Recently I was at a road junction close to Middlesbrough Town Hall at 4pm when a young woman carrying Sainsbury's carrier bags full of shopping approached the car.

I wound down the window and she asked: "Do you want some business?"

"What business?", I asked.

"Sexual business," she replied.

It was only then that it dawned on me I had been approached by a prostitute.

She told me she was 25 and I asked her: "Who do I look like?". She recognised who I was and I said: "You don't need to do this" and she scurried off.

This episode illustrates why you will never eradicate prostitution. Soliciting and kerb crawling can happen at any time and at any place. However, that doesn't mean you simply give up the fight and surrender

Police officers who suggest you should legalise prostitution because you will never eradicate it should find another job. Following their logic, you might as well legalise litter dropping, shoplifting and murder because you will never eradicate those crimes either.

And politicians and others who suggest you should legalise prostitution should ask themselves whether they would be happy for their sons and daughters to take up the profession.

If it isn't right for their children then it shouldn't be acceptable for anyone's children.

People should not be accosted by kerb crawlers and prostitutes on their doorsteps or have to put up with seeing their communities shattered by the drugs and violence it attracts.

You might not be able to eradicate prostitution but police and community wardens can ensure residential areas do not become red light zones.

That's why I welcome the reports suggesting the Government is set to adopt a hardline approach on prostitution. Rather than allow tolerance zones they are said to be adopting a zero tolerance attitude.

In many towns and cities the powers that be simply ignore the problem. In Middlesbrough we set out to confront it by prosecuting kerb crawlers and pushing for hard penalties from the courts.

As a result, the town is now responsible for one quarter of all convictions for kerb crawling nationally. This sometimes leads to the town wrongly being classed as the place to go for prostitutes in the North.

In fact the opposite is true. If you kerb crawl in Middlesbrough you are probably more likely to be caught than anywhere else.

But that is only half the story.

Through the police, community wardens and the courts we can provide effective deterrent and punishment. But it is vital that society accepts that once prostitutes and their customers have been caught and punished, we need to encourage rehabilitation and diversion.

If you don't do this you will simply continue in a never-ending cycle of locking them up, releasing them and then locking them up again.

That's why I applaud the work of Wendy Shepherd and her Barnardos team who do so much on Teesside to try and persuade prostitutes to change their lives.

The Government is clearly serious about tackling the problem. But it must adopt a twin track approach which not only makes life very difficult for prostitutes and kerb crawlers, but offers them a chance to make a new life for themselves.

Published: 30/12/2005