Hughes: launcing pilot scheme

The Home Office has announced plans to develop safe houses for women who are smuggled into the UK to work in the vice trade.

The move follows an explosion in the number of foreign women working in the UK's growing sex industry.

Under current rules "sex slaves" are often deported before they give evidence to police which could be used to combat people trafficking.

The new approach will see women given a safe haven in exchange for their evidence.

The move was announced by Home Office minister Beverley Hughes on Monday.

The minister denied, however, that every woman who claims to have been brought to the country to work in the sex industry will be allowed to remain.

"There is a new pilot scheme, with housing, which will offer support, counselling and assistance to women and to women particularly who are willing to co-operate with police in order to track down the traffickers," she told the Today programme.

"It is very important that the scheme has both of those aims. It is important that we support the women.

"But it is also important that we try to ensure that the same traffickers who brought them in are not going to bring other people in too."