Sex Trafficking: Scotland
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of sex trafficking in Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am proud to support a Labour Government who are committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade. However, I am always going to push for more action to be taken to end the commercial sexual exploitation that takes place every day on our streets and online.
I have raised the need for the Government and police to shut down websites that are advertising prostitution before. Why? Because there has long existed extensive evidence that online mega brothels are facilitating industrial-scale sex trafficking and sexual exploitation across the UK. Websites advertising prostitution, more accurately referred to as pimping websites, are commercial platforms dedicated solely or partly to advertising individuals for prostitution. In 2017, an inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation exposed the crucial role they play in the business model of sex trafficking to meet men’s demands for prostitution.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
I wonder if my hon. Friend shares my frustration that the Scottish Government voted down Ash Regan’s unbuyable Bill, which would have outlawed paying for sex and decriminalised victims of sexual exploitation in Scotland, despite the Scottish Government saying that they supported the Bill’s principle.
Tracy Gilbert
I pay tribute to Ash Regan for her work and for bringing forward the unbuyable Bill. Women are not to be bought and paid for, and buying sex is not consent. The Scottish Government’s reasons for voting down the Bill were poor, and in their debate in the Scottish Parliament in February, the Minister said they had
“instructed officials to start work immediately on the establishment of a commission so that options are available for the responsible minister in the next Government.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 3 February 2026; c. 55.]
I urge that that work be undertaken as soon as the election has taken place.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this forward. This is never an easy subject to talk about, but she always illustrates things well. We have to talk about these important issues and find a way forward. Does she agree that the shocking reports into sex trafficking would break even the hardest of hearts, including mine and many of ours? Does she agree that we must give local authorities throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland the ability and, importantly, the resources to break these rings and prosecute the perpetrators, while supporting the victims, whose futures unfortunately look incredibly bleak?
Tracy Gilbert
I wholly agree. In my Edinburgh North and Leith constituency, our local councils want to tackle some of these issues, which is very hard to do without funds. They also want to support and provide services for women who are trying to exit prostitution. I wholeheartedly agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman makes.
Since the 2017 inquiry, past and present members of the APPG, along with organisations such as UK Feminista, have consistently and repeatedly called for these platforms to be closed down. Yet, time and again over the years, the response from the Government, the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council has been the same: pimping websites, which they have referred to as “adult service websites”, are legal and we should continue to allow them to operate.
The Government and police have even engaged in public partnerships with these massive prostitution businesses. Freedom of information requests conducted as part of research by Kat Banyard at the University of Durham revealed that Vivastreet has been delivering training sessions to police officers. The same pimping website enjoyed what they billed as “quarterly catch-ups” with Home Office officials. The FOIs show that the Home Office gave pimping website regulators regular access to Government officials and privileged opportunities to input into policy.
To give an idea of the closeness of the relationship, after Vivastreet gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in 2023 as part of the Committee’s inquiry into human trafficking, a Home Office official reached out to it by email to say,
“the Committee did not give you an easy time – which hopefully didn’t come as too much of a surprise to you, but nonetheless it’s never a nice feeling – so I do hope that you were ok afterwards.”
I strongly support the Home Affairs Committee findings that collaboration between the Home Office, the National Crime Agency and pimping websites was
“inexplicable, particularly given the total absence of evidence that it has led to a reduction in the scale of trafficking facilitated by these websites”.
Since the inquiry, I am pleased that that collaboration with Government seems to have stopped. I am firmly of the view that Government and the police should not be collaborating with pimping websites. We should be banning those websites and using the full force of the law against them—that is the only way to keep women and girls safe.
Scotland’s law on human trafficking is different from the law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I will explain how pimping websites including Vivastreet and AdultWork constitute human trafficking operations under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act (Scotland) 2015.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that while websites advertising prostitution such as Vivastreet and AdultWork constitute human trafficking operations in and of themselves in Scotland, the National Crime Agency should also be investigating these sites for facilitating organised crime in England and Wales? These websites allow single individuals to pay for multiple prostitution adverts—a practice that a KC told the Home Affairs Committee is evidence of controlling prostitution for gain, which is a criminal offence.
Tracy Gilbert
I wholeheartedly agree. A recent report found that commercial sexual exploitation is so linked with organised crime that it could not be further underground. All of that is linked to violence against women and girls, and our Government are working hard to challenge and solve that over the coming years.
We should be in no doubt as to the gravity of the implications: pimping websites are the largest human trafficking operation in modern UK history. Police Scotland should launch an immediate criminal investigation into the individuals running pimping websites in Scotland for human trafficking—an offence that carries a maximum life sentence. Under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act, an exploiter must fulfil three key criteria for their activities to constitute human trafficking. First, they have to “take a relevant action”. Secondly, they have to take that action
“with a view to another person being exploited.”
Thirdly, they must intend
“to exploit the other person”
or
“know or ought to know the person is likely to be exploited.”
The individuals operating and profiting from pimping websites tick every box. I will consider each criterion in turn.
First, taking a “relevant action.” The relevant actions in the Act include
“the transportation or transfer of another person”
or “the arrangement or facilitation” of it. Pimping websites openly and explicitly facilitate the transportation or transfer of individuals for prostitution. The operators of these platforms publish prostitution adverts in a standardised format, which includes specifying whether the individual being advertised will do outcalls. Vivastreet helpfully clarifies on its website in a blog targeted at individuals being prostituted that
“An outcall is where you go to the client’s location”.
In a separate blog aimed at sex buyers, it says:
“If it’s an outcall, they will also have to factor in travel and finding the meeting space.”
Vivastreet also advise those advertising on its website:
“Don’t forget to set your incall and outcall - as well as overnight fees.”
AdultWork, meanwhile, provides a function on its website explicitly facilitating what it calls “escort tours”. Sex buyers were advised to use that page to locate members offering escort services “on tour”:
“Specify your preferences and location below to see who will be visiting your area.”
Prostitution adverts published by Vivastreet and AdultWork specify whether the individual advertiser will travel to the sex buyer. Crucially, website visitors are also able to filter adverts according to whether those individuals will provide outcalls—that is, travel for prostitution—using a sorting function designed and provided by the website. That is crystal-clear facilitation of
“transportation or transfer of another person”
for prostitution. Facilitating the transportation of individuals for prostitution is built into the architecture of AdultWork and Vivastreet.
The second element of the human trafficking offence in Scotland is that the relevant action is taken
“with a view to another person being exploited”.
The crucial issue is of course what constitutes exploitation. Under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act, exploitation includes exercising
“control, direction or influence over prostitution by the person in a way which shows that the other person is aiding, abetting or compelling the prostitution.”
Pimping websites openly and explicitly aid prostitution. In 2023, a representative of Vivastreet told the Home Affairs Committee that most of its profits came from sex-trade adverts. The standardised prostitute adverts that pimping websites publish contain a long list of sex acts, with the advertiser having to indicate which acts the person advertising will perform. The adverts also feature sexualised or sexually explicit images of the person advertised, prices and a contact phone number. AdultWork and Vivastreet have not even attempted to hide the fact that they aid prostitution, presumably because—at least until now—they have assumed that they do not need to.
As far back as 2017, a judge sentencing a sex-trafficking gang that advertised victims on Vivastreet observed:
“No one, including those who make a profit from Vivastreet, could have been left in any doubt prostitution services were being offered.”
The adverts on pimping websites are not incidental to the prostitution that takes place. After sex buyers view the ads, they call the phone numbers contained in them and make arrangements for the women to travel. The adverts are indispensable to the resulting prostitution, and they are how buyers and advertisers connect and communicate.
I turn finally to the third criterion: for an activity to constitute human trafficking in Scotland, the pimping website must intend
“to exploit the other person”.
That is, they must intend to aid prostitution or know, or ought to know, that the person is likely to be exploited
“during or after the relevant action”.
As is abundantly clear from the activities that I have described, Vivastreet and AdultWork are not unwitting or accidental hosts of hundreds of thousands of prostitute adverts every day. Their knowledge and intent to aid prostitution are immediately obvious to anyone who visits their sites. Every prostitution advert is displayed in an identical format, because the website operators designed it that way, complete with a predetermined list of sex acts. The operators have intentionally designed the website to enable visitors to filter prostitution adverts according to whether the advertised individuals will do outcalls—that is, travel for the purpose of prostitution.
AdultWork, for example, provides a function that enables sex buyers to contact advertisers directly through the website’s internal messaging function. The website states:
“AdultWork.com has booking forms for escort meetings that use the prices you’ve set”.
Again, that is crystal-clear intent to aid prostitution. Pimping websites operating in Scotland constitute human trafficking operations in and of themselves. That is even before we have considered the industrial-scale trafficking by third parties advertising their victims on those platforms. It is a national scandal that the individuals operating AdultWork and Vivastreet have been allowed to operate for years with total impunity, and yet they have also been presented by Government and the National Crime Agency as partners in tackling sex trafficking.
Tonia Antoniazzi
Does my hon. Friend share my alarm at the findings of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into human trafficking in 2023, which found that the partnership working between the National Crime Agency, the Home Office and websites advertising prostitution was
“inexplicable, particularly given the total absence of evidence that it has led to a reduction in the scale of trafficking facilitated by these websites—and the flagrant facilitation of trafficking enabled by, for instance, single individuals being allowed to advertise multiple women for prostitution.”
This is abhorrent, and I want to know what my hon. Friend thinks.
Tracy Gilbert
I agree. While the reports have been very interesting, I fail to understand why that collaboration was ever allowed to take place. It would seem from all the evidence that collaborating with those pimping websites has not saved one woman from domestic abuse or the violence they have faced. So I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s point.
As the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh North and Leith—a constituency in which AdultWork and Vivastreet aid prostitution—I have a duty to speak out. Today alone, there are 123 women being advertised for prostitution in Edinburgh on Vivastreet, and 132 women on AdultWork. Across Scotland, the total numbers are 776 and 816—that is in a single day.
I have reported this crime today to the chief constable of Police Scotland. As I have outlined here and detailed in writing, there is substantial evidence in the public domain that individuals operating pimping websites are perpetrating human trafficking in Scotland on an unprecedented scale, and that that has been the case since the introduction of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015. I am also aware that the charitable organisation UK Feminista has contacted Police Scotland on this matter. I believe that the seriousness and scale of these activities warrants an immediate criminal investigation.
Finally, my ask to Ministers in Westminster is this: shut down pimping websites now. They are directly perpetrating human trafficking in Scotland and across the UK and are facilitating industrial-scale sex trafficking. If the law as it stands allows them to operate in England and Wales, we should change it. These websites are crime scenes. Shut them down now, hold their operators accountable and, most importantly, let their victims finally access justice.
Government Assistant Whip (Gregor Poynton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) for securing this debate. The depth of her knowledge and the passion with which she spoke was obvious to all of us and has been obvious since the first day that she arrived in this place. I know that she will continue to advocate and campaign on these really important issues. I am deeply grateful to everyone who continues to advocate and campaign for action to tackle sexual exploitation, for better support for victims and survivors to recover, and for perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Before I respond to some specific points, it is worth outlining some key facts about this area. First, sexual exploitation can take different forms, which often overlap. For too long, women and vulnerable people have been trapped within sexual exploitation under the guise of prostitution. The daily abuse they suffer is truly horrific, and that people are profiting from this exploitation is sickening. Any individual who wants to leave prostitution or has been sexually exploited must be given opportunities to find routes out and recover.
To tackle a problem, we must first understand its prevalence. The nature of prostitution makes it difficult to accurately estimate the numbers in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales. In 2019, the Home Office published research by the University of Bristol, which found that it is not possible to produce a single estimate for the numbers of people engaged in prostitution in England and Wales. However, it assessed a number of existing estimates made over the preceding 25 years, which ranged from 35,882 to 104,964 people in prostitution—a truly terrible number.
We know that potential victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation make up a large proportion of referrals to the national referral mechanism—the framework for identifying and referring potential victims of modern slavery to appropriate support. The most recent statistics show that in 2025 across the UK, sexual exploitation accounted for 3,607, or 15% of all referrals. Of those who were sexually exploited, the majority—80%—were female. In Scotland in 2025, there were 144 referrals to the national referral mechanism where sexual exploitation was reported as at least one exploitation type, compared with 135 in 2024.
Of course, prostitution and human trafficking offences are complex and multifaceted crimes often linked to other offending, and people are often victims of multiple abuses. The legislation regarding prostitution and human trafficking is largely devolved in Scotland. That is why the UK Government work closely with counterparts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as with law enforcement partners across the UK. The UK Government are aware that, in March, the Scottish Government established an independent commission to explore how to safely and effectively criminalise the purchase of sex. We will follow the progress of that commission closely as we undertake our own review of prostitution laws in Wales in England—a commitment in our violence against women and girls strategy that remains firm and steadfast.
We must go further to prevent sexual exploitation by supporting law enforcement to identify and prosecute offenders and disrupt sexual exploitation facilitated by online platforms. To address the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and covered my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, under the previous Government, officials met organisations that provide adult service websites. However, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, under this Government, officials and Ministers have not met with those online service providers.
My hon. Friend covered adult service websites in great depth. As Members are aware, the online space is a significant enabler of sexual exploitation, and our response must reflect that. We must also acknowledge that individuals selling sex have increasingly turned to technology to try to manage their safety, as the University of Bristol found in its research on prostitution in England and Wales. It is important that we try to understand the unintended consequences for the safety of those in prostitution of removing an option that helps them to manage their safety. However, online platforms must be responsible and held accountable for the content on their websites, including platforms taking proactive steps to prevent their sites from being used by criminals.
We are implementing the Online Safety Act 2023, which sets out priority offences including sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Online platforms now have a duty to assess the risk of illegal harms on their services. As of 17 March 2025, online platforms need to take safety measures to protect users from illegal content, such as those set out in Ofcom’s code of practice, or face significant penalties. Ofcom has already started to investigate adult sexual websites for matters such as non-compliance with the Online Safety Act’s risk assessment duties or not adopting highly effective age assurance measures. In addition, our law enforcement partners are working closely with Ofcom specifically on the issue of adult services websites to help ensure that the right measures are being put in place to identify and remove illegal content and safeguard people from sexual exploitation.
Furthermore, in 2025 the Home Office provided £450,000 to the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for prostitution in England and Wales to pilot a national intelligence hub using information from adult services websites. During the pilot phase, the hub identified serial and serious offenders previously unknown or partially known to the police, leading to four arrests, safeguarding actions and other risk mitigations.
The UK Government are further supporting law enforcement to tackle the drivers of online trafficking for sexual exploitation through operational activity aimed at tackling modern slavery threats and targeting prolific offenders. The UK Government will continue to keep policies to tackle online enablers of sexual exploitation under review. We want to ensure that online companies fulfil their duties to eradicate exploitation from their sites, and we will take further action to achieve that if necessary.
I turn to the broader picture of disrupting trafficking for sexual exploitation, which was covered in my hon. Friend’s speech. Tackling the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation is important because it is a truly horrific crime. We are determined to safeguard victims and bring the ruthless perpetrators of this crime to justice. Although policing is devolved in Scotland, this means we must ensure that police across the UK are relentlessly pursuing those perpetrators who pose the greatest risk to women and girls, and other vulnerable people, and that we are using all the tools at our disposal to protect victims and get dangerous perpetrators off the streets.
We have been working closely with law enforcement to ensure that they have the necessary tools and training to tackle exploitation. For example, the Home Office-funded modern slavery and organised immigration crime programme, delivered by the National Police Chiefs’ Council leads, has developed a new framework for investigating modern slavery, including a suite of products to guide forces in identifying and tackling sexual exploitation. This provides a nationally consistent investigative framework that will help to sustain progress and support forces in delivering a strong, evidence-based response to modern slavery. It will further equip officers with practical tools for navigating modern slavery crimes and fill critical gaps in frontline knowledge to drive performance and support greater accountability.
We know that human trafficking often crosses borders and takes many forms, including sexual exploitation. That is why we are also working closely with international partners to disrupt those networks. We have agreed bilateral frameworks with key partner countries to strengthen co-operation, prevent exploitation and support victims. For example, the Home Office has agreed joint action plans with Romania and Vietnam, committing us to closer law enforcement co-operation, the disruption of trafficking networks and improved support for victims, including some returning to their own countries.
I will wrap up by again thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for securing the debate and all those who have spoken, including my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), my hon. Friend the Member for Gower and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). For too long, women and vulnerable people have been trapped within sexual exploitation under the guise of prostitution. This Government will not stand for it. These are complex and challenging issues, but we must be unrelenting in seeking to address them. The most vulnerable in our society demand this of us.
Question put and agreed to.