ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews recent policy debates in England and Wales and Scotland with a view to drawing out the fundamental contradiction at the heart of ongoing policy shifts. Policies introduced with the intent of increasing sex worker safety and decreasing exploitation may actually be making women workers less safe. The chapter suggests that recent legal reform has exacerbated and accelerated the process of removing prostitutes from the streets and the implications of doing this. It concludes by arguing for policies that don't criminalise or push street prostitution out of sight, but allow it to occur as safely as possible. Slowly but surely, sex work at least in its visible and more traditional forms is disappearing from Britain's streets. Launching the strategy, Home Office Minister Fiona Mactaggart reported that Prostitution blights communities and the lives of those who participate.
