Lap-dancing: clampdown on expenses claims

The war against lap-dancing clubs in Britain is hotting up. The Equalities Minister Harriet Harman has said that businesses should no longer be allowed to reclaim Vat on the cost of using the clubs for corporate 'motivation' and team-building. Why, she asked, should the taxpayer be expected to fund such activity when it clearly excludes women?

Neither should companies that use lap-dancing clubs for entertaining clients be allowed to offset the expense against their corporate tax bill.

Harman told the Times that the Treasury would issue guidance on the matter shortly. "You can't get tax relief for childcare, which is necessary for you to go to work," she said. "Why should you be able to get tax relief for a night out at a lap-dancing club where effectively you are discriminating against women employees in doing so?"

Harman was reacting to a wave of complaints from women's pressure groups and individual female employees upset by the growing culture of 'business' visits to lap-dancing establishments in Britain - which now number more than 300 according to the Fawcett Society.

Although a change in the law means they no longer count as part of the leisure industry and have to be re-licensed as sexual-encounter establishments, they have become part of the business entertainment landscape. For example, a recent report by the Fawcett Society found that 86 per cent of lap-dancing clubs in London were happy to provide 'discreet receipts' for expenses claims.

Kat Banyard, who wrote the report, described the sex industry as "a major threat to women's equality at work" and blamed employers for failing to halt the trend. ·