Bill to make payment for sex illegal in Northern Ireland likely to be unworkable

This is what Dr Graham Ellison of the School of Law at Queen's University in Belfast thinks about Lord Morrow’s sponsorship of this Northern Ireland Private Members’ Bill.

“It is going to cost an inordinate sum of money and resources to administer. There are also a number of practical issues: how is it going to be policed?” says Dr Ellison. “Is the onus going to be on the purchaser to prove that ‘he’ [or she] didn't pay? [and] what if both parties claim the sex was consensual without any money changing hands? Only a tiny percentage of sex work involves street prostitution: the overwhelming bulk has moved to the internet.”

“Victims of sex-trafficking are wheeled out by Lord Morrow as a justification for a change in the law. I can't help feeling, though, that for Lord Morrow there is more to it than that.

Nevertheless, religious fervour rarely leads to good law.”

For Dr Ellison’s full opinion please visit this link to the Belfast Telegraph