More than half of Britons told a pollster that paying for sex should be legal. Nearly nine in ten would not date the person selling it.
YouGov asked in January 2024 and published the answers in February, under the title “What does Britain think of sex work and sex workers?” Some 52% said paying for sex should be legal, against 28% who said it should not be. In the same research, 87% said they would be unwilling to date an escort or prostitute, and 75% saw a great deal or a fair amount of stigma against sex work.
Support has not visibly risen
Ipsos MORI’s Public’s views on prostitution, for the Government Equalities Office, found in 2008 that 59% agreed prostitution is a reasonable choice women should be free to make. YouGov’s “Majority support for decriminalising prostitution” put support for decriminalisation at 54% in August 2015, with 21% opposed. A Savanta poll for Amnesty International UK, a campaigning body that supports decriminalisation, found 53% agreeing in late 2024 that consensual adult sex work should be fully decriminalised. Amnesty published it on 12 February 2025, in a release on sex workers working together.
The questions, pollsters and samples differ, so these are not a time series. Read side by side, the 2015 and 2024 figures give no sign of a rise in support over roughly nine years, and the 2008 question was a different one.
What the law in England and Wales allows
In England and Wales, buying and selling sex are not in themselves illegal, a Home Office minister said in a written answer in January 2026. Related offences include persistently loitering or soliciting in a street or public place (for sellers), keeping a brothel and controlling prostitution for gain.
Most respondents to a University of Bristol study named the brothel law, which stops two or more sellers working from one address, as a problem for their safety. The Home Office commissioned that study, The nature and prevalence of prostitution and sex work in England and Wales today, and it appeared in October 2019.
The law had been questioned before. The Commons Home Affairs Committee recommended in July 2016, in its report Prostitution, that soliciting stop being an offence. The Government’s December 2016 response (Cm 9361) said it did not “have at present a robust evidence base” and that it would scope research. That research became the Bristol study, commissioned in 2018. In December 2025, a cross-government strategy committed to review how the law addresses prostitution. A March 2026 written answer gave no timeline.
Opinion is polled. The people involved are not reliably counted.
The Bristol study, by Hester and colleagues, says of people selling sex: “currently in the UK, no source of data allows for the production of representative population estimates for this group.” Published estimates of how many people sell sex run from 35,882 to 104,964 depending on method, and the top figure counts profiles on one online platform.
Sanders, Connelly and Jarvis-King did ask about education, in “On Our Own Terms: The Working Conditions of Internet-Based Sex Workers in the UK”, published in Sociological Research Online in December 2016. They surveyed 240 members of National Ugly Mugs, mostly independent escorts, between November 2014 and January 2015, and about one in ten of those approached replied. In the survey, 38% of respondents held an undergraduate degree and 17% a postgraduate qualification. The authors set the 38% against 40% of the general population in the 2011 Census, and noted “large numbers of highly educated women” in the sample. The mean age was 36 and the mean age of entry was 29. They read that as showing that independent escorts “are often older and have had previous work experiences in the mainstream economy”.
The Bristol authors recognise that many people in prostitution “are subject to acute exploitation and serious and sustained harm”. They also found that social class and education level “appear to be diverse”, and only weakly shield against economic need. Some respondents described selling sex as “a pleasurable and lucrative career choice”. The authors’ sense from the data is that a substantial proportion sell sex “to get by financially”. They urge caution about generalising.
Neither study contains evidence of a rise in highly educated or professional women entering escorting.
HauteLab is an agency that specialises in the luxury adult sector. It offers its own observation from its enquiries. The observation carries no figures and no time period. A HauteLab spokesperson said: “The agency is receiving more and more enquiries from young professionals who are already highly successful. It has worked with university lecturers who also work as elite companions. Discretion and anonymity are paramount for these women, because of the negative image that still lingers.”
Neither study set out to separate the top of the market from the rest, so neither can say whether the elite companionship the agency’s spokesperson describes is more common than it was.
How independent escorts choose clients and guard their anonymity
Independent escorts, the Bristol study says, “set their own prices, hours, service limitations and decide which clients they see”. In the Sanders survey, 79% said they could refuse clients all of the time. For some paid at the higher end, Bristol heard, full time could mean two or three clients a week.
Stigma and poor attitudes towards sex work were the second most disliked part of the job in the Sanders survey, after time-wasting clients and ahead of danger and violence. The Bristol study records a fear of being “outed” to friends, family or colleagues. Some independent escorts, out of concern for anonymity, do not advertise at all and respond to buyers’ ads instead. Other independent workers run their own websites or use social media to raise their profile.
Money is a second exposure. In its September 2024 update UK Payment Accounts Access and Closures, the Financial Conduct Authority recorded adult entertainment industry representatives saying that a personal bank account shows a person’s name to clients and exposes them to blackmail. Closed business accounts, they said, can force people onto cash or personal accounts. Bristol found bank transfer less desirable to some sellers and buyers for a similar reason: it may reveal a real identity.
Where Britons draw the line
A fair question is why influencers can sell sexuality and keep a public audience, while sex workers are looked down on and find it hard to operate openly. The polling and the platform rules offer part of an answer.
Hostility is not reserved for escorts. In the research above, 86% were unwilling to date a porn actor, against 87% for an escort or prostitute. Paying changes the picture. A YouGov article of March 2024, “Women unwilling to date OnlyFans users”, drew on the same survey. Among Britons, 44% were willing to date someone who watches pornography and 42% were unwilling. For someone subscribed to an OnlyFans creator’s account, 64% were unwilling, and 74% if that person interacts with the creator.
Meta’s Community Standards, in the section “Adult sexual solicitation and sexually explicit language”, prohibit content that offers or seeks sexual encounters for money, including escort services. They still allow discussion of “sex worker rights advocacy and sex work regulation”.
A payment-driven change at one platform shows the same line from the money side. OnlyFans had announced rules banning sexually explicit content from 1 October 2021, first linking the change to pressure from financial partners. On 25 August 2021 it said it had suspended the plan after banking partners assured it that it could support all genres of creators. LBC reported both steps in “OnlyFans suspends future ban on sexually explicit content”.
The poll and Meta’s rule both point to payment combined with personal contact as the harder line. None of these sources sets an influencer’s position against a sex worker’s head to head, so the double standard is easier to describe than to measure.
What a poll cannot count
YouGov can say that 87% of Britons would not date an escort or prostitute. The Home Office-commissioned study of 2019 found no UK source of data that could produce representative estimates of how many people sell sex. Any claim about who does this work, and how that is changing, rests on small surveys and on what people see from inside it. Some of those claims will be right, but none can be checked against a national count.
