Removes the likelihood of increased sex tourism with the UK

The argument

A further argument for partial decriminalisation, rather than full legalisation, is that it removes the likelihood of increased sex tourism. By keeping the purchase of sex an offence, the model avoids turning the United Kingdom into an open and advertised marketplace for buyers. Where buying sex is fully legal and the industry operates openly — as under some legalised-brothel regimes — a country can become a destination for sex tourists travelling from abroad specifically to purchase sex. That visible, lawful market expands overall demand, and rising demand is precisely what draws in trafficking and exploitation, as suppliers seek to fill it, sometimes by coercive means. Full legalisation, on this view, risks importing those harms on a larger scale. Partial decriminalisation is designed to avoid this. By decriminalising the sale of sex while keeping its purchase illegal, it removes criminal penalties from the worker — the more vulnerable party — but maintains a legal deterrent against buyers. The country therefore does not become an open marketplace, and does not advertise itself, at home or abroad, as a place where sex can be freely and lawfully bought. The result is a policy that aims to capture the protective benefits of decriminalisation for workers without the principal downside of a fully open market: an influx of buyers and the growth in trafficking and exploitation that surging demand tends to bring. It targets the harms associated with the trade while declining to stimulate it. Because it removes the likelihood of increased sex tourism within the UK, this argument holds, sex work should be partially decriminalised.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics of the partial-decriminalisation model argue that keeping the purchase of sex a criminal offence carries its own documented harms for the very workers it claims to protect. Where buyers face arrest, sex worker organisations and several studies report that transactions are driven underground, negotiations are rushed, and workers lose the time and leverage to screen clients or agree terms safely — so the model's protective aim for the 'more vulnerable party' is contested on the evidence. The sex-tourism premise is also disputed: New Zealand's full decriminalisation of both sale and purchase is not reported to have produced a surge in trafficking or in buyers travelling from abroad, which undercuts the assumption that any open, lawful market necessarily expands demand and imports exploitation. The demand-to-trafficking mechanism is asserted rather than established, and it treats a lawful domestic market and international sex tourism as if they rise together, when regulation, advertising rules and enforcement can be set independently of whether purchase is criminalised. On this view full decriminalisation, the sibling position, better secures worker safety without relying on a deterrent whose costs fall on workers.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The claim that a lawful market necessarily expands demand and imports trafficking is contested — New Zealand's full decriminalisation is not reported to have increased trafficking or sex tourism. [Rejecting P3] Keeping the purchase of sex an offence has its own documented harms, pushing transactions underground and reducing workers' ability to screen clients, so the model may endanger the workers it claims to protect.