Dood Member, Zacchaeus 2000, in The Times Today

Prostitution is everyone's problem


Sir, The Home Office consultation paper Paying the Price, published in July 2004, reports that: "Prostitution may be driven by economic necessity." It also reports "survival to be the overriding motivation" and that 74 per cent of street sex workers "cited the need to pay household expenses and support their children". The lack of money to live a healthy life and participate as citizens in the UK forces choices women would rather not consider. Survival is a powerful motivator.

Buying the things that most people consider necessary is impossible at the lowest levels of income in the UK economy without deciding to go into debt, shoplifting, bending the benefit rules, carrying drugs or, for some, entering prostitution.

At Christmas some credit companies will be lending £1,000 with £700 interest repayable to women wanting to do the best for their children but finding it impossible on benefits, which are below the Government's poverty thresholds. The best the Government could do about that was to invent another fast-track tribunal to examine cases of unfairness, to which access is near impossible for the majority.

All the political parties have failed fully to address such poverty in the fourth largest economy in the world.

THE REV PAUL NICOLSON
Chairman
Zacchaeus 2000 Trust