London Olympics targeted by trade in sex trafficking and illegal workers

The London Olympics are being targeted by criminal gangs behind the multi- billion pound international trade in sex slaves and illegal workers, police have warned.

They fear huge numbers of foreign women could be smuggled into the country to work against their will as prostitutes. The building contracts on offer could also lure employers prepared to boost profits by exploiting illegal foreign workers.

Police sounded the warning as the Home Office set out plans to tackle sex trafficking, believed to cost Britain £1bn a year. An estimated 4,000 women are brought into the country every year, most ending up in prostitution, while others are forced to work for a pittance. Unknown numbers of children and illegal workers are also brought into the UK.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, signed a European convention that gives trafficking victims temporary permission to remain in Britain. The Home Office also published an action plan for training immigration teams at ports, creating a national victim-support system and setting up a child trafficking telephone advice line. The department said criminal gangs would try to exploit the opportunity of the Olympics by establishing themselves in London and said plans had already been drawn up to put them out of business.

Grahame Maxwell, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "There is a possibility for labour exploitation and a possibility for sexual exploitation. There will be huge construction projects taking place and people will be putting in some very competitive tenders. We will be working very closely to ensure that the right people are making the right things." Mr Maxwell added: "You will have young men together who earn considerable amounts of money. If they spend that money paying for sex, we must make sure they are aware there are women held against their will." He said the prices paid for sex slaves ranged from £8,000 for a 15-year-old virgin to £500 for a woman forced to work in a restaurant and have sex with her co-workers.

Vernon Coaker, a Home Office minister, said all men who knowingly had sex with a woman who had been trafficked should face rape charges. He said: "Frankly, what else would anybody call it? I think if you have got a situation where a man knowingly has sex with a woman who he knows is not freely consenting to that, then I think that that could be considered as rape."

Poonam Joshi, a women's rights campaigner for Amnesty International, said: "Today is a great step on the road to eradicating trafficking in Britain. Trafficking in people is a vicious and well-organised crime which is causing untold human misery around the world and right here in the UK."