A senior policing body has reportedly told officers to refer to prostitutes as “sexual entrepreneurs”.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation has warned against the use of this terminology, as they described it encouraging commercial sexual exploitation of women.
The parliamentarians expressed “deep concern” the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s approach to handling prostitution cases was “normalising” commercial sexual exploitation as “work” and “undermining” efforts to crack down on it.
The guidance instructs officers to restrict usage of “prostitute” or “prostitution” to “specific legal meanings and offences”, instead promoting alternative terminology.
According to the guidance, “sex work” represents “a necessary survival strategy” for some individuals, whilst others view it as “an active career choice”.
The document specifically defines “sexual entrepreneurs” as those who “have chosen to engage in commercial sex as a career choice and for whom sex work is not necessarily a temporary arrangement that they seek to exit”.
The parliamentary group highlighted that “sex work” appears nowhere in UK legislation, calling it “an ideological, political and deeply contested term” whose recommendation by the NPCC was “highly inappropriate”.
Prosecutions for prostitution-related crimes have plummeted dramatically over the past thirteen years, the parliamentary group’s letter revealed.
MPs said they were concerned about the police chief’s use of language
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Convictions for paying for sexual services from someone subjected to force fell from 43 in 2010 to none in 2023, whilst soliciting prosecutions dropped from 208 to 25.
Brothel-keeping convictions declined from 32 to eight during the same timeframe, with pimping prosecutions showing an identical decrease.
Meanwhile, the MPs warned that sex trafficking operations were flourishing on an “industrial scale” via online platforms, with a single website advertising 15,800 prostitution listings.
The APPG, led by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, argued these statistics demonstrated how current policing approaches were failing to combat commercial sexual exploitation effectively.
Tonia Antoniazzi issued a warning against the plans
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The guidance suggested that for disabled officers, “using such services may be their only access to a physical relationship of any kind”.
It added restrictions “could cause significant distress and force the person to choose between their job and sex life”.
The APPG condemned this as a “deeply offensive statement” that “normalises commercial sexual exploitation”.
The MPs urged adoption of Police Scotland’s model, which avoids the term “sex work” and “recognised the exchange of money for sex acts as a form of violence against women”.
They requested a meeting with Ms Mahmood to discuss implementing this approach across England and Wales.
A Home Office spokesman told The Telegraph: “For too long, women have been trapped within sexual exploitation under the guise of prostitution.
“We will use every lever available to us to stop this.
“As part of our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, we are funding a pilot of the first national law enforcement intelligence and investigation hub for sexual exploitation to boost arrests and ensure perpetrators face justice.”