The issue of trafficking for sexual exploitation first came to the attention of the British authorities when the Metropolitan police started documenting cases in 1991. It is hard to know the size of the sex industry in Britain. According to the Home Office, 80,000 women work in prostitution and 70 per cent are recruited before their 18th birthday. It is also estimated that 10 years ago, 85 per cent of women in brothels were UK citizens and now 85 per cent are from outside UK. If any of these figures are correct, it would mean that there are approximately 56,000 trafficked women here. Yet the Home Office quotes a figure of 4000 trafficked women, dating back to 2003. The majority of women come from Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and the Balkans or from the Far East, especially China, Malaysia and Thailand.

On arrival, women are taken to work in massage parlours, private apartments, brothels and lap dancing clubs. Denise Marshall, Director of POPPY, an organisation that provides refuge to trafficked women, believes that there are massage parlours employing trafficked women in every borough of the country. The trade in women is conducted so openly that slave auctions are reportedly taking place at coffee shops at Heathrow and Gatwick where brothel keepers are bidding for women. Until the demand for sexual services is criminalised, feminists strongly believe that a thriving sex industry will continue to act as a “green light for traffickers”.