Edinburgh MP calls for urgent action on prostitution including ban on 'pimping' websites

In a debate at Westminster, Ms Gilbert said she wanted to turn the spotlight on men who used prostitutes but preferred to remain invisible.

She said: "Sex buyers rely on being unseen while they ruin lives, leaving us as a society and the individual women to pick up the pieces of the carnage they cause.

Edinburgh North & Leith Labour MP Tracy Gilbert has called for urgent action to tackle demand for prostitution | supplied

"The demand from men who pay for sex fuels a brutal prostitution and sex trafficking trade. It funds predatory websites that make millions of pounds advertising women for sexual exploitation every day and causes untold trauma to some of society’s most vulnerable women while undermining equality for all women."

She said research had found 3.6 per cent of men in the UK admitted to having paid for sex in the previous five years. Those most likely to have paid for sex were single, aged between 25 and 34 and in managerial or professional occupations.

And she said In Edinburgh over the weekend of June 7-8, some 142 women were being advertised for prostitution on one pimping website alone.

Ms Gilbert said demand for prostitution was "not inevitable" and the law could had a critical role in deterring it. One UK study which asked over 1,200 sex buyers whether they would change their behaviour if a law was introduced that made paying for sex a crime found over half said that they would definitely, probably or possibly change their behaviour.

“While sex buyers are driven by male sexual entitlement, ultimately, they do it because they can. The law is not just failing to stop these men; it is making it easy. Not only is paying for sex legal in England, Wales and Scotland, so are the pimping websites advertising thousands of women each day for sex buyers to choose from.

“These websites function as massive online brothels. They are the go-to place for traffickers to advertise their victims. Pimping websites are making it as easy to order a room and to sexually exploit as it is to order a takeaway.”

Ms Gilbert welcomed the Bill introduced in the Scottish Parliament by Edinburgh Eastern Alba MSP Ash Regan, which seeks to make the purchase of sex a criminal offence.

And she backed amendments tabled for the Crime and Policing Bill at Westminster to outlaw pimping and paying for sex, and remove sanctions for soliciting.

Replying to the debate, junior Home Office minster Jess Phillips praised Ms Gilbert’s passion and said she too had a long-standing interest in the issues raised. “For too long, women and vulnerable people have been trapped in sexual exploitation under the guise of prostitution. The daily abuse that they suffer is truly horrific,”

But she said legislation alone did nothing. “We have to look at legislative models and at what will actually work. I am only interested in actual outcomes.”

She added: “As the minister, I will use every lever available to me to clamp down on sexual exploitation. The Government’s position will be informed by the views of victims and survivors, the voluntary and community sector, which works directly with victims and survivors, the police and others.”