Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of people who are victims of (a) controlling prostitution for gain, (b) causing or inciting prostitution for gain and (c) trafficking for sexual exploitation advertised for prostitution on adult services websites in Hull North.

The Government keeps legislation under review to ensure it keeps pace with the evolving threat of crime.

Section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 is a strict liability offence. That means that, for the police to charge a case they need evidence that the suspect had paid for sexual services from an individual, and that that individual was subjected to force or control by another. They do not need to prove criminal intent. The penalty for a Section 53A offence is a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (up to £1,000). In gathering evidence of a Section 53A offence, the police will prioritise actions that may lead to charges for more serious offences, such as modern slavery or causing or inciting or controlling prostitution for gain. The penalty for modern slavery is up to life imprisonment and for the latter offence up to 7 years’ imprisonment.

The Home Office publishes police recorded crime data for the exploitation of prostitution offences (sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003) and modern slavery offences, but information about the facilitation of those crimes is not held centrally. Data is not available at the requested geographical level, however data by police force area can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables.

The Online Safety Act 2023 will place a duty on adult service websites to proactively identify and remove content linked to criminal activity and a duty to prevent illegal content relating to sexual exploitation appearing on their sites. Companies will need to adopt systems and processes to identify, assess and address sexual exploitation and human trafficking activity based on a risk assessment.

Law enforcement is also running an adult service website referral pilot where adverts are referred to the Tackling Organised Exploitation capability (housed in Regional Organised Crime Units) to gather intelligence and identify organised criminal activity.