LONDON (AP), November 19, 2008 - The British government announced plans Wednesday
 to "name and shame" people who visit prostitutes and make it illegal to pay for sex with
 women forced into prostitution - measures that sex workers say will put more women at risk.

 People who pay for sex with a prostitute "controlled for another person's gain" could face
 criminal charges and a fine of 1,000 pounds.

 The crime would be a "strict liability offense," which means men would be held accountable
 even if they didn't know a woman had been trafficked or was working for a pimp.

 "What I disapprove of is women being exploited in this country, coerced, trafficked into the
 country, effectively treated as slaves," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told British Broadcasting
 Corp. radio on Wednesday.

 The government also planned to hold lap-dancing clubs to the same licensing requirements as
 sex shops and sex cinemas. The clubs are currently regulated like pubs.

 Smith said the measures - which would need to be approved by lawmakers - are aimed at
 lessening the demand for paid sex and to cut down on human trafficking.

 Sex trade workers, however, said the wording of the proposed law would make it illegal for
 men to use prostitutes who work for other women at brothels or in other voluntary
 arrangements. "This is a very dangerous moral crusade," Cari Mitchell, spokeswoman for the
 English Collective of Prostitutes, said Wednesday. "What this will ultimately do is drive the sex
 trade further underground and put the focus on criminalizing clients that, for the most part,
 women aren't complaining about. This plan is of no benefit to women."

 The sex trade is already heavily restricted in Britain, unlike in many of its European neighbors
 where prostitution and solicitation are tolerated in some form.

 Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the son of a Presbyterian minister, has already backed a series
 of sin taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, called for tougher drug laws and scrapped plans for
 Britain's first Las Vegas-style casino.

 Smith said there was no public support for a "wholesale ban" on paying for sex and the
 measures were aimed at cutting down on exploitation.

 Under the plan, curb crawlers who solicit sex on the streets could also be identified publicly, as
 they are in the London borough of Lambeth, where police send warning letters to the homes
 of drivers whose license plate numbers are caught on closed- circuit television picking up
 street walkers.

 Under current laws in England and Wales, it is illegal to loiter and sell sex on the streets or
 elsewhere in public. Keeping a brothel is unlawful, but a lone woman selling sex inside is not.
 Similarly, paying for sex is legal. But solicitation has largely been tolerated.

 Britain made headlines in 2006 when a man murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich, 70 miles
 (110 kilometers) northeast of London. Recent headlines, however, have focused on police
 raids on brothels where women from eastern Europe, Asia and Africa have been forced into
 the trade.

 There is growing debate on whether a crackdown would lessen violence or cut down on
 human trafficking.

 Scottish cities such as Edinburgh used to have "tolerance zones" where prostitutes were
 allowed to work freely.

 But when the zones were scrapped in several cities years ago and curb crawling was made
 illegal, reported attacks on sex workers increased because prostitutes were forced to work in
 more isolated areas, according to the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project, which represents
 workers in the sex industry.

 In the Pacific nation of New Zealand, where prostitution was decriminalized in 2003, sex
 workers said the change has given women greater legal protection.