Lord Hanson of Flint:

Moved by Lord Hanson of Flint

308: After Clause 86, insert the following new Clause—“Disregarding convictions and cautions for loitering or soliciting when under 18(1) Part 5 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is amended as follows.(2) In the heading of Chapter 4, omit “for buggery etc.”(3) For the italic heading before section 92, substitute “Sexual activity between persons of the same sex”. (4) After section 94 insert—“Loitering or soliciting: under 18s94A Automatic disregard of convictions or cautions for loitering or soliciting when under 18(1) A conviction or caution is a disregarded conviction or caution if—(a) it was for an offence under section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 (loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution), and(b) the offender was aged under 18 at the time of the offence.(2) Sections 95 to 98 explain the effect of a conviction or caution being a disregarded conviction or caution.”.(5) In section 95 (effect of disregard on police and other records)—(a) before subsection (1) insert—“(A1) Subsections (1) to (4) apply in respect of a conviction or caution disregarded under section 92.”;(b) after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) A relevant data controller must delete from relevant official records, as soon as reasonably practicable, any details of which they are aware of a conviction or caution disregarded under section 94A.”(6) In section 99 (appeal against refusal to disregard convictions or cautions)—(a) in the heading, at the end insert “for sexual activity between persons of the same sex”;(b) in paragraph (a), after “application” insert “made under section 92”.(7) In section 100 (advisers)—(a) in the heading, at the end insert “on applications under section 92”;(b) in subsection (1), after “case” insert “under section 92”.(8) In section 101 (interpretation)—(a) in the definition of “disregarded caution”, after “which” insert “is or”;(b) in the definition of “disregarded conviction”, after “which” insert “is or”.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment provides for a conviction or caution for loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution, where the offender was under 18 at the time of the offence, to be disregarded.

My Lords, Amendments 308 and 309 are closely bound with Amendment 313 tabled by my noble friend Lady Goudie. If the Committee will allow me, I will ask my noble friend Lady Ritchie to speak to her amendments and on behalf of our noble friend Lady Goudie, who is unable to be here tonight. That being the case, I will then respond to both the Opposition front bench and any comments made by my noble friends, given that the lead amendment is mine but is very much tied up with a range of amendments. In that case, I will sit down and allow the proceedings to continue. I beg to move.

My Lords, I will address the amendments in my own name, Amendments 316A and 316B, relating to prostitution, and Amendments 310 to 313 in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie. I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend the Minister.

Like my noble friend Lady Goudie, I wish to address the exploitation of women and girls. As she has outlined in the amendments, which have also been signed by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, women and girls are trafficked, exploited and routinely abused in prostitution for the profit of others. I fully support all her amendments, which would finally bring Laws in England and Wales into alignment with those in Northern Ireland following the work of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, when he was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The other amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie are clearly needed, as they shift the burden of criminality from vulnerable women on to the men who buy sex, the traffickers, the pimps and the platforms that facilitate and profit from prostitution. Quite simply, my noble friend Lady Goudie has my full support.

I move on to address Amendments 316A and 316B in my name. Commercial sexual exploitation is a continuum. Women move from one form of prostitution to another. For example, a women may be involved in pornography production but moves to selling sex in person or vice versa. Women often go from in-person stripping to online camming sites. I hasten to add that I do not have any particular knowledge of this issue, but I am aware of it. I thought I would add that piece of information. While the location or act may change, what rarely changes is the exploitation of the women involved.

I will focus on just one aspect of this: online sexual exploitation via camming sites. These are websites where someone is requested to perform sexual activities in front of a webcam for paying subscribers. These content creators, as they are known—although I am reluctant to use the phrase, as it diminishes the exploitation—are usually women, and the subscribers are usually men; in other words, women sell sex, and men buy it. These sites come with their own specific dangers and types of exploitation.

Women involved in camming face harassment, blackmail and image-based sexual abuse, as well as the psychological and emotional labour of chatting—another word that hides the true horror of what these women face—to men for hours and days on end with no break. They speak about how young girls are targeted by camming sites, which recruit them via their social media accounts on platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, preying on their youth and vulnerabilities.

The best-known camming site is OnlyFans, which is a UK-based online streaming platform and app created in 2016, where users can pay for private content with a monthly subscription. In 2024, the company generated $7.2 billion in revenue. Despite being a British-based company, the owner is a Ukrainian-American who pays himself $1.3 million a day. Like all platforms designed to profit from the selling of sexual material, it facilitates and profits from sexual exploitation and abuse. OnlyFans is nothing more than an online pimp, facilitating and profiting from prostitution.

As with other forms of prostitution, one of the main reasons women cite for joining camming sites such as OnlyFans is economic distress. That is why OnlyFans grew exponentially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Women who, unfortunately and sadly, had lost their jobs or were struggling financially, turned to OnlyFans to make money. The platform now has 4.6 million content creators worldwide, and while some of these may be uploading content about sport or music, the Majority are women, and some men, selling sexualised content for a fee.

All this content is behind a paywall, so you cannot access it unless you pay. Content creators charge their fans—a euphemism for sex buyers—to watch videos. They can add extra fees for bespoke content, merchandise and personalised chats. OnlyFans makes its money by taking a 20% cut of creators’ earnings. It also offers a referral programme whereby content creators who bring other creators to the platform get a 5% cut of the referred creators’ earnings for 12 months.

Without question, OnlyFans and other camming sites facilitate and profit from commercial sex, yet OnlyFans in particular has positioned itself as a safe platform for uploading sexualised content—a platform that is empowering and lucrative for women. I remind noble Lords that the owner of OnlyFans pays himself $1.3 million a day, yet we have women in this country who are selling sexual images and videos that violate their own boundaries and which they consider degrading for just £50.

My Amendment 316A would make it an offence for a person to own, operate, manage or otherwise facilitate

“an online platform that enables the purchase, distribution, or access to personalised sexual content … for or in the expectation of gain for themselves or a third party”.

My Amendment 316B would make an offence for a person to

“intentionally cause or incite another person … to provide online personalised sexual content … for or in the expectation of gain for themselves or a third party”.

As we have heard, prostitution is organised. It is run by pimps and traffickers. This is no different on camming sites. An investigation by the Social Research Lab at the University of Northern Colorado found that OnlyFans provides new avenues for sex trafficking to occur. One trafficker generated more than $270,000 in the US alone over 30 months. Because much of this content is behind a paywall on OnlyFans, it is easier for traffickers to hide, while making it harder for law enforcement to track any potential trafficking on the site.

We cannot in conscience allow this to continue. Camming sites such as OnlyFans are profiting from trafficking, exploitation and violence against women and girls. Women are not commodities to be bought and sold. They are living, breathing human beings. As well as my Amendments 316A and 316B, I support those in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie.

My Lords, I speak against Amendment 310 on the prohibition of pimping. According to the Member’s explanatory statement, it would

“make it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the prostitution of another person, including by operating a website hosting adverts for prostitution”.

Specifically, the amendment would create the offence of assisting or facilitating another person to engage in sexual activity with another person in exchange for payment or other benefit, where the assister or facilitator knows or ought to know that payment for sexual activity is taking place, whether or not the person assisting or facilitating gains in any way. It would also criminalise the publishing or display of any digital advertisement for sexual activity.

The amendment conflates consensual sex work with sexual exploitation and trafficking. Adopting it would cause significant harm to sex workers. In seeking to criminalise those who facilitate the exploitation of victims of forced prostitution, which is already a crime, it would instead make sex workers’ lives more difficult and dangerous by removing their ability to advertise their services online and seek assistance or support from others in carrying out their services.

I will take those two separate elements in turn. First, on criminalising those who assist or facilitate another person engaging in sexual activity for payment where the assister or facilitator knows or ought to know that such activity is taking place, the impact of this would be disastrous for sex workers and the organisations that support them. It would mean that anybody acting to help sex workers work safely, including safety service operators such as National Ugly Mugs, would be guilty of an offence. I am sure that the intention of Amendment 310 was not to catch that, but it does.

I launched National Ugly Mugs when I was a Home Office Minister to reduce the violence that sex workers experience. The principle behind the scheme was not controversial. When a sex worker experiences violence or a threat, they can report it anonymously online. Other sex workers are therefore warned about a dodgy punter. That information, often the only line of defence, has saved lives, prevented repeated attacks and encouraged people who would never otherwise go to the police to start trusting them again. The ability to post online about a dangerous client is invaluable but would be caught by Amendment 310.

Since I launched it in 2012, National Ugly Mugs has disseminated more than 1.17 million alerts to sex workers warning of risks. Whatever one’s view of prostitution, no one should be assaulted, raped or murdered for the work they do. National Ugly Mugs was never about endorsing prostitution. It was about reducing harm and preventing homicide. The evidence is clear that where harm reduction schemes exist, sex workers are better able to report violence, share intelligence and access justice. Where they are removed, people go underground and the violence gets worse, not better.

The argument often put forward is that the Nordic or buyer criminalisation model would make the scheme unnecessary. But if you look honestly at the evidence from Sweden, Norway and France, you will see that violence did not disappear. It went into the shadows and underground. Sex workers in those countries report being more isolated, less able to screen clients and more fearful of the police. We should not repeat those mistakes here. It is a dangerous illusion to think that by abolishing the tools that keep people safe, we abolish the reality of prostitution. We do not. We simply make it more dangerous.

Amendment 310 would also criminalise family members and the extended support networks that many sex workers rely on in order to carry out their sex work, and it would criminalise the many sex workers who support other sex workers in carrying out their services. It would criminalise any business—such as banks, mobile phone providers, taxi services or web hosting providers—that knew or ought to know that it was providing services to sex workers and was thereby assisting them in carrying out their activities.

Sex workers are already among the most discriminated-against groups in the UK, suffering appalling stigma. To take just one of the examples set out above, the Financial Conduct Authority recently warned financial institutions not to close the bank accounts of those they suspect or know are carrying out sex work because of the significant harm caused by doing so. Providing a sex worker with a bank account enables them to receive payment for sexual services, and this would clearly be caught by the Bill because it is facilitating or assisting the sex worker in carrying out their work.

The amendment would compel banks to close sex workers’ accounts and would perpetuate such harm. The net result of the amendment would be to shut sex workers out of the economy and prevent them accessing the services and support they need to work safely, pushing them into more dangerous and more difficult working environments. The displacement of sex workers away from the support services they rely on would make it more difficult for sex workers to survive and make it more challenging for those who care about and serve those communities to locate and to help them.

My second issue is the move to criminalise the publishing or display of any advertisement for sexual activity. This section of the amendment seeks to criminalise the operations of the adult service websites, ASWs, and make it impossible for sex workers to advertise online. In the modern world, most sex workers do use adult service websites to advertise their services, and working in that way means that sex workers remain in control of the services they offer and the environment in which they work, and can take steps to screen the clients they are planning to meet in advance of doing so. For example, they can take ID information and/or prepayment, and use online checking tools such as the National Ugly Mugs scheme, which I launched, to see whether the phone number or email address contacting them has previously been linked to violent or abusive behaviour.

Supporters of the amendment will argue that because traffickers also attempt to use these platforms to advertise those they are criminally exploiting, they should be outlawed. However, outlawing the means for sex workers to advertise would not remove the sex workers themselves. They would instead be forced to adopt new approaches to sourcing clients, and that would have four main effects.

First, as evidenced by outcomes in other countries, online advertising for sex work would still exist but in a different form. Rather than sex workers advertising themselves openly as providing sexual services, they would instead advertise non-sexual companionship or massage services in such a way as to give the website proprietor grounds to demonstrate that they do not know that sexual activities are being advertised. This would make it harder to identify and provide outreach and support to those who are, in reality, carrying out sex work, and harder for law enforcement to screen adverts and assess risk.

Secondly, it would mean that advertising would be pushed to less visible areas of the internet, such as private messaging groups, social media and the dark web, where it would be out of sight of law enforcement and those seeking to provide support services to sex workers. UK national policing agencies have made clear that for this reason they do not support the outlawing of adult sex websites.

Thirdly, some ASWs would instead move offshore and carry on business out of reach of UK policing. They would also stop providing evidential materials to UK law enforcement, making it harder for police to investigate and prosecute genuine cases.

Fourthly, it would increase the levels of danger facing sex workers by forcing them off the internet and on to the streets. On-street work is universally acknowledged as being far more dangerous than online. In this scenario, sex buyers would hold all the power in negotiations and those who seek to harm sex workers would have greater opportunities to do so.

When forced offline, sex workers lose the ability to clearly communicate their services and boundaries in advance, before engaging in in-person sexual exchange for money. While there have been well-documented instances in the past of traffickers and exploiters seeking to use ASWs for sexual exploitation, the recently enacted Online Safety Act includes new legal duties for ASWs to prevent such content appearing on their services. That legislation has come into effect only recently, so we should give it time to bed in and have an impact.

While we all might very well wish that prostitution did not exist, it does. We need to provide the best protections we can, at the same time as perhaps supporting more useful programmes that help women to leave prostitution altogether.

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for the explanations of their amendments. I support the Government’s Amendments 308 and 309 for reasons that will be explained by the Minister. I go further and support the Amendments 312 and 313, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie. It must be so difficult for social workers and charities to steer sex workers away to a better life if they have to admit to these offences when seeking legitimate or conventional employment, when they have not even been found to be dishonest. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in her Amendment 316B for the reasons that she explained. This is yet another online problem.

I am afraid that I cannot support Amendments 310 and 311, which seek to make buying or organising the provision of sexual services illegal. I come at this from a similar position to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone.

In the recent past, and for centuries before, we erroneously thought that we needed to stamp out gay sex because we did not like it. Thanks to the effort of great campaigners, people like me now recognise that the policy was absolutely bonkers. We made otherwise law-abiding citizens out to be criminals, we turned patriots into security risks, and we made sure that around 5% of the population could never reach their full potential—and we hurt them. We made sure that gay people could not have stable relationships, which then caused a variety of health issues for both the gay and the straight communities. We do much the same with prostitution.

We have an especially nasty name for sex workers—we call them prostitutes or worse. However, quite a lot of people, mainly men, are happy to use them for a variety of reasons—some understandable and some not so good. We do everything that we can to make it a dirty, horrible, seedy, disgusting business, in the vain hope that doing so will reduce the problem. It does anything but.

We ensure that only criminals can engage in managing the paid-for sex business, just like the drug trade. Worse still, and just like homophobia, we create a health problem with sexually transmitted diseases, when we could minimise the problem if we so desired. The noble Baroness explained the logic behind her amendments. If the policy were successful, there is no doubt that it would be a great moral success. However, to be successful, the police would have to devote huge resources to absolutely stamp out prostitution in the UK, and I am not confident that they can.

I see considerable problems with these amendments. The first is around the safety of sex workers, and the noble Baroness touched on this. I would imagine that, very often, appointments are made via an ordinary mobile phone. If something goes horribly wrong with the encounter, no doubt the police can access the mobile phone records and use relevant detection techniques. Sex workers can currently identify regular, and therefore safe, clients. If these amendments became law, clients would not use their main mobile; they would surely use burner phones, regularly change them and turn them on only at railway stations and the like. Of course, this activity would no longer be a red flag; it would be quite understandable. If the booking is online, clients would use a website that might be far away from the UK, in authorities such as Russia or the Far East. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, talked with great knowledge about this issue. It would lead to significant cyber and espionage risks compared with sex workers using certain well-known UK sites.

One would hope that someone who acquires a sexually transmitted disease would be honest with the health professionals seeking to identify the source of the infection, particularly if it were hard to treat. If the amendment is accepted, very few clients would agree to reveal that they have paid for sex, where and with whom.

I can understand why the noble Baroness has sought extraterritorial jurisdiction. If she did not, we would be exporting our problems—if they are problems—to another country, which might be as close as Germany, for instance, which has for many years done what I am about to propose. If the police are given concrete evidence that this offence has been committed somewhere on the continent, are they going to go in hot pursuit? I am not sure that the police in Berlin, for instance, would be very helpful, given that it is not an offence there.

When certain state employees are security vetted, it is necessary to understand the applicant’s sexuality because it could obviously be a major vulnerability, but there is never a problem if the applicant is honest and candid, and the vetting team is not easily shocked. However, it would be a problem if the applicant admits to serious criminal offences. If they successfully lie to the vetting team, they make themselves a security risk.

Unlike the online problems that we have been discussing, we are talking about the world’s oldest profession. If we think that we have stamped it out, we may only have driven it deep underground, as explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. Those seeking paid sex would have to use dangerous IT solutions, which would leave them, and possibly their employers, much more vulnerable to cyber attacks and blackmail. The sex workers involved would be involved in a very serious criminal undertaking—not just, as at the moment, perhaps three girls setting up a flat together.

What is to be done to address the ills that the noble Baroness has so skilfully articulated? I do not disagree with her analysis of the problem and the evils. Hitherto in the UK, we have taken a priggish and prudish attitude to these matters and made things far worse, just as we did with gay people. The answer is that we should regulate, license and tax this activity, just as we do with alcohol. We should license establishments, whether large or small—the larger establishments could be discreetly located so that they do not interfere with the local community. We should ensure that sex workers never again have to give the Majority of their earnings to an immoral criminal who will abuse them if they do not. The economics of the profession would be favourable for sex workers if there were no immoral parasites involved. We should ensure that criminals are not able to be involved in the business at all. We should license sex workers to ensure that they have not been trafficked and are not being coerced into the business. This policy would make it far more difficult to force people into the business and would drastically reduce the risks for sex workers.

If we went down this route, there would be significant benefits apart from the tax take, which would be significant. We could require regular health checks and make sure that any drug dependencies were properly managed. We could make this a condition of the personal licence. It is reasonable to argue that sex workers would not have to entertain so many clients in a day, and in any case, as I have suggested, it would be a far less sordid activity for all. If the Minister is cautious in his response to these amendments, I will gladly support him.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in what has been a thoughtful and at points sobering debate on this group of amendments. Each Amendment has been brought forward with a genuine desire to protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, a shared goal among all of us.

On Amendments 308 and 309 in the name of the Minister, I of course understand and respect the intention that lies behind them, which is to ensure that individuals who were exploited as children, often in circumstances of profound vulnerability, are not burdened in adulthood by convictions or cautions that arose from their victimisation. We share the Minister’s desire to protect children from such exploitation and absolutely recognise that those under 18 involved in prostitution can very often be victims.

The amendments as drafted would create an automatic disregard or pardon for every offence of loitering or soliciting committed under the age of 18. Will the Minister explain whether a blanket approach of this kind is the right mechanism? Young people under 18 can be convicted of a wide range of offences, many of which the law rightly considers on a case-by-case basis with great care and nuance. It is not immediately clear why this category of offence should be given automatic treatment when others are subject to a case-by-case consideration. I totally accept that that is a difficult question. While we are very sympathetic to the concerns that underpin the amendments, we hope to hear from the Minister a more detailed rationale for them.

Amendments 310 and 311, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, raise significant issues about the role of those who enable, promote or profit from prostitution, including through online platforms, and about the criminal liability of those who pay for sexual services. Again, we absolutely support the underlying principle that exploitation, whether offline or online, must be robustly tackled and that those who profit from the abuse or commodification of vulnerable people should face meaningful consequences. The growth of online facilitation has created new and disturbing avenues for exploitation, and we support efforts to ensure that our legislative framework keeps pace with these developments.

However, the approach that the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, has suggested through these amendments, which is effectively to repeal the current offences in the Street Offences Act and replace them with the new offences in her amendments, is a very wide-ranging change to the law. Such a sweeping and significant alteration to our legal framework should not be undertaken, in our view, without a serious consideration of the impact and should be the subject of a serious examination, consultation with the police and other groups and the publication of proposals by the Home Office. It is not a change that we can simply make on a whim.

Finally, Amendments 316A and 316B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, concern the rapidly evolving landscape of online sexual exploitation. We share the noble Baroness’s concern about the ways in which digital platforms can facilitate harmful or coercive practices and about the need to ensure that those who profit from the exploitation of vulnerable individuals are held to account. We recognise the seriousness of the issues that she has raised this evening and the need for continued work to ensure that offenders cannot simply exploit technological advances to evade scrutiny or sanction. I hope the Government will consider these amendments very carefully.

There is clear recognition of the need to strengthen protections for vulnerable people and to ensure that those who exploit them, whether in person or online, are met with the full force of the law. I look forward to continuing discussions with the Government as the Bill progresses and to hearing from the Minister tonight so that we can ensure that the legislation is robust and proportionate and delivers the protections that victims so clearly deserve.

My Lords, the problem of prostitution has been around since biblical times. I can understand why the noble Lord might not be very supportive of Amendments 310 and 311, but does my noble friend on the front bench not offer any solution to the problem of prostitution?

I thank the noble Earl for that question. I have made the position of the front bench clear and think it is now for the Minister to answer such a testing question.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick for commencing this discussion and debate. A number of views have been expressed in Committee today and some go wider than the amendments that are before us. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, raised a number of issues which go beyond what is before us. My noble friend Lady Ritchie also touched on the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie. It is clear that there are differing views in the Committee—from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, on the front bench opposite—which tells me that this is a truly complex area where there are very different legislative options open and where the Government need to consider very carefully what needs to be done.

The Government are absolutely committed to tackling the harms associated with prostitution and sexual exploitation, including where it takes place online. This is an important part of our work on tackling violence against women and girls which, as colleagues in the Committee will know, is a top government priority, and about which we will be saying more shortly. But we need to look at the evidence. We have limited evidence as to what will most effectively reduce demand for prostitution and disrupt exploitation without—and this is the key point that came out of some of the contributions—unintentionally causing harm to victims and survivors and making life more difficult for those who choose that lifestyle. I say to my noble friend that the Government are not in a position to accept the amendments today, but I want to make it absolutely clear that we are in the business of taking steps to tackle sexual exploitation and to gather evidence to inform further interventions in the future.

Amendment 310 in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie would make it an offence to assist, facilitate, or control the prostitution of another person, regardless of whether the individual secures any personal gain from this facilitation. The broad wording of this offence could—and again this echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, said—have an adverse consequence for people who choose to be engaged in prostitution, for example, by criminalising professionals such as healthcare support workers, charities which provide sexually transmitted infections testing or those providing contraception or safety planning. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, made a compelling case around some of the issues that the Government have reflected on in relation to that amendment. My noble friend Lady Goudie’s amendment would also make it a criminal offence to operate a website hosting adverts for prostitution, and I will come back to that again in a moment, if I may.

My noble friend Lady Ritchie, in Amendments 316A and 316B, would introduce new criminal offences to tackle the sale of personalised sexual content online, including audiovisual and visual content. Amendment 316A would make it an offence to own, manage or facilitate one of these online platforms, while Amendment 316B would create an offence of causing or inciting an individual to sell personalised sexual content on these platforms. It would also introduce a duty on the online platform to remove personalised sexual content within 24 hours if an individual is convicted of the offence and if an individual who is incited to sell the content has requested its removal.

The Government recognise very strongly that we need to take action to tackle these websites. The so-called pimping websites need to be addressed and tackled. However, I would argue that criminalising those websites may have safety implications for people who sell sex and may result in displacement to on-street prostitution, which is more dangerous for individuals. It may also disrupt policing operations. The police can scan adult service websites for signs of vulnerability and exploitation and to gain data to support criminal investigations.

I accept that members of the Committee might want government Ministers to say that, but Changing Lives, an organisation supporting people who have been sexually exploited, also advocates against criminalising adult service websites. Instead, it is calling for stronger regulation, more referral mechanisms and more funding to support people affected by exploitation.

Amendment 311 in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie would make it an offence for an individual to pay for or attempt to pay for sex either for themselves or on behalf of others. The Government have looked in detail at this approach in other countries which have taken it and have seen indications that the law can be misused to harass and victimise people engaged in prostitution. Again, that is a matter for debate and discussion, but that is the view the Government currently take.

Amendment 312, in the name of my noble friend Lady Goudie, would repeal the offence in Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 which criminalises a person aged 18 or over who persistently loiters or solicits

“in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution”.

Amendment 313 would disregard prior convictions and cautions. There may be some common ground here, because I absolutely recognise the concern that this offence may criminalise vulnerable individuals and restrict their opportunities for employment. However, I am also mindful that on-street prostitution can have an impact on local communities, and it is important that we consider their views.

My noble friend Lady Goudie, were she able to be here, would say that the criminal law rightly evolved in 2015 to make it clear that children cannot be prostitutes and that any child who is paid in exchange for sex is clearly a victim of child sexual exploitation. Therefore, I would argue that it is long overdue that individuals issued cautions or convictions for the offence in Section 1 of the Street Offences Act before 2015 have their criminal records expunged.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, asked for details. I simply repeat: children cannot be prostitutes. Children who are paid in exchange for sex are clearly victims of sexual exploitation. The records currently in place provide significant barriers to the employment and psychological rehabilitation of those who are now adults. It is important that we look at the long-term consequences of those incidences and help support them in rebuilding their lives. That is why we have tabled government Amendment 308, which will disregard convictions and cautions for Section 1 offences issued to under 18s. Amendment 309 will provide pardons for such convictions and cautions.

In each case, what we have tried to do—I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will reflect on this—is to ensure that the disregard and pardon are automatic. We do not want to retraumatise victims and survivors of childhood abuse by requiring them to go through an application process. I asked today in our internal Home Office discussions how many individuals this could impact. We have looked at the figures for the last 30 years and assess that 350 to 352 individuals would fall under the auspices of that. Someone aged under 18 30 years ago is now approaching their 50s. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that for that person an offence committed as a child would still be on their record. Something they maybe did not have responsibility for at the time would therefore impact upon their employment and life chances. Therefore, I would welcome his support for that repeal.

I entirely support what the Minister is putting forward. Is it the intention of the Home Office to track down these 350 or so individuals and notify them of the consequences of this legislation when it is enacted?

We will reflect on that, but, as I said, the disregard and pardon will be automatic, so it will happen if the Bill receives the support of both Houses and Royal Assent. I will reflect on what the noble Lord said, because there may be an opportunity to consider that. However, I do not want to commit to it today, because we do not necessarily know where someone who was that age in 1995 is now—the address, contact details and so on might all be different. The key point is that this is an automatic disregard for those individuals, so if publicity is given to this new Clause and the Bill receives Royal Assent, it will potentially lift a burden for those who were under 18 at the time.

The Government cannot share in the support for repeal of the Section 1 offence for those over 18, and I can give reasons for that. We will consider in future, if the Section 1 offence is repealed in its entirety, whether the disregard and pardon should be extended to adults, because that is a separate issue. However, today I wanted to focus on those under 18.

Will the Minister consider separating the disregard and the pardon?

I am trying to think how that would impact upon the issue we are talking about today. In effect, the disregard and pardon will be automatic for people under the age of 18. I will look at what the noble Earl said and discuss it with Home Office colleagues in that context.

As I have rejected the amendments in the name of my noble friend, I reassure her that there is a range of ongoing work to tackle sexual exploitation, and our intention is to continue working with the police, charities and those affected to ensure that we take action. It is important that we draw attention—as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, did—to online platforms’ legal duties under the Online Safety Act 2023, which came into play on 17 March. That Act sets out priority offences that platforms must take additional steps to tackle. In addition, I hope it will help my noble friend Lady Ritchie to know that the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it an offence to cause, incite or control prostitution for gain. Those offences, together with human trafficking offences, are priority offences under the 2023 Act.

As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, indicated, platforms should now already be completing risk assessments and implementing measures to mitigate against the risk of their services being used for illegal activity and having illegal content present. ofcom is providing recommended measures for compliance through the illegal content codes, and platforms must be able to demonstrate the measures they have taken to comply with their duties. Very significant fines of 10% of global revenue are in place, or, in extreme cases, business disruption measures.

To show that we are not ignoring the issues my noble friend has raised, I also point out that we have introduced provisions in Schedule 13 that will enable law enforcement agencies to apply to the courts to temporarily suspend for up to 12 months IP and domain names used for serious crimes such as sexual exploitation. We are also working closely with the police and other law enforcement partners to ensure that the Laws we already have are effectively enforced.

Through our law enforcement partners, we are running a pilot whereby adverts are referred to the Home Office- funded Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme to consider if offences have been committed on adult service websites. In addition, as my noble friend has mentioned, our law enforcement partners are working closely with Ofcom on the issue of adult service websites to ensure that the right measures are put in place to identify and remove illegal content and safeguard people from sexual exploitation.

It may help my noble friend to know that we are providing £450,000 to the National Police Chiefs’ Council this year to pilot a national law enforcement intelligence and investigation hub for sexual exploitation, collating information on victims and perpetrators. We are also providing £475,000 to Changing Lives to provide support to those affected by sexual exploitation.

I hope the Committee can reflect on this difficult and challenging topic. I commend Amendments 308 and 309 to the Committee. I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed—

Picking up what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said about licensing sex workers, I wonder whether the Minister knows what goes on in Holland, where each individual woman is licensed as an individual business. I walked through the red-light district of a small town and saw women in all the windows, and I was told by a local Dutch councillor that all of them had pimps. They were either on the phone to their pimp or the curtains were pulled. So I suggest that licensing does not stop pimping.

I am grateful for that. As I said, the Home Office has examined and looked at a range of alternative methods of regulation and legislation from other countries. The issue of licensing is outside these amendments and the legislative proposals in the Bill, so I do not wish to go down that route today. But obviously we look at all experiences. Our main objective is to ensure that we support, and protect the safety of, individuals who choose to involve themselves in this work, and at the same time to ensure that no harm comes to wider society as a result of those actions. I am grateful to the noble Earl for raising this today, but it is not an issue that I can explore at this moment, for the reasons I have outlined.

Amendment 308 agreed.