Paying for sex should be banned in Britain in a bid to stop women being trafficked into prostitution, a Home Office minister told MPs.
Sarah Dines said the demand for sex workers was “part of human nature” but she wanted to see it “outlawed”.
The comments from the safeguarding minister came as she faced questions from the Commons Home Affairs Committee on how the Government was cracking down on trafficking in the UK.
Speaking to MPs on Wednesday, Ms Dines said: “Sex work – the demand is there. It’s unfortunately part of human nature, I would like for it to be outlawed.
“What we are doing is using the legal system that we can to make the UK the most unfriendly country for this sort of practice that we can.”
The sex trade and trafficking “has been around for thousands of years”, she told the committee, adding: “Reducing that demand is difficult.
“There have been various models across the world, across different countries, people have tried different things. We know, for example, in the sex trade, we know about the Nordic model, we know other countries have tried outlawing various practices.
“What is clear is that discouraging demand is incredibly difficult and that we have to be very careful about the evidence in that.
“What we are doing practically – to answer your question – is we are funding a lot of work to stop this trade. It goes to the very heart of the whole reason why we have got the Illegal Migration Bill now passed because we want to squash the international organised crime aspect of this.”
Her comments come after her Labour counterpart, Jess Phillips, lamented how victims of modern slavery are now treated in the UK.
In a speech on Tuesday the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding told how the difference in standards, compared with efforts made for trafficking victims ahead of the Modern Slavery Act becoming law in 2015, made her cry as she accused the Government of failing victims.
During the session, Ms Dines was also pressed by MPs on the lack of prosecutions for people buying sex from trafficking victims and came under fire for failing to provide the committee with “reliable data” to back up the Government’s claim that migrants crossing the Channel were “gaming” modern slavery laws.
