Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution

Joani Reid Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I will call Joani Reid to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the mover of the motion and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the mover of the motion to sum up afterwards.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of pornography prostitution on violence against women and girls.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I begin by thanking two organisations that have been hugely helpful in preparing for today’s debate: UK Feminista, which provides the secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, and the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation—CEASE—and particularly Gemma Kelly, its head of policy.

Let me set out from the beginning precisely what I mean by pornography prostitution. It is the fusion of the pornography industry and the sex trade into one system. It is the buying, selling and consumption of sexual access to women, livestreamed, or filmed and uploaded, and monetised as entertainment. It is seen by many as a new and booming industry. I disagree: it is commercialised abuse, repackaged and sold as entertainment. It is a form of violence against women and girls.

Nowhere is that clearer than on OnlyFans, a UK-based company that has now become the global giant of online sexual exploitation. Last year, it generated $6.6 billion in revenue. It markets itself as a harmless subscription platform but, in reality, it is the largest pimping empire in the world today. I want to focus on three areas where OnlyFans is enabling violence against women and girls.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First of all, I commend the hon. Lady on bringing this forward. I spoke to her beforehand to ensure that my thoughts are similar to hers. There is no doubt that online platforms such as OnlyFans pose a potential threat to how young people perceive sexual relations. Does the hon. Lady agree—the Minister is here to answer this, of course—that the law needs to be brought up to date to ensure that OnlyFans and all other online pornographic platforms, including adult services websites, put proper age and consent checks in place to protect young people from damaging content online?

[Joani Reid]

I agree. I think that age verification is hugely important in tackling children’s exposure to pornography. It is not just on those websites; it is found on mainstream websites as well, and I think that is something that we need to look at in the next regulations under the Online Safety Act 2023.

As I said, OnlyFans is the largest pimping empire in the world. It is a playground for child sexual abuse and exploitation. Harm and coercion are suffered by women who become so-called content creators, and there is a wider societal and cultural impact, particularly on children and young people.

I begin with the most damning evidence: OnlyFans claims to have a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse, yet Reuters has documented at least 30 criminal cases between 2019 and 2024 in the United States alone involving child sexual abuse material on the platform, including hundreds of videos and images, some depicting extreme abuse. In one horrific case, the graphic abuse of a 16-year-old girl was monetised for more than a year before it was taken down, and that was only after Reuters started asking questions. We should be under no illusion: OnlyFans is not a safe platform for consenting adults to express and enjoy themselves. As one survivor put it,

“A whole company has made money off of my biggest trauma”.

The truth is that all that is just the tip of the iceberg, because OnlyFans hides content behind millions of individual paywalls, and there is no meaningful way for independent investigators, charities, or even law enforcement to monitor the full scale of the abuse. That is not transparency; it is secrecy by design.

Ofcom fined OnlyFans for providing misleading information about age verification. While the company claims to set a global standard, the reality is stark. It has no meaningful age verification in the vast majority of the more than 100 countries in which it operates. How many of the 500,000 new users signing up every day are children? We do not know because OnlyFans will not say. OnlyFans likes to boast that every video is reviewed by a human moderator, but the figures just do not add up. Last month alone, 62 million pieces of content were uploaded. Independent experts have said that it would take tens of thousands of moderators to review it all, but OnlyFans employs just a few dozen staff. It outsources the rest to Poland and Ukraine, behind non-disclosure agreements, with no transparency. When the company tells us it has zero tolerance for abuse, we must ask: zero tolerance or zero credibility? The evidence suggests the latter. It is not a British success story; it is the British export of the abuse of children to the world.

The second reality is that OnlyFans is not the empowering feminist fairytale that its marketing suggests. It claims to give women financial freedom, but the facts tell another story: 73% of the profits go to the top 10% of creators, and the average woman makes just £4 a month. That is not liberation; it is a lottery in which a handful at the top get rich and millions of others are driven to push their boundaries further and further to survive. As one former content creator described it,

“I wasn’t there. I was doing things like a robot.”

Another said,

“When you’re making an OnlyFans, you are gambling…Betting that your clients are strangers who don’t cross into your real world.”

She said it was the worst thing that ever happened to her when she discovered that the man who had paid her over $10,000 over a two-year period for her explicit videos was not a stranger but her uncle.

Research by Talita, an organisation in Sweden that supports women out of prostitution, pornography and trafficking, found that almost all women drawn into online pornography had suffered childhood trauma: 96% reported abuse, 88% sexual abuse, and 79% physical abuse. Predators deliberately target vulnerability. Women do not wake up one day just wanting to make porn. As one survivor put it,

“At first I told myself, I’ll just sell a foot photo. And before you know it, you’re drawn in step by step.”

[Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)]

I must congratulate and thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. This debate should be difficult to listen to, but it still does not compare to the violent impact of pornography on women and girls. Does she agree that the upcoming violence against women and girls strategy should explicitly recognise and address prostitution and pornography as forms of commercial sexual exploitation?

[Joani Reid]

I completely agree. I hope—and this is a point that I am sure the Minister will respond to later in the debate—that there is a section within the strategy to address these issues. That could possibly be advanced as a result of collaboration between the Home Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

I was talking about the abuse that women who are involved in online pornography have suffered: 56% were physically assaulted as a result of their online pornography, and 65% raped. No other industry in Britain would be allowed to operate with those statistics. Meanwhile, OnlyFans executives pay themselves handsomely and its owner reportedly takes home £1.3 million a day. That is the price of women’s pain. But the harm extends well beyond women directly exploited. Its cultural impact is shaping the attitudes and behaviours of an entire generation.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does she agree that the normalisation of violent porn can mean that these horrors come out of the screen and into real life, particularly when defence counsels argue that consent was given to crimes of strangulation? Does she welcome, as I do, the Government’s steps to make strangulation an aggravating factor when sentencing for murder?

[Joani Reid]

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I am delighted that the Government have brought forward plans to ban strangulation in pornography, but there is a whole host of behaviours within pornography that we know affect real-life abuse.

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that, having created the ban on non-fatal strangulation in pornography, the Government now also need to ban depictions in pornography that encourage a sexual interest in children—so-called paedophilic-adjacent porn—as well as depictions of step-family incest?

[Joani Reid]

Let me take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she did with other members of the APPG to get the Government to make that commitment around strangulation. Yes, I think it should extend to those categories as well. We have to tackle pornography that normalises and glamourises child abuse. It is not niche; we know from the work that we have done and through the Bertin review that, on Pornhub, incest porn is a main category. It is absolutely repugnant and should be tackled through Government intervention.

The impact extends into the behaviours of children and young people: eight in 10 children have seen violent pornography by the age of 18. Increasingly, children’s first exposure to sex is not a healthy relationship but online abuse marketed as entertainment.

[Imogen Walker (Hamilton and Clyde Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Pornography is nothing new, but access to the kind of content she has described is something that previous generations did not have to deal with. The most responsible and vigilant parents are struggling to prevent access to it. Does she agree that we need action from the companies that promote and disseminate this type of material, in addition to the work of parents, and the important work that the Government are doing?

[Joani Reid]

We have recently seen a step forward in the age verification process but, as we know, parents cannot be omnipresent, particularly online. Companies such as Facebook, Meta and Instagram are allowing pornographic content to be pushed and used within algorithms, and it is completely unforgivable. Yes, I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

The academic Dr Elly Hanson talks about a parasitic ecosystem, which refers exactly to what my hon. Friend mentioned: OnlyFans feeds off mainstream social media platforms, where sexualised clips are pushed to children by algorithms, which pushes them on to their sites. Teenagers are bombarded with adverts and the grooming is blatant. Children have reported seeing OnlyFans content creators appearing alongside exam revision ads on their feed, the content of which was so graphic when I looked at it in preparation for this debate that I cannot bring myself to quote it. Children are being pushed this content, and it is being normalised. It is not a bug in the system; it is the business model. One child said,

“The amount of porn and fights I get on twitter is just horrible.”

The result of all this is that girls report feeling coerced to imitate what boys expect, and boys describe being desensitised, seeing violence and degradation as normal. Doctors link the 40% rise in non-fatal strangulation during sex to pornography consumption. As a result, as we have already mentioned, the Government have announced that the depiction of strangulation in pornography will be banned, in a move to protect women and girls from violence. CEASE’s report “Profits Before People” makes clear that pornography is harmful not just for those in it but for society. It grooms boys to perpetrate violence and grooms girls to accept it. It is not a fringe issue; it is a public health crisis.

Let me briefly address an argument sometimes presented by so-called progressive voices, particularly on the left, who claim that they are advocating for the rights of sex workers. Let me be clear: what they are really doing is prioritising a tiny minority of privileged individuals—people like Bonnie Blue—who pursue this work out of commercial choice rather than desperation. In doing so they ignore, and in fact further marginalise, the vast majority of women trapped in cycles of abuse, violence and poverty. Elevating the voices of those who profit from glamorising exploitation is not progressive; it is regressive, and it fundamentally betrays the women, girls and children who are suffering.

I ask those who support Bonnie Blue, Lily Phillips and other successful porn prostitutes: are you really content to ignore women who are raped on camera, and coerced and trafficked then disregarded, simply because a tiny minority can make millions from the same system? To celebrate them is to turn a blind eye to the abuse of thousands of others. The truth is simple: they do not represent the vast majority who engage in this activity. Those women have no voice, and if we are to claim to be on the side of progress, it is their voices, not the voices of those who glamorise abuse, that we must hear.

We must face facts. OnlyFans is not a neutral digital platform company. It is a profiteer of exploitation. We cannot regulate it in the same way that we do Facebook or Instagram. It requires tougher and targeted measures. First, we need transparency. OnlyFans must prove that its 4.6 million creators are all over 18 and have consented to their content. It must also allow independent child protection and trafficking agencies behind its paywall. Secondly, we must protect children online. Ofcom’s current child protection codes are not strong enough. It must ban algorithms that feed sexual content to children. The wider tech sector is critical in this.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. One of the issues with OnlyFans is the way that it does its marketing. Content creators can only market their content by pushing it out on to other platforms. Does the hon. Member agree that we absolutely have to keep the law up to date with modern technology—pornography laws are now well out of date—to stop pornography not only being available on OnlyFans but creeping out on to regular social media platforms?

[Joani Reid]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. Social media companies should not be allowed to push pornography and sexual content to under-18s, and they should be banned from doing so.

The wider tech industry is crucial to this issue—it is not just OnlyFans. It should not be allowed to profit from directing children towards pornography. If it does not comply, economic levers could be considered. If OnlyFans refuses to reform, it could face a levy on profits to fund services for survivors and education for young people.

We should learn from Sweden. On 1 July this year, Sweden became the first country to criminalise the purchase of sex online. The OnlyFans law sends a clear message that buying exploitation is not a digital game; it is a crime. The UK could look seriously at following that path. However, I appreciate that much work needs to be done before we reach that point. We must acknowledge that the prostitution laws in our country remain rooted in Victorian values and were designed in a different age.

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

In my view, prostitution and sexual exploitation are inherently violent. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is right that we shift the criminal burden on to those responsible for sexual exploitation and violence, and that more should be done to criminalise those who buy sex, whether it is through prostitution or OnlyFans?

--- Later in debate ---

[Joani Reid]

What my hon. Friend describes is the Nordic model, which I fully support and hope to see implemented in this country some time in the future. Ash Regan, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, brought forward a private Member’s Bill there that made a serious attempt at trying to implement that way of doing things. We should modernise the system and appreciate that vulnerable women should not be criminalised—those who create the demand should.

Ultimately, we must be clear about the principle. For too long, it is the women who have paid the price while the men who purchase and the corporations that profit walk free. We need to turn that around. As survivors in Sweden put it: “It feels like redemption.” This is not about prudishness; it is about confronting violence and exploitation in plain sight. Pornography prostitution is not a career and is not harmless entertainment. It is abuse—filmed, monetised and uploaded.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I urge the hon. Member to give the Minister some time to respond.

[Joani Reid]

I have one sentence left.

OnlyFans is not a success story; it is a pimping empire built on the pain of women and children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joani Reid Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I can say to the hon. Gentleman that we are strengthening those checks. We continually assess potential threats in the UK and ensure that we guard against them.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

20. What steps her Department is taking to tackle knife crime.

[The Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)]

My hon. Friend will know that the Government have set an unprecedented mission to halve knife crime in a decade. We are determined to tackle the scourge of serious violence on our streets. This month, we are running a major new surrender scheme for lethal weapons, including ninja swords, in hotspots across the country, alongside introducing the new provisions in our Crime and Policing Bill to crack down on the illegal sale of knives online. Those measures will help to reduce the availability of dangerous knives on our streets and ensure that those who perpetrate these offences face the full force of the law.

[Joani Reid]

Six weeks ago, Kayden Moy, a 16-year-old boy from East Kilbride in my constituency, was stabbed to death, leaving his family bereft and a community—my community—in grief. Since Kayden’s tragic death, I have received multiple videos and images of local youths posing while wielding machetes in their own homes, but the police claim that they are powerless to take any action whatever. Does the Minister agree that much more needs to be done to stop the very real glamourisation of knife crime online, and to prevent social media from being a breeding ground for youth violence?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

May I first express my condolences to Kayden’s family and friends? That is just appalling to hear. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the role that social media can play in glamourising these types of weapons. That is why it is so important that we have measures in the Crime and Policing Bill and the Online Safety Act 2023 to start to tackle that. As I say, it is absolutely appalling.

Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Joani Reid Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I reassure the hon. Member that the point of having the national inquiry is to ensure that where local institutions are being examined, the commission has powers to compel witnesses, take evidence under oath and gather information, papers and evidence as it sees fit to make sure that we can get to the heart of this institutional failure.

The hon. Member is also right to say that this is about vile criminals knowing when young children—teenage girls especially—are vulnerable to the most appalling exploitation and coercion. They play with children’s emotions and vulnerability to draw them into what is ultimately violent crime and the most terrible abuse. This raises questions, particularly when the number of child protection cases around sexual abuse identified by social services has dropped. We are very concerned about that, and the Education Secretary is now investigating. There is also a failure to properly share data about the children who are at risk—the ones who are going missing. The hon. Member mentions the evidence from the work he and the Communities and Local Government Committee did 10 years ago about missing children and children in care. It is all the same evidence now, and we have got to be better at pursuing the evidence.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement of an inquiry and its commitment to survivors. It is absolutely right that the inquiry focuses on local areas where we know that survivors have been failed by the authorities that were supposed to protect them, but it is also essential that we draw lessons for the whole UK. Earlier this year, Professor Alexis Jay from the University of Strathclyde warned the Home Affairs Committee that Scotland is not immune to the kind of organised abuse that we have witnessed elsewhere in the UK. Scotland’s victims and survivors deserve the same assurances on accountability and robust safeguarding measures as anywhere else in the UK, so will the Home Secretary actively seek engagement with the Scottish Government, and offer them support and advice to ensure that they wholeheartedly implement the Jay recommendations effectively?

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s point. The Minister for Safeguarding will follow up these issues with the devolved Administrations. My hon. Friend is right that this is a devolved issue but that this kind of appalling crime is happening everywhere. Action is needed everywhere to safeguard and protect children.

Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Demand

Joani Reid Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this crucial debate to Westminster Hall today. I wonder whether she has noticed the private Members’ Bill tabled by Ash Regan of the Scottish Parliament, which looks to do exactly what she has described by decriminalising the sale of sex. Would she like to congratulate Ash Regan and wish her luck with her Bill?

[Tracy Gilbert]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I will come back to that point later in my speech.

Sweden was the first country to criminalise paying for sex while decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation. The more than two decades since the introduction of its 1999 Sex Purchase Act have provided evidence of its effectiveness. Since that pioneering Act was introduced, demand has dropped significantly, public attitudes have been transformed and traffickers are being deterred. An analysis by the European Commission concluded that the Act, coupled with proactive policing,

“has created a less conducive context for trafficking.”

In Ireland, an evaluation by researchers at University College Dublin reported that, under the country’s demand-reduction legislation, there was

“an increased willingness amongst women”

in prostitution

“to report crimes committed against them and in their improved relationship with Gardaí overall.”

In France, there is strong public support for the demand-reduction laws, which is significant given the importance of changing public attitudes and deterring sex buying. An Ipsos survey found that 78% of the French public support the legislation on prostitution, and 74% think that prostitution is violence.

Demand for prostitution and trafficking is not inevitable, and the law has a critical role to play in deterring it. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride and Strathaven (Joani Reid) mentioned, I welcome the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill, introduced to the Scottish Parliament by Ash Regan MSP, which looks to replicate the lessons learned from other European countries. I hope that all Members of Scottish Parliament will consider the legislation carefully and support it as it makes its way through Parliament. I am keen to hear from the Minister whether UK Government will be looking to bring forward similar legislation.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation and has tabled amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to outlaw pimping and paying for sex, and to decriminalise victims of sexual exploitation by removing sanctions for soliciting. I am proud to be among the more than 50 Members of Parliament who are signatories to those amendments. 

The proposed reforms are backed by survivors and best-practice frontline support services, such as the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance in Scotland, nia, Women@TheWell and Kairos, whose representatives I recently met and heard from. These vital amendments will help the Government to meet our manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls by reducing the demand for prostitution. I urge Ministers to accept the amendments, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s views on which amendments may be accepted.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joani Reid Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I, as the Policing Minister, have said that we want a common-sense approach to dealing with these matters. The Government have been very clear on this. We have set out our priorities as the incoming Government: halving knife crime; halving violence against women and girls; restoring confidence in the justice system; and—one of the big issues for me—tackling antisocial behaviour through our neighbourhood policing guarantee.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

9. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle knife crime.

[Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)]

22. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle knife crime.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

We remember those who have lost their lives to knife crime, including 17-year-old Thomas Taylor, killed in Bedford, and 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa, killed in Woolwich just last week. Kelyan’s mother said:

“I tried to prevent it. I’ve tried so many, so many times.”

No mother should live with that grief or feel that level of fear for her teenage son. That is why this Government have set up the coalition to tackle knife crime, which involves families, alongside taking new action on serious violence.

[Joani Reid]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, and of course my sympathies also go out to that mother this weekend. Recently published data showed a sharp rise in serious violent crime in Scotland, particularly in our cities and towns. Too many of my constituents feel unsafe in East Kilbride town centre and the Village, particularly at night. Meanwhile, the SNP Government’s chronic underfunding of Police Scotland has resulted in officer numbers being at their lowest level since 2008. Does the Secretary of State agree that the SNP now has the funding in place to increase police numbers, and that protecting our community and citizens should be its priority?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the Scottish Government have a significant increase in funding, so they can take action to improve public services. This Government have made it a mission to halve knife crime over the next decade, including taking action to get dangerous weapons, such as zombie knives and ninja swords, off our streets by preventing the unlawful sale of these lethal blades, particularly to children.

Violent Disorder

Joani Reid Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I am glad to hear my hon. Friend’s description of the way in which communities come together to celebrate. It is distressing to hear about the fear that was created and the community events that were delayed because of it. I thank him for continuing to champion his constituents throughout the violent disorder that we saw in Middlesbrough. He and I have spoken about the things that happened, and I thank him for standing up for his constituents.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

There has been much discussion of the role that social media played in fuelling the violent disorder that we have seen on our streets. Many of the extremists were swiftly arrested and charged; does my right hon. Friend agree that those who spread pernicious and poisonous online lies should also share responsibility for the disorder that we have seen, and that online thugs who deliberately stir up hatred and division should have been similarly punished? If not, what does she think can be done about this increasingly wicked online behaviour?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right: we have seen deliberate attempts to radicalise people or promote extremism online, including on social media platforms, and we have seen illegal content not taken down. Obviously, incitement and encouragement of serious violence and racial hatred offline has been a criminal offence in this country for many years, but what is criminal offline is also criminal online. People need to take responsibility for the crimes they commit, which is why we have taken this behaviour so seriously, and why we are so clear that the Online Safety Act 2023 needs to be implemented to make sure that the social media companies take some responsibility for criminal content online.

Border Security and Asylum

Joani Reid Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the hon. Member to his new post. He is right to talk about the importance of the UK doing its bit to help those who have fled persecution and conflict. It is why I strongly believe that the Homes for Ukraine programme was immensely important. Personally, it has been important to our family. It is important that the UK has done its bit, including in previous years around Hong Kong and Afghanistan. That must continue to be the case, but that help must operate alongside a properly functioning system, otherwise criminal gangs will continue to exploit the system whatever it is. At the moment, those criminal gangs are getting away with it.

Let me turn to the specific issue of offshore processing. In fact, the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme was a form of offshore processing, just as the Homes for Ukraine scheme was. There are different ways to arrange these things. Our approach is always to look at what works. As long as it meets proper standards in terms of international law, we should be serious about what it is that works in order to tackle the complex problems that we face.

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. I think that my constituents will be incredulous when they are informed of the extent to which the previous Government wasted so much money on this scheme. What commitments can she give the House that we will be able to rescind our commitments to spend further money on any such programmes, and that no further public money will be wasted?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I welcome her to Parliament, and I welcome her asking questions on this issue. We have to take a strong, rigorous and robust approach to value for money in every Department. It cannot simply be the responsibility of the Treasury; it has to be the responsibility of the Home Office, and of every Government Department. That is the approach that this Labour Government will take. I am frankly shocked that under the last Government not just the Home Office but the Treasury, the then Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues all signed off on these incredibly high payments and costs. They must have had the modelling that would tell them how much the costs would go up by, yet they signed off on them. Our Government are determined to pursue value for money at every stage.