Call for curbs on lap dancing clubs

Get-tough measures to clamp down on lap dancers are proposed

A dossier of evidence which revealed the "exploitation" of women at lap dancing clubs has led to renewed calls for a crackdown.

The study, commissioned by Glasgow City Council, has prompted fresh calls for clubs to be licensed as sex shops.

Councillors have also called for VIP suites in the clubs to be banned.

Compulsory closed circuit TV is also suggested. The moves, though, will not apply to two clubs which are applying for licences later this week.

The council said the £7,000 report provides local authorities with the ammunition to class lap dancing clubs as being part of the sex industry, rather than the leisure industry as their owners argue.

The study said dancers are humiliated and that employment legislation, and licensing conditions, are regularly breached.

The probe found that dancers are sometimes ordered "to dress like sluts" and that many are in debt, increasing the pressure on them to be sexually available.

In the three clubs in Glasgow where there is a blatant no touching rule, this was not being adhered to Julie Bindel Lap dancing club researcher

One club, the report said, had a room where dancers were regularly left with customers unsupervised, and there was a bowl of condoms on a table.

Council deputy leader Jim Coleman said: "It exposes the myths of up-market harmless fun provided to lonely businessmen, the perception of well run, luxurious gentlemen's clubs and dancers making loads of money.

"What we see in the findings of this report is women being exploited in a number of ways: sexually, financially and through very poor employment conditions."

He added: "This council has taken a stand against the proliferation of such venues in the belief that they exploit and demean women and hamper our bid to promote gender equality.

"Under the current legislation lap dancing is seen in the same light as karaoke, live music and discotheque. This can't be right."

Researcher Julie Bindel, of London Metropolitan University's Child and Woman Abuse Unit, argued that women were exploited.

'Gyrating'

"This is a sexual service. Women in the commercial sex industry are not there through choice," she said.

"The myth of these women making £300 per night, earning an extremely good living, going off to be actors or cabaret dancers or scientists is absolutely ridiculous. Very few of them appear to be students, even though a lot of them told me they were studying.

"The clubs encourage a veneer that the women are respectable, between jobs, just earning a lot of money in a glamorous job before they go on to be rocket scientists."

Ms Bindel added: "In the three clubs in Glasgow where there is a blatant no touching rule, this was not being adhered to. The women during the private dances were gyrating against the men in a very sexual way and certainly there was physical contact going on.

"Conventionally unattractive older men who may well feel their chances of ever seeking a relationship with a very attractive woman can go into these clubs and for the price of a dance he will have her at the end of the evening."

Glasgow has four lap dancing clubs - Diamond Dolls, Legs 'n' Co, The Truffle Club and Seventh Heaven.

A spokesman for Seventh Heaven said: "We have a really strict policy at Seventh Heaven, even if a girl is seen swapping phone numbers with a customer she is dismissed and he is asked to leave.

The prostitution angle is an easy one to pick up on but it's ridiculous, it really is a world apart from that Steve Campbell Promoter at Diamond Dolls

"Nothing like that goes on here, if it were to happen the girls would be the first ones to tell us and it is something we would come down hard on."

He said the club was already covered by CCTV cameras "both for the girls safety and because we don't want anyone to break the rules - customers or the girls".

Steve Campbell, promoter at Diamond Dolls, also denied that sex was for sale at that club.

He said: "We have not seen the full report yet but what we have heard we don't agree with.

"The prostitution angle is an easy one to pick up on but it's ridiculous, it really is a world apart from that."

No-one was available for comment at the other two clubs.

The council is objecting to this week's two applications for clubs but the report cannot be taken into account because it did not form part of the original objection.

Edinburgh City Council has already asked Holyrood ministers to grant licensing boards greater powers to control pubs and clubs where lap-dancing takes place.