A ban on pimping websites has been proposed by MPs, as part of measures designed to rewrite legislation regulating the sexual exploitation of women.
Campaigners say ordering a woman to be sexually exploited has become as straightforward as ordering a takeaway online, with the proliferation of websites that allow buyers to browse images and videos of women, and refine their search by postcode.
A group of 59 cross-party MPs have signed an amendment to the crime and policing bill, to be debated on Wednesday, which would make it a criminal offence to “enable or profit from the prostitution of another person, including by operating a website hosting adverts for prostitution”.
The all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation has published research saying that the ease and speed with which pimps and traffickers can now advertise their victims to potential customers has “turbo-charged the sex trafficking trade”.
The committee has warned that regulation of the sex trade has not kept pace with technological developments. It said browsing commercial websites has replaced picking women up on street corners or consulting phone box advertisements.
A report from the Home Affairs Committee concluded in 2023 that “websites advertising prostitution significantly facilitate trafficking for sexual exploitation”. The Home Office has acknowledged that these websites “are the most significant enabler of sexual exploitation linked to trafficking”.
Three amendments tabled by the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi together set out a new approach to regulation of commercial sexual exploitation, and also propose making it an offence to pay for sex and the decriminalisation of victims of commercial exploitation.
In a Commons speech last week, Labour’s Tracy Gilbert read out reviews of women posted on pimping websites by men who pay for sex. “No smile, her atrocious English made the interactions even more impossible,” one reviewer stated. “This was a very sub-standard service from someone who is not interested in providing customer satisfaction,” another review stated.
“Men who buy sex review women as if they are reviewing an Xbox game,” Gilbert stated, adding that the quoted feedback represented just a handful of the approximately 28,000 reviews left on one sex buyers’ website.
Kat Banyard, senior programme manager at UK Feminista, said the amendments, each of which had been backed by more than 50 MPs, represented the biggest show of support for legal reform on this issue in a generation.
“The commercial sexual exploitation of women is taking place on an industrial scale in the UK, and successive governments have failed to confront it. Websites hosting prostitution adverts operate openly and freely, functioning as massive online brothels, and the men who order women from these sites and pay to exploit them enjoy impunity.
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“Meanwhile, women exploited through the sex trade can themselves face criminal sanctions for soliciting. Our laws on sexual exploitation are unjust and, fundamentally, totally ineffective at preventing it.”
She said the proposed reforms “would finally shift the burden of criminality off victims of sexual exploitation and on to those who perpetrate and profit from it”.
Banyard said: “Jurisdictions that have already adopted this approach, including France, Ireland, Norway and Sweden, show demand can be reduced, traffickers can be deterred and attitudes towards sexual exploitation can be transformed.”