Welcome to the UK Pimp State

Summary

FOI requests to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have revealed that the DWP, along with the tax office (HMRC), considers self-employment as an OnlyFans ‘creator’ to be regular self-employment, not significantly different from being a plumber or hairdresser for example.

Under DWP rules, jobseekers and Universal Credit claimants who are self-employed are given an amount that they are expected to achieve through their self-employment each month. This is called their minimum income floor (MIF) and these claimants “must take active steps to achieve their MIF”. Work coaches assess whether claimants are taking “appropriate steps” to achieve their MIF and if not, they may put pressure on claimants to do so, with the potential threat of sanctions, including a reduction in the amount of benefit they receive.

While some women make a lot of money on OnlyFans, the vast majority make very little, with average monthly earnings being about £130. The main way that a woman can increase her OnlyFans income is by creating more explicit and degrading pornographic content and promoting this by posting clips of it on mainstream social media sites, including TikTok, Instagram and similar, where children are likely to be present.

Increasing her OnlyFans visibility in this way is likely to increase attention from predators who want to pay her for in-person sex, and pimps and other third parties who want to cash in on her earnings. It may push her into “full service” prostitution and will inevitably expose her to more risks.

The DWP does not consider that treating OnlyFans as regular self-employment in this way breaches Section 2A of the Employment and Training Act 1973 (ETA), which bans the DWP making “arrangements in respect of employment for sexual purposes”. Furthermore, the DWP has no plans to extend the scope of the ETA to cover self-employment on OnlyFans and similar.

This means that the DWP is complicit in the commercial sexual exploitation of (mainly) young women and in increasing the amount of pornographic material that children are likely to be exposed to.

This also suggests that Dame Diana Johnson, Minister for Employment, misled Parliament in her response to questions from Rosie Duffield on 8 December 2025. There’s more on this below.

The FOI requests

We submitted two Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The response to our first FOI request explained that the DWP self-employment guidance does not refer to OnlyFans and that self-employment is not covered by Section 2A of the ETA. Together, this implies that the DWP considers OnlyFans to be standard self-employment and treats it in the same way as any other self-employment. The response goes on to say that there are no plans to extend the scope of Section 2A to cover self-employment.

The response to our second FOI request suggests that work coaches are not trained on Section 2A of the ETA and that companies who are contracted to carry out work on the DWP’s behalf are not explicitly made aware of it. It also appears to suggest that there is no mechanism for monitoring compliance with Section 2A.

Dame Diana Johnson’s response to Rosie Duffield’s questions

On 8 December 2025, Rosie Duffield MP asked two questions of the DWP in Parliament and Dame Diana Johnson as Minister for Employment responded. You can read the exchange on the Hansard website.

Rosie’s first question concerned what steps the DWP is taking to “prevent job seekers and welfare claimants being subject to commercial sexual exploitation”.

Dame Diana’s response included the following “Work coaches in jobcentres are trained to recognise a wide range of risks. If they identify safeguarding concerns, including a risk of commercial sexual exploitation, action is taken to escalate them to the appropriate agencies. The DWP does not accept jobs relating to sexual services, or those seeking employees for jobs of a sexual nature.”

Rosie Duffield then went on to define commercial sexual exploitation as “the exchange of money, goods or services in return for sex acts. It is a form of violence against women.” Dame Diana did not disagree with this in her response, indicating that she accepts this definition and sees commercial sexual exploitation as a form of violence against women – and this is backed up by her record, which includes introducing a Nordic Model style private member’s bill in 2020 (which failed to become law).

Being a creator of sexual content on OnlyFans clearly falls under the description given of commercial sexual exploitation and yet the response to our FOI request makes clear that the DWP considers this to be ordinary self-employment.

So what does Dame Diana Johnson mean in this context? Does she not understand that the DWP is pressuring women to increase their income on a platform that falls under the definition of commercial sexual exploitation that she appeared to accept? This directly conflicts with her assertion that work coaches are trained to recognise risks of commercial sexual exploitation and to refer the claimant to appropriate support.

This begs the questions: Was Dame Diana deliberately misleading Parliament? Or is she simply ignorant of how her department operates?

Either way, it does not look good. Surely it is beholden on the Minister for Employment to understand the fundamentals of how her department works? The fact remains that at the time she was speaking, under DWP rules women are at risk of being pressurised to increase their engagement as creators on OnlyFans, a form of commercial sexual exploitation, in order to increase their income and therefore reduce the amount of benefit the DWP has to pay them.

This is evidence that the UK is a pimp state – i.e. A government that legitimises, regulates, and profits from the commercial sex industry.

16 February 2026: We have now written to Dame Diana Johnson, Minister for Employment, about this. You can read the letter here. We will let you know of any response.

Corroboration

In September 2025, we published an article by a work coach in an English jobcentre about how Universal Credit claimants who are OnlyFans creators are being pressured into increasing their income on OnlyFans and the DWP office culture where OnlyFans is considered a bit of a joke and some male job coaches appear to seek free access to claimants’ OnlyFans content.

We followed this in November with an article that went into more depth. It covers Section 2A of the ETA and how it defines sex industry jobs in such a way that it is likely to cover most OnlyFans content creation. However, it only applies to employment and not to self-employment. OnlyFans creators are always self-employed. The article also explained more about how work coaches’ pressure on claimants to build up OnlyFans income works in practice. It also touched on how the prohibition on work coaches using information gained through their duties for their own private interests is rarely enforced.

The responses to the FOI requests corroborate what our anonymous work coach said in the article about women being pressured to increase their incomes on OnlyFans or face sanctions.

Sign our petition

We have now set up a petition about this. It calls for:

1. An immediate ban on the DWP putting pressure of any kind on claimants to maintain or increase their income and/or hours on OnlyFans or other commercial sex industry platforms.

2. The extension of Section 2A of the Employment and Training Act 1973 to cover self-employment in addition to employment.

3. For the DWP to recognise engagement as a creator on OnlyFans and similar platforms as a form of commercial sexual exploitation and a safeguarding risk and for it to be treated accordingly.

4. Training for all DWP work coaches and managers on the above.

Further reading

• Everything you need to know about OnlyFans
• How long before UK Jobcentres move from encouraging unemployed women into OnlyFans to mandating it?
• Is the DWP morphing into a pimp?

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