Tonia Antoniazzi

It is a real privilege to speak in this debate marking International Women’s Day. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer) for her maiden speech. I remember that when I made my maiden speech nearly nine years ago—time flies—in the Gallery above me were my mum, my younger brother and my son, aged just 13 at the time. I do not know who the hon. Lady has with her today, but I would like to pay tribute to our family members. We lost my mother last September. I want to say that if it was not for other women supporting women, and their brothers and sisters and children, we would not be able to stand here to do our job. I wish the hon. Lady all the very best in her career. There have been many advances in the fight for women’s equality in recent decades, and indeed the very welcome and much-needed action on male violence against women and girls since this Labour Government came into office. There has, however, been a frustrating stasis on some issues, meaning they have worsened. Sexual exploitation has shown a clear and sustained rise in the United Kingdom, with an increasing number of women being identified as victims. We are seeing more UK-national victims of sexual exploitation, and at a younger age, yet the women and girls exploited in the sex trade remain among the most neglected in our policy discussions and reforms. I want to talk about them today, because these women matter and the harms they experience are extreme. Technological change has reshaped our world, but it has also created new opportunities for sexual exploitation to proliferate on a scale we have never seen before, because our legislation has not kept pace and is not capable of keeping pace. Despite it being illegal to place a prostitution advert in a phone box, the same advert can legally be published for profit on a website, and traffickers have moved quickly into that gap. Pimping websites that act as a vast online brothel drive demand and supercharge the sex trafficking trade by making it easier and quicker for pimps to advertise their victims. They make it as easy to order a woman to abuse as it is to order a takeaway. They operate freely and openly because our legislation allows it. A report published just weeks ago by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner shows how adult services websites do not just host exploited and trafficked women but provide the infrastructure to initiate, scale and normalise their abuse. Nearly 63,000 listings for women were recorded at one point in time across 12 of these sites, and they attracted almost 41.7 million visitors in a month. That is just a fraction of an even larger marketplace, because additional sites are available to users. Nearly 60% of the adverts analysed displayed three or more indicators of trafficking or exploitation, which include multiple ads linked to the same phone number and “new to area” language. Behind the numbers are real and severe harms endured by the women exploited on these sites. Survivors interviewed for the report talked about how they were groomed, controlled and advertised online without their knowledge or consent. A survivor, who was exploited alongside other women, said: “None of us had access to the emails from buyers. They came directly through him. He answered as if he was us and then he would send me a message saying, ‘Oh, this person, you know, this is where you’re going to meet them and this is what you have agreed to do.’” The use and abuse of women is directly enabled and amplified by the sites’ very design, which, for example, enables third-party facilitation. Survivors spoke of how traffickers and abusive partners created profiles, arranged bookings and made profits, while women themselves were controlled and intimidated. Despite third-party facilitation being a known red flag for trafficking, Ofcom guidance ignores that and portrays it as a safety measure. Profiles on the sites also give the illusion of independence to mask deeper exploitation. Another survivor said she was “being raped on webcam essentially. And of course, the people watching aren’t aware of that...the profile is written so it sounds as if I’m independent and enjoying it...how do you go behind a webcam to make sure that the woman isn’t being coerced?” Meanwhile, buyers on some forums openly discuss which women are controlled and the benefits this has for them. As another survivor explained: “You will see men sharing about...‘these girls are trafficked’...‘you can get away with doing this to her’...it’s just right there on the page”. This is the selling and abuse of women in plain sight on an industrial scale, enabled by our legislative framework. It is totally unacceptable. These women deserve so much better. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner is absolutely right to say that these websites are ready-made tools for abuse, and that the toughest action must be taken against them. The all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, which I chair, has been sounding the alarm on pimping websites and their harms for quite some time. The truth is that the current legislation and regulatory guidance are not acting or preventing harm, and it is traffickers, pimps and punters operating with near total impunity who benefit. Women are abused as if they are objects and suffer acutely. We are failing them. I urge the Government to pay close attention to the report’s findings and to act urgently on its recommendations for a robust review—one that includes survivors, and it needs to be prompt. A lot of evidence is already out there and the longer we wait, the more women and girls are suffering as a result. What is more, the scale and ease of access of the online market is not only facilitating exploitation; it is, more widely, fuelling the dangerous rise in misogyny by normalising the idea that women exist to be bought, used and discarded. In an age when prostitution is glamourised, boys and men are repeatedly exposed to platforms that present women as sexual commodities, and that inevitably shapes their attitudes. The scale of demand for pimping websites should give us serious pause for thought in that respect as well. Shutting these sites down has a fundamental role to play not just in preventing horrific exploitation, but in shifting the attitudes of men and boys to promote healthy and respectful relationships. If we are to tackle male violence against women and girls, these websites have to be shut down.