In 2009 the Lib Dems vigorously opposed the Labour government plans to criminalise buyers who pay for sex with a trafficked or otherwise coerced person. According to former Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne, the government's proposals would "drive sex workers underground". He argued that the right way to protect the women would be to regulate the sex industry so that brothels were places of safety. Several key figures in the party argued that prostitution would always exist and should simply be regulated. 

According to Elizabeth Evans, the party's line on prostitution is entirely in keeping with its failure adequately to address wider issues of violence against women. "Viewing prostitution through the lens of choice rather than through a prism of structural violence means that for many within the party the issue of legalisation simply fits into wider debates concerning drug legalisation," she says. "In short, the debate is about consent and protection rather than prevention and any attempts to tackle the root causes of prostitution."

A number of individual Lib Dem politicians have behaved extremely badly. An Essex local councillor, Gary Scott, posted pictures of his erect penis on a social networking website in 2006 but was not sacked from his role and still serves the people of the Alresford ward on Tendring Council. 

Mark Oaten was a senior member of the party and considered as a potential party leader until a scandal forced him to resign from the front bench. A tabloid newspaper revealed that Oaten had hired a 23-year-old male prostitute between the summer of 2004 and February 2005.

There is no better example of Lib Dem sleaze than the Mike Hancock debacle. Hancock has been accused of subjecting a mentally-ill woman to "upsetting sexual treatment" over the course of ten months after she approached him for help with a neighbourhood dispute in 2009.