Saving a person from a life of exploitation unfortunately does not provide any monetary value to put back into the government/public service system and therefore priorities will be placed elsewhere were a tangible product can be obtained.

I have first hand knowledge of someone who was trafficked and through her plight i have experienced the lack of support the UK have provided to her even though she testified against her traffickers and ultimately helped them receive custodial sentences.

Yet her story still goes un-noticed and her efforts just ignored by a country who have let her down and continued to let her live a life of squalor with little compassion and support.

The truth is that politically directed policing operations make great copy, but make little difference and have a tendency to ignore bigger problems while focusing attention on smaller, more media/pressure group friendly problems- meanwhile old ladies are beat up in their homes, pre-teens are murdered by gangs and drug dealers peddle their substandard and potentially dangerous concoctions to the lower dregs of society, perpetuating misery.

Prostitution is treated bizarrely in this country; how can we think the act itself is fine between consenting adults but then benefitting from it monetarily is a bad thing? Do we treat similar transactions to the same sort of insecure, swivel eyed nonsense? If I like food, and start a business as a chef am I going to be put in jail for providing a service I love to others with similar feelings/desires?

This is a beautifully emotive subject and I am not saying the problemdoes not exist; but by criminalising it in the way we do we exacerbate it to the detriment of the prostitutes, the punters and give a helping hand to those groups who benefit (whether you be a pimp, human trafficker or an MEP or pressure group with an ideological axe to grind).

Again we see a solution to these problems; liberalising, legalising and acknowledging the existence of a market for sex protects the most vulnerable within it- in New Zealand we have licensing authorities which register and protect the most vulnerable; income taxes are collected which can then be used to deal with the health and criminal concerns of the industry and reduce it to non-existent levels; Portugal have done a similar thing with drug legalisation which is transforming the face of drug use their in a way which protects the most vulnerable.

Only we, the so called birthplace of democracy and enlightenment, are stepping backwards and in so doing allowing chaos to rule.

Do not mistake me- as a follower of Jesus Christ’s teachings I find the act of selling that most wonderful and precious gift between man and woman as upsetting as the next; I would however direct my fellow Christians to this; take care as to who you side with, whether wittingly or otherwise. If we have a problem with how a peoples conduct their business or live their lives we should tell them with love and seek out our own salvation first with fear and trembling; we should not use the force of the law to push our agenda – that is the broad road and has created this mess which allows the kind of abuses we see with human trafficking, White slavery and pimping to continue. The law should be an extrapolation of the maxim Freedom from…:

Freedom from coercion.

Freedom from Interference.

Freedom from oppression.

We undermine all freedoms when we forget any one of these; this allows those who prey on others to prosper.