YOU report that the Government’s plans to penalise men who pay for sex with illegally trafficked women would only affect men who acted “knowingly” (Putting the brakes on Bolton’s kerb crawlers, November 26).

This interpretation has been disputed by the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent. What the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said was: “It won’t be enough to say ‘I didn’t know’. What I hope people will say is: ‘I am not going to take the risk if there is any concern that the woman has not made a free choice.’ It would be quite difficult for a man paying for sex in the majority of cases not to fall under this particular offence.”

This, of course, puts men seeking what has hitherto been a perfectly legal transaction in an impossible position. It is as though the Government had said that anyone who purchases an item of clothing any part of which has been produced by child labour commits an offence! The same question arises in each case — how can anybody know?

This potty proposal should be strangled at birth and replaced by more conventional policing, even if the police have to recruit the Women’s Institute to assist with their monitoring!

On the same day as this report, your editorial comment expressed that hope that the crack-down on kerb crawling “does not drive the trade behind closed doors, thereby making it less detectable for police”.

Behind closed doors, however, is exactly where the trade belongs and the law should be amended to facilitate its transfer thereto by legalising brothels — something that your editorial comment called for as long ago as October 8, 1993, in which you wrote “Apart from cutting down the number of prostitutes on the streets . . . brothels would provide regular health checks for the women, and hopefully keep down the spread of sexual diseases.”

Allan Horsfall

Bolton