UK P4P News

Students sex workers and poll dancers should not be prevented by their universities unless their welfare is at risk or they start missing lectures, according to a new report by Swansea University academics.

The authors of a study which suggested that one in 20 students was involved in the sex industry have called on universities to accept the practice and offer support rather than stigma.

Professor Tracey Sagar and Debbie Jones told the Cheltenham Science Festival that students selling sex was not going anywhere and claimed it was outdated to automatically assume prostitutes and other sex workers are victims.

Their 2015 report, The Student Sex Work Project , indicated that 5% of students, more than 100,000, are engaged in the sex industry, principally to fund their higher education or a better lifestyle at university.

The survey of 6,750 students also found that more male than female students were making money in sex-related occupations. Most were involved with indirect sex work, and the most popular activities for men included acting as a naked butler , stripping, erotic dancing and performing in porn films. For women, the most common occupations were selling sex online, erotic dancing, stripping, and selling sex on phone chat lines.

Perhaps some of the revelations of the report are not so surprising when considering that many of today's students will graduate with debts of approximately £50,000 including maintenance loans.

No one has been charged under a nasty new law that makes it illegal to pay for sex in Northern Ireland, a year after it was introduced.

Frances Fitzgerald, the justice minister, is about to introduce similar laws in the Republic of Ireland amid warnings that they are unenforceable and will put sex workers' lives at risk.

Anti-sex work groups claim that the laws would end demand for prostitution but critics argued that they would make sex workers' lives more dangerous by driving the trade underground and making them less likely to go to the police or hospital if something went wrong.

The criminalisation of payment for sex would dissuade sex workers from reporting violence against them, Brooke Magnanti, the former London call girl better known by her alias Belle de Jour, has told a group of MPs.

Appearing before a home affairs select committee hearing on prostitution and the sex industry, Magnanti said:

If you criminalise buying sex, the prostitute knows she becomes the evidence. Police will be instantly suspicious, they ask to see your papers, examine your premises. She might be coerced by police into giving evidence against other people.

Magnanti said MPs needed to focus on the root causes driving people into sex work:

Things like migration policy and the social safety net. You have people who are marginally in the black going into red because of the bedroom tax, and the failure of the social system to catch them.

Magnanti appeared alongside Paris Lees , a journalist and equality campaigner who has also previously been a sex worker. Both were critical of the witnesses the select committee had called to question as part of the inquiry. Of the four sex workers you've spoken [to] face to face, three of us aren't doing it any more, Magnanti told the committee's chair, Keith Vaz

The committee is nominally looking into the way prostitution is dealt with in legislation, and in particular whether the balance in the burden of criminality should shift to those who pay for sex, but the selection of those participating in the debate suggest that the committee is biased towards criminalising men who buy sex.

Scottish Labour is set to announce a manifesto pledge to prosecute men who buy sex.

Bizarrely the party claims that selling sex can be somehow legal whilst buying it is illegal. Surely the sex workers would be clearly inciting their customers to commit an offence.

Its manifesto, to be unveiled on Wednesday, will state:

Scottish Labour aims to tackle commercial sexual exploitation by challenging demand and by supporting those involved. It has a three-pronged framework: criminalising the buying of sex, decriminalising people involved in prostitution, and providing long-term support and exiting services for those exploited through prostitution.

ScotPep, the sex workers' rights charity, said during the last Holyrood session that it did not agree with the policy, fearing that it could put women in more danger and challenging the assertion that all sex workers are victims .

Executive Summary @ Criminal law is inappropriate for regulating consenting adult sexual activity, including sex work.

• Criminalisation of either sex workers themselves or their clients has the effect of stigmatising sex workers unfairly.

• It prevents some people who lack the capacity to maintain long-term intimate relationships, such as those with severe physical disabilities or the elderly, from pursuing their legitimate interest in sexuality.

• It puts sex workers in an antagonistic position with public authorities, reducing the personal security of sex workers .

• It can create opportunities and temptations for police officers to engage in opportunistic or predatory behaviour.

• It can prevent sex workers integrating into normal labour market activity, such as making national insurance contributions and developing a credit record. These are essential for personal savings and accessing long-term legally secured housing.

Read the full Backlash submission from data.parliament.uk