Britain rejects prostitution zones

Britain has rejected plans to set up so-called "tolerance zones" for prostitution, saying a worldwide study had shown there was no evidence they offered greater protection for women.

Instead, the government announced plans yesterday to relax laws on brothels so that prostitutes could work together in the same premises.

But an international campaigning group for prostitutes said the new laws did not go far enough to prevent sex workers suffering rape and violence.

The government had been considering allowing special zones in what would have been the biggest shake-up of British prostitution laws for 50 years. "We rejected that option because if you look at the international examples where there are managed zones (of prostitution) it seems not to reduce criminality," Home Office minister Fiona MacTaggart told reporters yesterday.

"It seems not to reduce the exploitation of women by usually criminally associated and dangerous men."

The British-based campaigning group International Collective of Prostitutes (ICP) had urged the government to decriminalise the world's oldest profession and a former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, published plans in 2004 to change the law. Instead, the Home Office said yesterday it would work to protect women in the sex industry and help them find alternative work.

It will also target the men who traffic women from abroad into the British sex industry.

The Home Office said the London market was "saturated" with migrants working in brothels.

"Prostitution blights communities and the lives of those who participate," Ms MacTaggart said. "Women involved in prostitution often have very limited choices in life. They come from difficult backgrounds, might have drug problems or nowhere safe to live."