear and stigma. The committee’s recommendation for decriminalisation must stand.

Joan Smith: ‘It’s hard to think of a more blatant conflict of interest’

Public attitudes to prostitution are changing. In Sweden, where what’s known as the Nordic model of prostitution policy was first introduced, a majority of the public now regards paying for sex as a form of abuse. Women and men who sell sex no longer face criminal sanctions but, crucially, people who buy it do.

In this country, we still have out-of-date laws that criminalise vulnerable individuals who are in reality victims of a vast commercial sex industry. That’s one of the reasons why many of us would like to see a sex buyers’ law introduced in the UK, forcing men who drive this trade (and it is mostly men) to face up to their responsibilities.

The Labour MP Keith Vaz chairs a powerful House of Commons committee that has been holding an inquiry into this key area of public policy. It has heard evidence from a number of organisations that support the Nordic model, yet no one knew that a change in the law may – if the allegations in the Sunday Mirror are true – affect the committee’s chair directly.

That’s why these claims, no matter how luridly they have been presented, are in a different category from other stories exposing the private activities of well-known people. To take a recent example, the argument for publishing details of the sexual relationships of the former culture secretary, John Whittingdale, was undermined by the fact that there was no clear evidence they had affected the way he did his job.

Vaz’s situation is very different from Whittingdale’s. To put it bluntly, he appears to have chaired hearings where campaigners proposed a change in the law that could, in theory, turn his own private behaviour into a criminal offence. This is jaw-dropping stuff, and it’s hard to think of a more blatant conflict of interest.