“These are entry-level jobs into a world of gross exploitation and violence.”

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has paid cash incentives of up to £2,275 to lap-dancing bars and similar establishments to hire young unemployed people aged 18-24 as part of its Youth Contract scheme.

Strip clubs and massage parlours that offer full-time jobs to young people for at least 26 weeks can claim up to £2,275 – as long as the young person is neither a “performer” nor “performing sexual acts”.

Labour MP for Slough,  Fiona Mactaggart, who discovered that the subsidies apply to strip clubs and lapdancing bars, wants them scrapped.

She said: “I do not think parents would welcome government-sponsored recruitment into the sex industry.

“These are entry-level jobs into a world of gross exploitation and violence.”

Mactaggart has now raised the matter in Parliament, and has demanded to know how many people employed in such establishments go on to become sex workers.

She said she had met young women who started out working in cloakrooms who went on to become prostitutes.

The DWP said that young people are only ‘guided towards’ working in sex establishments if they specifically ask.

Guided towards?

Since 2012 jobs with a sexual purpose have been banned from government websites, although “ancillary” jobs within such establishments are still available.

A document released by the DWP listed jobs in the adult entertainment industry for which employers can receive government subsidies to employ the young unemployed.

These are: those involving the sale, manufacture, distribution and display of sex related products; auxiliary workers in lap/pole dancing clubs, such as bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners; auxiliary workers in strip clubs, such as bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners; auxiliary workers in saunas/massage parlours; bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners; glamour model photographers; web-cam operators; TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for adult channels on digital TV; and TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for pornographic films.

A DWP spokesman said: “This Government took action to ensure jobs in the adult industry which might exploit jobseekers were not advertised through Jobcentre Plus.

“We also ensured that to be eligible for our schemes jobs must not exploit vulnerable jobseekers.”

So you can get taxpayers money to teach you how to be a producer or director of pornographic films, or to photograph glamour models and possibly exploit other people…

And what happens if, when you are all settled in, you are offered another job, ‘inhouse’? What happens if you turn that down? Sanctions?

I don’t think this has been thought through.