Paying for sex, and being paid for sex, are not illegal in the UK. But there are some very strict laws that people need to be aware of.

Both people need to be over the age of 18.

There needs to be no element of coercion. The paying person is guilty of an offence if the sex worker is coerced even if the payer is not aware of any coercion.

There needs to be no trafficking. The UK uses a stricter definition of trafficking, which can include someone voluntarily coming to the UK. It also includes travel within the country.

There's some other stuff too about premises used as brothels and about pimps.

Your comments about use of Housing Benefit are weird and wrong and not worth responding to.

I only have hearsay to go on, but why do you think it is wrong?

Others points I believe are correct.

Because housing benefit doesn't work like that. It's idiotic to think that it does.

Most HB fraud is criminal gangs using fake id, or individuals who are cohabiting but claiming as singles.

Huh? I have claimed housing benefit when genuinely unemployed in the past (though not for some years). All they need is proof of address, some form of ID ,a statement of earnings/benefits and details of any dependents etc.

If you operate a cash only business with no paperwork there will always be a temptation to under report earnings.

So yeah, a certain proportion of those who operate cash-only businesses - gardeners, builders, whatever - fraudulently under-report their earnings. A proportion of those will also fraudulently claim benefits, though less than you might think - if you're going to do benefit fraud it makes more sense to do it on a larger scale, you're risking the same penalties and getting more income. But in any case, it's misleading to talk as though this were in any way specific to prostitution.

It's not really legal in the UK.

True it's legal to pay for sex, but it's illegal to offer sex for payment, or to live off immoral earnings.

It is only illegal to live off somebody else's immoral earnings (i.e pimping / running a brothel). It's also illegal to solicit in a public place (i.e kerb crawling).

It's certainly not illegal to respond to an advert offering paid sex or to place such an advert. I have no idea what the law would be regards propositioning people at random.

Edit: Paying for the services of someone who is coerced into prostitution against their will is also illegal.

Source: http://sw5.info/law/punters/

Immoral earnings? Based on who'se morals? I hope it's not actually worded that way.

Here's the act (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...)

It actually is! I presume it implies the morals of the Church of England.

Or the inherent moral view of legislation.

I know. A shocking concept: law has underlying moral values like "it's bad to kill people" and "stealing people's cars is wrong" and so on.

Yeah but murder is written into the law directly and so is theft, not some abstract notion of morality that differs from person to person and culture to culture.

So if paying so sex is made illegal, what happens if you pay your wife for sex? Not sure how this works in other countries, I guess it must be clarified somehow? In the UK it's very common for laws to be vague.