Sir David Spiegelhalter
speaker
51 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2013
last heard Jan 2015
Sir David Spiegelhalter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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My number is £5.7 billion.
This was the amount that the Office of National Statistics estimated that prostitution contributed to the economy in 2012.
And the reason they had to do this is that EU has now regulated that both prostitution and illegal drugs should be part of national accounts and contribute to GDP.
Now, you know, where did they get this figure from?
And it's quite difficult to judge.
Is that big?
Is that small?
It's a big number.
But the ONS nicely give us a simple spreadsheet and say roughly where they got it from.
They estimated there's around 61,000 people working in prostitution in the UK.
Average cost per visit is about £67.
And that each was seeing about 25 clients a week and working 52 weeks a year.
Multiply those up, and you get £5.7 billion.
Now, this figure has been questioned by people close to the profession as being far too high, and I actually agree with them.
If we go through those components, the 61,000 probably isn't too bad.
It's very difficult to estimate, and the trade is changing so rapidly in that the number of independents now with the internet has grown enormously.
You can go onto one website and see 30,000 people operating independently,
Yeah, exactly.
I don't necessarily recommend it, but I've been doing this research.
The numbers are there.
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