Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage and develop safe and stable ways for people to leave prostitution and sex work and to find alternative work.

We believe that people who want to leave prostitution and sex work should be given every opportunity to find routes out. Where someone wishes to exit prostitution or sex work, we would seek to support them to achieve this, as we know that there can be particular barriers to exiting. We continue to work with the police, Crown Prosecution Service and others to ensure that this is the focus.

As the Bristol University research on the nature and prevalence of sex work and prostitution shows, activity is increasingly moving online. We are providing £1.36m over the next three years to ‘Changing Lives’ to better understand the levels and types of online abuse and exploitation that are happening, and why, and identify and develop the pathways that are needed to improve support.

Victims of Modern Slavery have access to DWPs mainstream employment support where they qualify for income related benefits. This includes the Work and Health Programme, Restart and Sector Based Work Academy Programmes. To support everyone seeking alternative work, the Find a job service has over 170,000 job vacancies across a wide range of industries.

In addition to this, to protect the most vulnerable we are increasing benefits in line with inflation. This means that, subject to Parliamentary approval, they will rise by September Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation – 10.1%. Furthermore, we are making cost of living payments (paid in 2 lump sums of £326 and £324) to more than 8 million low-income households on Universal Credit, Income-based Jobseekers Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Pension Credit, with £150 to individuals receiving disability benefits.