Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of Operation Clear, Hold, Build on sex workers’ safety.

The Home Office published an independent impact evaluation of Clear, Hold, Build in January 2025. The evaluation examined five police-recorded crime groupings: total police-recorded crime; anti-social behaviour-related crimes; violence; and acquisitive crime and drug offences. It also considered community perceptions, but did not specifically assess the impact of Clear, Hold, Build on the safety of sex workers.

As set out in the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy published on 18 December 2025, we have committed to ‘review the law on prostitution to ensure that it better protects women and girls’ and to ‘strengthen the law enforcement response to sexual exploitation’. Further details on next steps for this commitment will be announced in due course.