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Human Trafficking

Again, my hon. Friend brings his experience, knowledge and good judgment to the debate. I hope that that has been noted by the Ministers. Let me move from the subject of supply to that of demand. We have a real problem in this country with a booming sex industry that lumps together a whole set of legal and illegal activities. They range from legal and illegal pornography through legal and illegal lap-dancing clubs to prostitution, which takes many different forms and is conducted in many different places. I sense an element of schizophrenia in how we think about the problem. There is gross moral outrage when we talk about human trafficking and people who are forced into sexual slavery in this country, yet when we talk about prostitution we almost stand back, afraid of climbing down from our position of liberal neutrality. We cannot tackle a large part of the trafficking problem in this country unless we start to tackle the growth of the sex industry. The growing demand from British men for easily available paid-for sex is largely driving the supply of trafficked women into this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) mentioned the change that has taken place over the past 10 years. We have gone from a situation where 85 per cent. of those working in prostitution were from the UK to one where an estimated 85 per cent. are foreign. Such a massive change will have come about in one of two ways: either through a huge fall in the number of domestic girls and young women working in the sex trade, or through a massive increase in the supply of foreign women to meet additional demand. I think that the latter has happened. Demand is booming for easily available paid-for sex and it is being met by women who have, effectively, been imported. That is backed up by some research that I read earlier today, which suggested that the proportion of men who admit to paying for sex has more than doubled in the past 10 years from about 2 per cent. to 4 or 4.5 per cent. That backs up my assertion about the growing demand in this country for paid-for sex. I pay tribute to the work on that point done by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and to the tone that she has struck. In my last 20 seconds of allotted time, I shall make a final point about victims. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) talked about transferring knowledge from this country to countries from which people are being trafficked. There is also a need to learn from some of the excellent initiatives on the ground in those countries when we work with the victims of trafficking in this country.