Hello and welcome to Navarra FM.

My name is Eleanor Penny. As the cost of living crisis and

benefit cuts continue to bite, more people are turning to sex work to pay the bills. Full-service

sex work, in other words, having sex with people in exchange for money, has long been a job that a lot

of people, most of them

women, take up in response to poverty, crisis or exclusion from other forms of work.

Technically, technically speaking, selling sex and buying sex are both perfectly legal acts in

UK law. But all the surrounding acts like loitering, brothel keeping and soliciting are illegal.

This means that if you're actually working in the industry, you are very likely going to be

criminalised under this kind of legal grey area, and sex workers can face harsh treatment of all kinds

from the police and the court system. For the last half century, the English collective of

prostitutes has been organising and advocating for the rights of sex workers on the streets

and in all spheres of public life. In November, they launched a report Proceed Without Caution

about the impact of prostitutes' cautions and convictions on sex workers' lives.

On this episode, I was joined by Laura Watson, spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes,

to talk about why women's survival strategies are met with the strong arm of the law rather than a social safety net.

And what can we learn from sex workers about power, urban geography and women's work?

We talked about the experience of criminalisation and the cost of living crisis,

about trafficking, gender-based violence and abolishing the police.

Laura, hi, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

So do you want to tell us a bit about who you are and your role at the English Collective of Prostitutes?

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