SEX workers warned yesterday that a proposed ban on advertising their services would push many into dangerous work for exploitative employers.

The Advertising of Prostitution (Prohibition) Bill was proposed by Lord McColl of Dulwich to “make it an offence to publish, or distribute, an advertisement of a brothel or the services of a prostitute.”

The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) is urging peers to contest the ban on call cards, websites and classified adverts on the basis that sex workers currently advertise as part of a “safety strategy” that enables them to screen clients.

“Banning advertising will force sex workers out of premises and many will end up on the street where it is 10 times more dangerous to work,” said the ECP spokeswoman Laura Watson.

“It could push sex workers into the hands of exploitative bosses leaving them at higher risk of violence, coercion, isolation and criminalisation.”

Luton sex worker Cybil said that she advertises on her website because it enables her to keep all the income — in contrast to when she worked in a “middle-man” parlour — and work in “complete anonymity.”

Brothel laws already put sex workers in danger, breaking up “safety networks” by ­making it illegal for more than one person to work from one premises, the ECP said.

The organisation also disputed claims that 80 per cent of sex workers were victims of trafficking — which is used to justify partial criminal­isation of clients — saying that the true figure was less than 6 per cent.

At the request of MPs, a Commons conference will be held on November 3 to gather evidence from sex workers and academics in favour of decriminalising prostitution.