Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Demand

Tracy Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling demand for prostitution and sex trafficking.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. There is a group of people who do not get talked about enough in Parliament. In fact, they are rarely mentioned in public at all. We seldom hear from them directly, and we rarely knowingly encounter them on our screens or in person. It is almost as if they are invisible. I suspect that that is how they would like to remain, because if we heard what they said and saw what they did, we would want to stop them. This group of people is men who pay for sex.

Sex buyers rely on being unseen while they ruin lives, leaving us as a society and the individual women to pick up the pieces of the carnage they cause. The demand from men who pay for sex fuels a brutal prostitution and sex trafficking trade. It funds predatory websites that make millions of pounds advertising women for sexual exploitation every day and causes untold trauma to some of society’s most vulnerable women while undermining equality for all women.

This debate is an opportunity to bring the demand for sex and sex trafficking out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Who are the men who create this demand? To answer that, I will read their own words, written on a website on which men anonymously rate and review women who they have paid for sex:

“No smile, her atrocious English made the interactions even more impossible.”

“I asked for OW”

—oral without a condom—

“which she did reluctantly...This was a very sub-standard service from someone who is not interested in providing customer satisfaction.”

“She basically just laid back, shut her eyes and let me get on with it. She made no noises. I put up with about 5 minutes of her lying there-like a side of beef before sitting up.”

“Bad attitude. Everything was off limits.”

“Finally, I got her to lay there, but it’s like shagging a dead fish.”

I am sure we can all agree that those remarks are sickening. Men who buy sex review women as if they are reviewing an Xbox game. Those comments prove that men who pay for sex treat women as subordinate sex objects whose role is to service their sexual desires, and they represent just a handful of the approximately 28,000 reviews left on one sex buyers website.

Researcher Alessia Tranchese found that the most misogynistic reviews were posted about women disrupting buyers’ fantasies, such as failing to adequately pretend that they wanted to have sex with these men. Negative reviews of women were used as a tool to control their behaviour—publicly punishing resistance while rewarding compliance with their sexual demands. Sex buyers may delude themselves into thinking that paying money absolves them of responsibility for subjecting vulnerable women to unwanted sex, but the opposite is true. It is not possible to commodify sexual consent; the money is coercion. As the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls states:

“prostitution is intrinsically linked to different forms of violence against women and girls and constitutes a form of violence in and of itself.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward. It is a hard subject to speak about and it is incredibly hard to listen to—not because of the hon. Lady, but because the subject content is so graphic. I know that the hon. Lady is aware of the Northern Ireland legislation, but does she agree that there is a need to make profiting from the prostitution of others illegal with criminal repercussions? The Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 does this. Will she join me in calling for UK-wide legislation to protect vulnerable men and women from the exploitative sex industry? I know that the Minister is always keen to answer, and she does well.

[Tracy Gilbert]

I will come to that later, and yes, I do agree with those comments.

The most recent research into the scale of paying for sex found that 3.6% of men in the UK report having paid for sex in the previous five years. Men who are most likely to have paid for sex are single, aged from 25 to 34, in managerial or professional occupations, and report high numbers of sexual partners. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, it was revealed last month that multiple members of the Scottish Parliament have paid for sex. We can only predict that Members or former Members of this House have too.

Demand is not inevitable, and the law plays a pivotal role in whether this minority of men choose to pay for sex. In one UK study, researchers asked over 1,200 sex buyers whether they would change their behaviour if a law was introduced that made paying for sex a crime. Over half said that they would definitely, probably or possibly change their behaviour. While sex buyers are driven by male sexual entitlement, ultimately, they do it because they can. The law is not just failing to stop these men; it is making it easy. Not only is paying for sex legal in England, Wales and Scotland, so are the pimping websites advertising thousands of women each day for sex buyers to choose from.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward this debate. Does she agree that pimping websites are facilitating sex trafficking of women, making it easier for traffickers and organised crime groups to profit from the dehumanising, violence, exploitation and trade of vulnerable women?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracy Gilbert]

These websites function as massive online brothels. They are the go-to place for traffickers to advertise their victims. I have said it before and I will say it again: pimping websites are making it as easy to order a room and to sexually exploit as it is to order a takeaway.

I want to talk about the women who face the devastating consequences of prostitution and sex trafficking for the rest of their lives. In a 2016 inquiry, the Home Affairs Committee found that a number of prostitutes were in a vulnerable position. Evidence from St Mungo’s showed that one in four women living in its housing services was a current or former prostitute. Its evidence also showed that, of its residents who had experienced rough sleeping, one in three was a current or former prostitute. In 2022, Beyond the Streets published a report by Grayce Collis and Dr Katie Thorlby that found that 78% of women actively seeking support to leave prostitution needed support with their mental health, while 71% needed support with their relationships with friends and family, which are often broken, and 63% needed support to access employment and education. Tragically, a database managed by National Ugly Mugs recorded 180 murders of prostitutes across the UK between 1990 and 2016. Evidence from Agenda to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry stated that

“Women in prostitution are 18 times more likely to be murdered than the general female population.”

Behind those statistics are vulnerable women, who all too often feel there is no escape from the exploitation they face. Fiona Broadfoot told Sky News in 2018 that she was physically abused and exploited by her pimp from the age of 15. She detailed how she was introduced into prostitution within two weeks of first meeting him. She was arrested; her pimp was not. Her criminal convictions have followed her out of prostitution, resulting in employment and education opportunities being snatched from her.

Operation Fasthold, a joint operation between Police Scotland and the Home Office, showed that women are trafficked into the UK to meet this demand. In that case, it was mainly women from east Asia, uprooted and coerced into prostitution, afterwards finding themselves at the mercy of our asylum process, stuck in low-paid work or at the hands of another criminal gang. In Edinburgh, over this weekend, 142 women were advertised for prostitution on one website alone. Five of the top 10 adverts are explicitly posted by so-called agencies, so the site does not even try to hide the organised nature of this exploitation.

The devastation and exploitation of women continues, and something has to change. The law must deter demand for prostitution and sex trafficking, and reflect the reality that prostitution is violence against women by holding perpetrators and profiteers to account and, crucially, by supporting victims. A growing number of countries and states have adopted this approach: outlawing paying for sex and profiteering from the prostitution of others, while decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation and providing support and exit services. Those countries include France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. Their experiences show that demand for sex buyers and the trafficking of women to meet that demand can and must be deterred.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this crucial debate to Westminster Hall today. I wonder whether she has noticed the private Members’ Bill tabled by Ash Regan of the Scottish Parliament, which looks to do exactly what she has described by decriminalising the sale of sex. Would she like to congratulate Ash Regan and wish her luck with her Bill?

[Tracy Gilbert]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I will come back to that point later in my speech.

Sweden was the first country to criminalise paying for sex while decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation. The more than two decades since the introduction of its 1999 Sex Purchase Act have provided evidence of its effectiveness. Since that pioneering Act was introduced, demand has dropped significantly, public attitudes have been transformed and traffickers are being deterred. An analysis by the European Commission concluded that the Act, coupled with proactive policing,

“has created a less conducive context for trafficking.”

In Ireland, an evaluation by researchers at University College Dublin reported that, under the country’s demand-reduction legislation, there was

“an increased willingness amongst women”

in prostitution

“to report crimes committed against them and in their improved relationship with Gardaí overall.”

In France, there is strong public support for the demand-reduction laws, which is significant given the importance of changing public attitudes and deterring sex buying. An Ipsos survey found that 78% of the French public support the legislation on prostitution, and 74% think that prostitution is violence.

Demand for prostitution and trafficking is not inevitable, and the law has a critical role to play in deterring it. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride and Strathaven (Joani Reid) mentioned, I welcome the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill, introduced to the Scottish Parliament by Ash Regan MSP, which looks to replicate the lessons learned from other European countries. I hope that all Members of Scottish Parliament will consider the legislation carefully and support it as it makes its way through Parliament. I am keen to hear from the Minister whether UK Government will be looking to bring forward similar legislation.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation and has tabled amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to outlaw pimping and paying for sex, and to decriminalise victims of sexual exploitation by removing sanctions for soliciting. I am proud to be among the more than 50 Members of Parliament who are signatories to those amendments. 

The proposed reforms are backed by survivors and best-practice frontline support services, such as the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance in Scotland, nia, Women@TheWell and Kairos, whose representatives I recently met and heard from. These vital amendments will help the Government to meet our manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls by reducing the demand for prostitution. I urge Ministers to accept the amendments, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s views on which amendments may be accepted.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I congratulate her on securing this debate, however short—we are all managing to squeeze little bits in. Does she agree that those who argue that outlawing pimping websites will just drive this all underground are absolutely wrong? Actually, the reverse is seen: prosecution rates go up, so the demand decreases.

[Tracy Gilbert]

I agree. One piece of misinformation surrounding the actions that I have proposed is that outlawing pimping websites would simply displace trafficking to the dark web, making no impact on the scale of sexual exploitation. That claim lacks both logic and evidence. Advertising victims of sex trafficking on the dark web carries multiple disadvantages and barriers for both traffickers and sex buyers. It requires technical expertise from the traffickers to post the adverts and from sex buyers to locate and access the adverts. Advertising on the dark web would substantially restrict the customer base that traffickers could access via their adverts, as well as making it harder to advertise victims in the first place.

A similar myth is that outlawing paying for sex would just drive prostitution underground, making it harder to identify victims and perpetrators, and have no impact on the scale of offending. There is a logical fallacy underlying that claim: men who pay for sex must be able to locate women to sexually exploit. Police officers’ support services can look at exactly the same adverts as sex buyers to locate victims and perpetrators. In short, if sex buyers can find the women being exploited, so can the police.

Perhaps the most destructive myth of all is that being paid to perform sex acts is work, making the men who pay women for sex ordinary consumers. We need to be absolutely clear as policymakers and as a Parliament that there is no such thing as sex work. Giving someone money, accommodation, food or other goods or services in exchange for a sex act is sexual exploitation and abuse. It is never acceptable, and our laws must reflect that.

I thank hon. Members for making the time to attend today’s debate. I hope that, together, we can start to end this exploitation of women. I conclude with the words of Mia de Faoite, a survivor of prostitution, who said that demand reduction legislation that criminalises sex buyers and decriminalises victims works because it puts sex buyers

“at risk of bringing what they do in the dark into who they are in the day.”