Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times (a) Ministers and (b) officials from her Department have met representatives of Vivastreet (i) online and (ii) in person since 4 July 2024.

Sexual exploitation is a truly horrific crime. This Government has committed to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and we use all our levers to deliver this.

The advertising of sexual services has increasingly moved online, and we know that adult service websites are now the most significant enabler of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Online platforms need to be responsible and accountable for content on their sites and take proactive steps to prevent their sites being used by criminals. The Online Safety Act 2023 sets out priority offences, including sexual exploitation and human trafficking offences, and companies will need to adopt measures and put in place systems and processes to identify, assess and address these offences based on a risk assessment.

We must ensure law enforcement use every tool to pursue perpetrators and that victims are supported to recover from this horrendous abuse. The Government is working closely with policing and others to help tackle the drivers, including through operational intensifications to target perpetrators.

Prostitution more broadly is an extremely complex issue and there are a wide range of potential approaches. We are committed to making our streets safer by tackling the harm and exploitation which can be associated with it and ensuring that people who want to leave are given every opportunity to find routes out.

Home Office Ministers and officials have not had any meetings with Vivastreet since the General Election on 4^th July 2024. There are no plans to publish minutes or other written records of previous meetings with Vivastreet as these meetings were informal in nature and no minutes or records were taken.

This government will ensure adult sexual exploitation is part of our VAWG.