Never trust an army or a government with a hard-on. Excitable soldiers tend to shoot people. Similarly I’d much rather vote for a politician who is idle, complacent, drunk and preferably comatose. A busy government full of reform simply means that our bills and bus fares go up to pay for their grandiose schemes. A busy government is a vanity. A busy government does not mean a more efficient democratic machine. A busy government hell-bent on fast-tracking dubious legislation is a danger to the public. New Labour has been busier than most.

Within six weeks of taking over from Charles Clarke at the Home Office, Dr John Reid reported to a House of Commons Select Committee that the department was “unfit for purpose”. He went on to say he did not believe that the Home Office was “intrinsically dysfunctional” but added: “I do believe from time to time it is dysfunctional in the sense that it doesn’t work!”

The Home Office is responsible for the police in England and Wales as well as national security, the justice system and immigration. The official website also boasts that it is the government department responsible for ensuring that we live in a safe, just and tolerant society. If the minister in charge believes that his own department is dysfunctional and unfit for purpose then we should be treating all legislation that is passed from his office into law with the utter contempt it deserves.

In May 2004 the Home Office officially went insane. It decided to try and abolish prostitution in this country. Actually the issue was really immigration and the Home Office knee-jerked in response to the relentless tabloid witch hunts and xenophobic scare stories for which the editors responsible should have been lynched. But governments must be seen to be busy and so David Blunkett went to war with the whores.

In 2004 the Home Office published a public consultation paper on prostitution called Paying the Price. After four months they began to process the grand total of 800 responses from every public sector affected by prostitution with the exception of actual sex workers themselves. For some reason this took the Home Office a whole year. In January 2006 the government unveiled its Co-ordinated Strategy for Prostitution. One of the key objectives of this Strategy was to “challenge the view that street prostitution is inevitable and here to stay.”

To make sure that we were all paying attention, the Home Office also armed its police force with a plethora of possibly illegal legislation to ensure that we never saw another hooker on the streets ever again. The police could use the inappropriate ASBO and ABO laws to run the girls into courts who in turn could then offer the pious mantra of rehabilitation and rescue.

It didn’t work. It will never work. A democratic society will always exploit the under-classes and no-classes. The alternative is Communism. Sweeping girls off the street and into court has stretched the legal system to breaking point and achieved absolutely nothing. Red light areas still flourish. Men still kerb-crawl. Girls still die.

The vanity and gall of those responsible for introducing the Strategy for Prostitution is breath-taking. Despite being axed as Home Office minister in May 2006, Fiona Mactaggart still insists in her official website diaries that she is “proud to be part of a party which has a strategy to drive out prostitution and the misery it causes.”

During the four month consultation period the Home Office had a good snoop around at the sex economy. It has always been something of a black economy and as such can ruthlessly exploit those people who have few life-choices. That is not, however, a reason for governments to get busy. It is a reason for those working within the adult sector to get organised and start putting their own house in order for themselves. The fact that a lot of people working in the sex industry are greedy, needy and selfish should surprise no one. Yet this did not stop the Home Office from deciding that new laws were required.

The new legislation passed in January 2006 was ostensibly crafted to “save” and “protect” prostitute women who had been trafficked into the UK from abroad. Launching the Strategy, Fiona Mactaggart stated that “prostitution blights communities and the lives of those who participate. I want the women involved to have the help and support to leave prostitution.”

She left it to the police and immigration authorities to provide this “help” and “support”. The authorities immediately set about “saving” sex workers by enthusiastically raiding flats, brothels, clubs and massage parlours across the country. They conducted these raids under the blue-sky banner of Operation Pentameter. Seemingly they weren’t so keen to “save” sex workers in possession of a valid UK passport. Such benevolent and kindly gestures of rescue were reserved for those without work permits, passports or visas. These workers were subsequently “saved”, detained, interrogated and eventually threatened with deportation. There was much talk of “rehabilitation” by the Home Office for women trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation. Government proudly presented the Poppy Project as evidence. The Poppy Project is in fact a state-funded organization which has received £2.4 million from the Home Office to provide shelter and support for just 25 women and only then if the women agree to “co-operate with the authorities”. It is a drop of piss in the ocean and undermines the Strategy for Prostitution altogether. Women are routinely being sent back towards the guns and knives of the original trafficking gangs. Many simply choose to disappear into the morass of immigrant misery and hope never to be “saved” again.

Although the Strategy for Prostitution was largely immigration-orientated, the Home Office also had a chance to tinker around with the 2003 Sexual Offences Act. Ironically it is now considerably easier for legitimate sex workers to earn a living. The law was amended to allow two girls and a “receptionist” to work together from a flat so long as the “receptionist” did not discuss any sexual arrangements whatsoever with a client. The “receptionist” is also at risk if he or she is actively involved in the day-to-day running of the premises such as paying the bills, the rent or the advertising. The change in the law was instigated by the Home Office to make it safer for prostitutes working off-street. It is a sensible policy and one which had been long overdue. The dangers of working alone in a flat were recently highlighted with the sentencing of four men convicted of targeting, assaulting and robbing three independent prostitutes in London. The gang were also responsible for the torture and murder of a Thai masseur. All were chosen at random from adverts placed in newspapers. The four men were only caught after the police followed up numbers stored on the murdered masseur’s mobile phone.

Running a brothel or an escort agency is now only illegal if the owner ‘controls for gain’. Profiting from brothels and agencies is legal. It is only illegal when an owner profits at another’s expense and the penalties for ‘controlling for gain’ have been increased from 7 months to 14 years. This is legislation aimed directly at those caught controlling and exploiting trafficked women and as such should be applauded. It is still illegal to own or run a brothel or flat from which more than 2 girls work. A brothel can, however, offer as many girls as it wishes as long as only 2 girls are working the same shift at any given time. Bizarrely, it is now legal for a dominatrix to advertise and charge for her services and yet any sexual act which involves inflicting pain on another can still be treated as assault by the authorities.

Generally these legitimate “micro-brothels” are no longer a priority for either the police or the CPS. Obviously the more attention a micro-brothel attracts then the more likely it is to be visited by a government department more interested in cash-flow than working conditions. Only the Inland Revenue could possibly classify prostitution alongside part-time bar staff and cab drivers.

All escorts (whether independent or working for an agency) are technically self-employed. As a result they must file their own end-of-year tax returns like any body else. Due to the nature of the work, however, it is pretty impractical to admit to being a sex worker. Most escorts call themselves either models or therapists or masseurs. Anything, in fact, that does not require a regular proof of income. The police and immigration authorities’ new powers of investigation means that every escort should now be prepared to disclose any full time or part time income to the Inland Revenue. Failure to do so can lead to a prosecution for tax evasion.

In Germany the taxable status of prostitution has led to farce. Prostitution was legalised there in 2002 and as a result all brothel owners must pay tax and employee health insurance. In return they are allowed to advertise for sex workers in relevant job centres. Under Germany’s welfare reforms any woman under the age of 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take any available job or risk losing her unemployment benefits. Last month a 25 year old waitress lost her benefits for refusing to take a job at a brothel in Berlin. The German government did consider excluding brothels from the scheme on moral grounds but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. Women who have worked in call centres are offered jobs on telephone sex lines. Any job centre that refuses to take adverts from an employee trying to recruit for the sex industry can be sued. A man is trying to sue his local job centre in Goerlitz after they withdrew his advert for 12 prostitutes on the grounds that it would be impossible to find them.

In the UK an escort agency or micro-brothel is more likely to be taxed rather than hounded out of existence. Only recently a well-established London escort agency running a chain of 26 flats was busted for tax evasion and forced to close. Another has registered itself as an off-shore concern to avoid the menace. In return for handing over a percentage of an income earned the hard way, sex workers still have very few rights and little legal recourse. Any damage – either mental or physical – is still seen as self-inflicted and therefore a sex worker’s own damn fault. Any government knows that there are no votes to be won by highlighting the plight of prostitutes. Despite New Labour’s suffocating Strategy they also remain of very little concern to the general public.

Pleading ignorance of the law is no defence. This government can now arrest anybody for nothing and sex workers are not exempt. Laws introduced to legitimise the War On Terror after 9/11 can be used to tag and track those who choose to do no more than have consensual sex for money. It is Paying The Price indeed.