Official Report 893KB pdf
Good morning, and welcome to the 32nd meeting in 2025 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have received no apologies. We expect to be joined later by Rachael Hamilton.
Under our first item of business, we will finish taking evidence on the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill. We have one panel of witnesses, and I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for the evidence session. I refer members to papers 1 and 2.
I welcome to the meeting Ash Regan, the member in charge of the bill, and, from her office, Maren Schroeder, who is a senior researcher, and Anna Macleod, who is a parliamentary assistant—a warm welcome to you all.
Before we start, I remind everyone to be as succinct as possible in your questions and responses. I invite Ash Regan to make a short opening statement; we will then move to questions.
Thank you, convener. I want to put on record my thanks to the committee for the scrutiny that it has undertaken on the bill. I have listened very carefully to every witness and read every submission that has been made; no voice has been ignored.
I welcome the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s clear statement that the Scottish Government strongly supports the principle of legislating for the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. It is a significant moment for the Government, more than a decade on from the equally safe strategy, and for the public, whose views now firmly align with the principle at the heart of the bill.
I thank the Law Society of Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service for their constructive support and all the stakeholders with whom I have had engagement. I remain fully committed to working with the committee and other Parliament colleagues to amend the bill to address the concerns that have been raised during stage 1 scrutiny.
Committee scrutiny and consultation have revealed that there is substantial common ground, and even those who are opposed to criminalising buyers support the bill’s three other pillars of decriminalising sellers, the right to support and pardoning previous solicitation offences.
Tackling prostitution is only complex until we acknowledge the silent presence in every discussion: the sex buyer. Prostitution is not empowerment; it is exploitation and violence, and exploitation must never be acceptable in law or society. In 1999, Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex, and it now has the lowest number of women involved in prostitution and the lowest number of men buying sex in Europe. Scotland now has an opportunity to learn from Sweden and the many nations that followed its lead in continuously adapting to counter an ever-shifting global sex industry.
The unbuyable bill reflects the lessons learned from operation begonia and brings forward a clear principle: challenge the root cause, which is the demand to buy sex. The Crown Office has been clear that tackling sex buyers is in the public interest; it is already known that many commit other offences, including rape and domestic abuse. The bill will align the law with justice, public expectation and current policing practice. Its aim is simple but profound: to place criminal consequences on exploiters while removing criminal barriers that continue to harm the victims, and to support those in prostitution to move on with their lives.
The bill cannot wait. Against the backdrop of a multibillion-pound global sex trade that never stops marketing and exploiting, prostitution is driven by demand, and it targets women and children in what is now the world’s third-largest criminal marketplace after drugs and the arms trade.
Trafficking is a global scourge on humans. Last year, in Scotland, 78 per cent of those who were identified by the national referral mechanism as being trafficked with a sexual element were female; 36 of them were children. However, those figures are only the tip of the iceberg.
Vulnerable women and children in Scotland have waited long enough. As with rape law and domestic abuse law, criminalisation is the right decision, even though it is challenging. Criminalising sex buying is the right decision now, because doing nothing is in itself a decision—one that allows exploitation to continue unhindered.
The evidence points to one fundamental question: is prostitution a job like any other, or is it exploitation of the vulnerable? I think that we already know the answer, so now is the time to act. Sex buyers exploit vulnerability openly, in their own words, on review websites where women and girls are rated like products. We know the severe physical and psychological harm that is caused, and we know that those who claim that they choose prostitution do not speak for the majority—those who have no choice and no agency.
Buyers rarely ask whether a woman is safe, coerced or trafficked, or if she is a child. They only ask whether she is available. That is why the unbuyable bill is so necessary and urgent. Until the law names sex buyers as the problem, the vulnerable will continue to pay the price.
Thank you, Ms Regan. We will move straight to questions and I will begin with a couple of broad ones.
The first relates to last week’s meeting, when we had the minister here. She clearly set out her support, and the Government’s support, for the policy objective of the bill, but expressed concern about some aspects, such as the workability of the main offence, as outlined in section 1; the repeal of section 46 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982; and the proposal to quash past convictions.
In your opening statement, you acknowledge the work that lies ahead, so can you respond to those concerns? Have you had the opportunity to discuss them with the Government since last week’s committee meeting? Will you have that opportunity in advance of the stage 1 debate?
There is rather a lot in that question. I counted about four different things and will take them in turn, starting with the final point.
I have not spoken to the Government since last week, although I have had several meetings with the minister and her team while I have been developing the bill. The most recent of those meetings was some months ago. I attempted to get a meeting with the special adviser about two weeks ago, but that meeting did not take place. I imagine that the Government will watch this evidence session, and I think that it would be appropriate for me to meet the Government again soon after today’s meeting.
As I had an opportunity to say last week, I want the bill to work. It is important that we put it into law for the reasons that I am sure we will speak about. I think that some of the issues that the Government has raised are reasonable—quashing is the obvious example.
The policy intent behind quashing past convictions is that many women and girls who are groomed into prostitution and end up with criminal convictions find it very difficult to move on with their lives. Over the years, I have spoken to a number of women who have found that to be a real barrier to moving on with their lives in the way that they want to. They feel as if their convictions hang over them, and they have had to disclose them, for example for employment or housing purposes.
The committee will understand that there have been changes to the disclosure rules in Scotland, and that the situation is not as it used to be. The minister touched on that last week. Such a conviction will now remain on someone’s record for only a year and, after that, will not be disclosable for level 1 or level 2 checks. However, the principle remains that someone can be criminalised for their own exploitation, so there is a symbolic element here.
The policy intent behind the quashing of past convictions and the repealing of offences is to send a message, and it is one that has been echoed elsewhere. I do not know whether committee members have had the opportunity to read the report from the Casey review, which came out a couple of months ago. That is the review that was ordered by the United Kingdom Government and by Prime Minister Starmer into grooming gangs. There were only 12 or 13 recommendations, one of which very clearly said that girls who had been groomed into prostitution should not be criminalised for their own exploitation. That is an important principle.
The original policy intent was to have automatic quashing, which I felt would send out the right message. It also seemed to be the simplest way to do it: it would be automatic and would apply across the board.
However, I have very much taken on board the evidence raised at stage 1. Maren Schroeder and I have had a number of meetings with the Law Society of Scotland and others to discuss the issue. I intend to lodge amendments at stage 2 to put into practice something that will fulfil the same policy intent but will do so in a more appropriate way, and that is to move to having an automatic pardon. That would have the effect of saying to people that they should not have been criminalised for their own abuse.
There would also be a voluntary disregard process, which has appeared in other pieces of legislation. I am sure members are aware of that process, which is familiar to our justice partners, such as the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, who already amend people’s records.
The approach also respects the idea of being trauma-informed. We do not want to be sending letters out to people who may have had a conviction 40 years ago. That would not be good practice. I think that the new approach will achieve all the policy objectives that we set out to achieve, but does so in a way that respects the law. It certainly picks up on points made by the Government, by Liam Kerr at a previous committee meeting and by the Law Society.
That deals with those two points. Do you want me to move on to enforcement?
09:15
I am sure that what you have been outlining will come up in further questioning, so I will move to my second question, which relates specifically to section 1, on the purchase of a sexual act. In his evidence, Detective Superintendent Bertram emphasised the key point on
“understanding when the crime would be complete”,
noting that
“Whatever legislation comes in needs to be effective for policing.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 November 2025; c 3.]
Putting my former—police—hat on, I completely agree with that. I am looking at this from the perspective of whether section 1 sets out an offence that police officers can use effectively, and I have some concerns about that.
Will you talk us through how you envisage section 1 being complete, so to speak, when it comes to the range of scenarios that are covered by the section 1 offence? I suppose that I am asking what threshold of evidence police officers would be expected to obtain to prove that an offence was complete.
I took note of the fact that Police Scotland raised that in its evidence a few weeks ago. Under the bill, the offence is complete at the point of agreement to pay; the sex act does not have to take place. Obviously, that is intentional. There is also the reasonable inference test.
I know that committee members are interested in the Irish experience, so I note that the bill is drafted very differently from the Irish legislation. The offence is designed to focus on the buyer’s demand behaviour, so it does not require the act to have taken place before the police can intervene.
I was cognisant of evidence that came forward during scrutiny of the bill, and I requested a meeting with the Lord Advocate to discuss this very point, because I wanted to be clear about whether the drafting of the bill was appropriate. In the meeting with the Lord Advocate, she confirmed to me that there is nothing wrong with the drafting of section 1 of the bill and that, as far as she is concerned, the way in which it is drafted means that it is enforceable.
Thank you for that.
I have a final question on the point that you made regarding the crime being complete at the point of payment, or evidence of payment or intended payment. That brings to mind the fact that payment can include a transfer between bank accounts or online payment, which are notoriously difficult transactions for police officers to investigate. My question is a practical one: how do you envisage that being enforceable?
The Crown Office’s position on that, which it put forward when it was in front of the committee, provided an interesting perspective. Emma Forbes said that this is a type of offending that is carried out behind closed doors, like other types of offending that we have criminalised. Such offences are slightly more challenging to prosecute, but, as she said,
“That does not mean that we should not do it and that the difficulties are insurmountable”,—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 November 2025; c 2.]
because they certainly are not. All such offences are difficult to prove, but no one is suggesting that those offences—for instance, similar crimes such as rape or domestic abuse—should be repealed.
Established evidential routes are already available. I had that conversation with the Lord Advocate, and I have had numerous meetings with Police Scotland and other members of COPFS, because I thought that that was a very important point that had to be explored. In the past few weeks, I have had at least two and possibly three such meetings exploring the issue further with them. We have discussed various scenarios and what type of evidence might be used.
For the committee’s information, the evidence could be things such as digital communication, as the convener has mentioned, which could show the time, what act was requested and what price was agreed on. It could involve using payment traces and bank app data. In the meeting with the Lord Advocate, it was confirmed to me that that would not always require extensive digital forensics; it could just be screenshots—those would be sufficient. Surveillance could be used, where appropriate, as could various types of online intelligence. Obviously, third-party testimony would be a type of evidence that could well be used, as well as buyer admissions—the committee might be surprised to know that, sometimes, people admit that they have committed a crime when questioned by the police.
Good morning. According to the policy memorandum, the aim of the bill is to reduce the number of people in prostitution and reduce the impact on those who are, or have been, in prostitution. The committee has heard differing views and has been presented with differing evidence, as to whether the provisions in the bill as it is currently drafted will or will not achieve a reduction in prostitution. Do you maintain that the bill’s provisions will achieve the ends as set out in the policy memorandum? If so, can you help the committee understand why we should prefer that line of evidence, and reject the alternative?
Mr Kerr’s question cuts to the heart of the issue on which the committee is deliberating. I want to be clear on this point: the committee has not been presented with any verifiable evidence that the Nordic model does not work. A lot of statistics have been thrown around, and small samples of qualitative interview data have been presented to the committee, but that is not verifiable, state-level, Government-level research information.
Governments and Parliaments need to make decisions on policy frameworks and legislative approaches based on the evidence. The evidence that is coming from countries that have implemented the model is that, even if the law is changed and not robustly enforced, it will still have some effect. We have seen that in Northern Ireland and in Ireland. Yes, it is not having the full effect that we might anticipate, but it is having some effect. In a moment, I will go on to discuss how we judge whether it is having a good effect.
I know that the committee is concerned that it seems to have been presented with almost completely contradictory pieces of evidence, so we are developing, in the office, a paper that goes through, in extreme detail, all the evidence that has been given to the committee. I am happy to share that with the committee if it would help with your deliberations.
Turning to how we would decide whether the Nordic model is working, I think that there are a number of key issues that we would look for. We would be looking at what happens to demand and to the market size of prostitution; at trafficking inflows; and at culture and attitudes to buying sex. We need to look at those key things. In order for evidence to be verifiable, we need baseline data, and we need to be able to observe trends. That is why I am suggesting that much of the evidence with which the committee has been presented that appears to undermine the Nordic model does not, in fact, undermine it, because that evidence does not address those key things.
We can look at Sweden. After the buyers were criminalised, the share of men paying for sex fell by almost half, and Sweden now has one of the smallest prostitution markets in Europe. That can be contrasted with what we would call commercialised systems, because there is a bit of debate about whether those systems are regulatory models or decriminalisation models. Those models exist in countries such as Germany and Netherlands. They have some of the biggest markets—they have the highest numbers of men who are buying sex and the largest numbers of women who are in prostitution—and the largest trafficking inflows.
I have to say to the committee—it is disturbing to tell you this—that Scotland, under those measures, sits much closer to countries such as Germany and the Netherlands than it does to a country such as Sweden. We might think that our laws on prostitution are perhaps somewhere in the middle of the models, but the data that I am seeing shows that Scotland is much closer to the latter model.
I can give you the rates of people in prostitution by legislative framework. The data has been adjusted for population size, so it is comparable. To give you a starting point, in Sweden, the rate of people in prostitution per 100,000 is between 6.6 and 15 people. We can compare that to Germany, where, per 100,000, it is between 185 and 493 people. I hope that the committee can see the difference there.
I can read out all the other figures, but I expect that the convener will not like it if I do. Just for context, and for the committee’s information, the rate for Scotland, under our current legislative model, is between 108 and 144 per 100,000. When I saw those figures, I have to say that I was shocked. I think that there is definitely a problem in Scotland that we need to address.
The next question is similar. The committee has heard differing evidence as to whether criminalising purchasers might result in a higher risk for those who are selling sex. We have heard from both sides: on one side, we have heard, “No, it will not increase the risk,” and on the other side, we have heard, “Yes, it will increase the risk.” Do you think that there will be an increased risk to those selling sex? If not, why should the committee prefer that line of evidence as opposed to the alternative?
It will not make women more unsafe. No evidence has been presented that suggests that the Nordic model makes women more unsafe. That was one of the key notes that I took from Professor Jo Phoenix’s evidence. She has been a researcher and criminologist in this area for more than 30 years, and she said that there was no causal relationship, and no evidence had been presented for it, between the Nordic legislative model and making women more unsafe. I can state that categorically to the committee.
I turn to what we all agree on. People on my side of the argument who want to adopt the Nordic or equality model, and those who suggest that we should be pursuing another model, all agree on one fact: prostitution is inherently dangerous, violent, abusive and exploitative. The reason for that is the behaviour of the buyers, or punters. That is what makes it unsafe. I put it to the committee that, if prostitution is unsafe, dangerous and violent—I will give the committee the murder rates by country in a minute, to illustrate my point—that means that the larger the prostitution market in the country, the more women are going to be dragged into that and harmed, and possibly murdered. The smaller the prostitution market, the smaller the number of women who are going to be harmed.
I will not say to you that you can ever make prostitution safe. You can never, ever make prostitution safe—it is violent and abusive. What you can do, by using the Nordic type of legislative approach, is shrink the market down as much as possible, and the better you enforce the legislation, the smaller your market will be, as we have seen in countries where they follow robust enforcement.
I have a small follow-up question, because you brought in enforcement at the end. The convener asked an important question, and you brought up Northern Ireland and Ireland earlier. The committee heard in evidence from the Crown Office that it
“is mindful of the challenges experienced by police and prosecutors”
in those two jurisdictions. Do you accept that enforcement could be problematic? Earlier, in response to the convener, you said that this bill has been drafted differently. Can you help me understand precisely in what way it has been drafted differently if enforcement in Scotland is going to be different from enforcement in those jurisdictions?
The bill has been drafted differently—in fact, we spent quite a bit of time, in drafting it, looking at the drafting of various other pieces of legislation. In the original drafting, we had the offence drafted as it is drafted in the Northern Ireland legislation, and then we looked at the conviction rates. We also took note of the Irish review, which included a review of the way in which Ireland’s legislation had been drafted. Ireland has said that it now recognises that it has issues with the drafting of its legislation. When we drafted the bill, we took note of that and we drafted in a different way.
As I explained in a previous answer, we have included the reasonable inference test. I have sat down with the Lord Advocate, who is the head of prosecutions in Scotland. She read the description of the offence, and she said to me that there is nothing wrong with how the offence has been drafted, and that it is enforceable.
There have been issues with enforcement; I am sure that, if the committee had somebody here from Northern Ireland, they would say that. I have not been to Northern Ireland for some time—I went over there in 2017 and I spoke to the Advocate Attorney General—it was John Larkin at that time. At that point, the law had been in force for only a very short period of time, and he admitted to me that they were having issues with enforcement. Ruth Breslin, when she spoke about the Irish experience, said the same thing: they recognise that they are having trouble with enforcement.
09:30Other countries are not having trouble with enforcement. The latest statistics that I saw from France, which has not had the law in place for nearly as long as Sweden has, show that it has convicted 5,000 men. I know that France is a large country in comparison with Ireland and Scotland, so the context is different, but it shows us that enforcement of these offences is possible.
It can be an iterative approach. Ireland is looking at how it is enforcing the law and at ways to change it to make it better. Sweden has been on a very long journey, during which it has changed the way in which it enforces its legislation. I have been to Sweden and spoken to its prosecutors and its police forces, and to its anti-trafficking commissioner. I spent several days in Sweden looking at the situation with my own eyes. The police told me that, when they first started to enforce the law, they were using a surveillance approach. They would find the adverts online, go to the location and observe, and then, when the men were coming out, they would arrest them.
That is obviously a different context, but because of the way in which the culture has changed as a result of the law, there was an interesting public discussion. The public were saying, “Hang on a minute—if we think that this is violence against women and a crime is being committed here, why are the police waiting for the crime to be committed before they take action?” The police in Sweden have now changed how they police. They have moved from the surveillance model to what they would describe as a welfare model. That is very similar to the way in which Police Scotland police prostitution, and the convictions have gone up—
I will have to cut you off, I am afraid, because a number of members want to come in. We have had only two members ask questions so far, and we have a lot to get through, so I have to ask for much shorter responses, Ms Regan.
Are you done, Mr Kerr?
I am done—thank you, convener.
As you say, Ash, there seems to be support for three pillars of your bill from what I will refer to as both sides of the argument. However, there seem to be quite conflicting views on the fourth pillar, which is the principle of criminalising the purchase of sex.
One of the arguments seems to be that criminalising purchasers might have the unintended consequence of placing people who continue to sell sex at greater risk. A specific issue that has been raised is that it would be difficult for checks to take place with potential clients, and the legislation is likely to lead to there being less time to carry out such checks. What is your response to that? Is there any validity in that argument?
First, the reason why there is resistance to the idea of criminalising the buyer is that, as I have just explained, Scotland is a very profitable destination for pimps and traffickers. It is a top destination—that came out of a report from an all-party parliamentary group at Westminster; the committee can look it up. We are talking about millions of pounds being made from the commoditisation of girls and women. I gave you the national referral mechanism figures. Some of the people who are being exploited in the sex trade in Scotland are children. As a country, we need to consider whether we think that that is acceptable, or whether we want to change the law to address that. That is why there is resistance to criminalising the purchase of sex, but I do not think that that is a good enough reason not to do it.
As we have suggested—it came up when we discussed the bill with the Lord Advocate, and I think that it came out in the Crown Office evidence as well—this is root-cause offending. The type of men who are buying sex are quite often involved in other, similar crimes. Those men are involved in crime such as domestic abuse and other sexual crimes such as rape and sexual assault. It is appropriate, I think, that we consider criminalising this behaviour, because it sends a very strong message that, in Scotland, we do not want to tolerate this behaviour.
Screening is a myth. I come back to the figures again; I think that I mentioned them last time I was in front of the committee. There are the various proportions of women: the 2 per cent, the 38 per cent and the 60 per cent. The 2 per cent are probably the elite, at the very top of the market, and they are comfortable with the choices that they are making. I am not disputing that those women exist, and that they are in prostitution because they have made that choice. However, as legislators, we have to remember that they are not the majority, and their experience is not the same as that of the majority of people in prostitution. They might be able to screen, take a very small number of clients, make a lot of money and then leave the industry after a few years—but, as legislators, we need to consider the reality for the majority of women who are in prostitution.
I have spoken to women who have worked on street, I have spoken to women who have worked in brothels in Edinburgh, and I have spoken to women who were trafficked from Africa. There are many more examples, but I will just mention those. This is what they would describe to you. If you work in a brothel in Edinburgh, you cannot refuse clients. If you refuse more than a certain number of clients, your pay will be docked—and you have to pay fees and so on. Somebody working in a brothel in Edinburgh said to me that people have the idea that working off street is safer. She said, “I think it is slightly safer than working on street, but when we’re screaming in another room, the manager will just shut the door”—so that people could not hear them screaming quite as loud. It was not like anybody rushed in to save them or anything.
The myth of screening has developed a life of its own. If you are trafficked, as we understand the majority of women in Scotland who are working in prostitution off street to be—that is what I am attempting to target with the bill—and you are being coerced and controlled by a pimp, you will not have the opportunity to screen your clients. You will not know who is about to come through that door next, you will not know what has been advertised that you are supposed to be doing, and you will not get most of the money for it either.
We have to remember that anonymity is one of the most prized things that sex buyers have. That is the reason why the proposed law is so effective. It is not because we are going to put lots of the buyers in prison; it is because of the deterrent effect. These men value their anonymity. They use burner phones, and they use user identification, which is how women will sometimes attempt to verify them—they will try to verify whether a particular user ID is in use. They use fake names.
The women’s identities are often online, because of the review sites with pictures and so on. However, these men are very much in the shadows. They value their anonymity. It is laughable to suggest that there is any kind of meaningful screening. Do not get me wrong: I think that the women who attempt to screen will do so, because they are trying to survive in a system that is stacked against them. However, there is no meaningful screening that goes on. Most women in prostitution do not have the ability to decline punters.
If we take women working on the street, who I think you would agree are a more vulnerable group, some of the evidence seems to suggest, or some people are arguing, what you are proposing gives women in that situation less time to negotiate and to check. That is presumably an argument that you have had put to you. What is your response to that? Why are we are being told that?
You are being told that because the pimp lobby does not want to criminalise demand. Pimps and traffickers are making a lot of money in Scotland, and they want to continue to make a lot of money in Scotland. In fact, they would like to make more money in Scotland. They would like to move to the model that exists in Germany and have the sex trade expand and expand.
I would suggest that we can see the harms that are going on here in Scotland. The issue is sometimes very much in the shadows, and it is something that the Parliament has been able to avoid for a very long time. I do not think that we should be avoiding it. I know that it is difficult to talk about the issue, and it is difficult to face what is going on here in Scotland, but I can tell you now that, not far from here, there will probably be three or four trafficked women in an apartment who have been brought here from another country—probably Nigeria, China or Albania. They are being held, they are being coerced and they will not have a choice over who they see or what they do.
We have been told that, in France, the number of sex workers murdered seems to have been atypically high in the space of time immediately after the introduction of similar legislation. I am putting to you some of the things that are being said. Have you looked into that, and what is your response? Do you think that there is anything in that? You have mentioned France as one of the systems that you have looked at.
I am sure that the convener will not want me to go into extreme detail on this. I will follow up with the committee on the evidence that we have on it—but, no, that is not substantiated by any evidence. In fact, that was investigated by the court.
We are coming back to the same argument, but, although prostitution is inherently violent, we have to be careful that we are not conflating the legislative model with the violence. The violence is ever present. There is no evidence that the proposed legislative model makes things more violent or more unsafe.
I did not talk to you about the murder rates, which I will try to come back to if I get an opportunity in response to the next question.
That would be helpful, or perhaps you could share it with the committee later.
Can I perhaps now bring in other members and, if there is time, come back to you?
Yes, of course.
I urge witnesses to give succinct responses, just to allow everybody to come in. I bring in Jamie Hepburn.
Thank you, convener. I will stick with the theme, because our primary concern is the safety of women and girls who are involved in the selling of sex.
Ash Regan, you have obviously set out the principle and the conceptual nature of the purchase of sex as an act of violence against women and girls. I am the father of a daughter, and I understand that point, but what we are doing here is assessing the bill that we have before us and its practical impact. We have heard from a number of witnesses—and you have said that you have listened to every voice—who have said that the provisions of the bill would make the experience for women involved less safe. You have said very clearly that you do not think that that is the case. At a high level, do you think that that perception is wrong?
It is wrong, and it is not just me who says that. The committee had a criminologist—a professor with 30 years’ experience—in here who told you that that is wrong and that there is no evidence to back up that claim.
We have also heard from other academics, and we had the experience of engaging with women who are involved in the selling of sex—a summary of that engagement has now been published.
Which study was that?
I am not referring to a study. I am talking about our practical engagement with those involved in the selling of sex. At the very least, there is a perception that the bill would make the environment less safe. Do you think that that belief is held genuinely and sincerely?
I cannot speak for what other people might believe to be true. I am a legislator; I have to go with the facts and the evidence, and the facts and the evidence say that that is not true.
Nonetheless, that perception exists, so what are you doing to try to ensure that that perception is minimised, to take care of those concerns as you take forward the bill?
I hope that this evidence session will speak to that. I am doing as much engagement with the media as possible, where I continue to try to get the message out. The murder rate in various countries by legislative approach might be illustrative in this respect. In the UK, between 1990 and 2016, 180 women involved in prostitution were murdered. The most widely referenced statistic on the risk of homicide that women in prostitution face concludes that they are 18 times more likely to be murdered than a woman of similar age and race who is not in prostitution—that was from a US study. Twelve of the 180 women in prostitution who were murdered in the UK since 1990 were murdered in Glasgow or the surrounding areas.
I remind the committee that Germany has a commercial model; there are no laws preventing prostitution and it has the largest prostitution market in the whole of Europe. From 2002 to 2017, 75 per cent of the 86 murders of prostituted women in Germany occurred indoors, and many of them were in legal brothels. I just want to put on the record the fact that, under these other models, women are dying—they are being murdered in legal brothels.
Those are obviously appalling figures.
In Sweden, since the law was changed to the Nordic model or equality model, which is what I am suggesting for Scotland, there have been no murders of women in prostitution.
We have certainly been sent evidence from the Swedish jurisdiction that would suggest that there has been a substantial reduction. I am not arguing against that, although we did have evidence from the Police Service of Northern Ireland that suggested that what they have done in Northern Ireland has had a limited impact.
The figures that you have set out are appalling. Any rational person would understand that. However, you have made the point yourself, as did our very first panel of witnesses, that, even with the bill, we will never be able to make the selling of sex truly safe. The bill will not make it truly safe, but the question is, will it make it less safe? I have heard your perspective, which you have set out very clearly. You have talked about all the stakeholders that you have engaged with. When you have engaged with those who are opposed to your bill, and in whose perspective it would increase the likelihood of selling sex being less safe, what have they said?
I had a meeting with representatives of National Ugly Mugs. They put that perspective to me, and I asked them to show me the evidence for it, but there is none.
09:45
So, even though there is a perceived concern, you have no concerns whatsoever that the approach makes it less safe?
Because it does not make it less safe.
So, you have no concerns?
No.
I have another quick question—
Rona Mackay will then come in with a supplementary.
One part of the bill is on the nature of assistance and support for women who want to leave the selling of sex. You have said that there has been widespread support for that proposal, which I recognise, but there is not a lot of detail as to what that support would consist of. In your mind, what would it look like, how would it be provided, how would it be done on an even basis and what would the likely cost be? Moreover—and this is key, because we know that exiting from the sale of sex is not likely to be a linear process for everyone—should support also be available to those who are not immediately seeking to leave the sale of sex?
I know that Mr Hepburn will understand that because this is primary legislation, it sets the duty on Scottish ministers. Then, it is up to them, as they are obviously the appropriate people to place duties on other parts of the public sector to set staffing levels, decide how that might work and then set out a delivery and implementation plan to the Parliament. I will lodge an amendment that would provide for the Government having to do so within three months of royal assent—I invite members to think about whether they might want to do the same. It would be an affirmative procedure, so it would give Parliament an opportunity to scrutinise those plans.
I can talk to you about what good practice would be in relation to how we support people in prostitution. The costs are all set out in the financial memorandum, and the evidence that the committee has taken has shown that front-line services and other jurisdictions coalesce around that figure, which is roughly around about £1 million a year for support services, which I believe is a moderate amount for what we are talking about.
If I get an opportunity, I would like to talk to the committee about the costs to society of prostitution, which are very stark. We are often being asked in Parliament to observe the Christie principles and to bring the idea of preventative spending as much as we can into the decisions that we make here. I believe that this is one of those areas in which we should do that—I can support that with evidence, which, if I do not get a chance to put on the record now, I will follow up on in writing. I do not have the studies in front of me, but a number of them have looked specifically at that area. One of them—Maren Schroeder will correct me if I am wrong—was a Scottish piece of research that said that for every pound that you might invest in prostitution support services would deliver back between just under £6 and £6.80. That shows that this is a spend-to-save model.
The Government has admitted in various reviews that there is a fragmented picture of support. If you are in Glasgow, you will be very well served because you have access to Routes Out, which is an excellent service that does extremely good work there. However, that is funded by Glasgow City Council.
The Government is putting a bit of money into commercial sexual exploitation at the moment, but it is only resulting in, we think, somewhere between three and four posts across the whole of Scotland. As you can see, at the moment, very little support is available to those who are in prostitution.
I think that it was Diane Martin, when she came to the committee earlier this year, who talked about the need for linked-up casework, so that you can follow women over time, because you are right, Mr Hepburn, that what we know about working with women in prostitution is that it can take a very long time. Services might have to engage with women for a very long time before they are ready and able to leave prostitution. They might come into services, disappear for a while, and then come back.
I want to put on the record that there is no intention with any of this that anyone who is engaging with those services should have to say that they will exit—that should be a principle, and I intend to lodge an amendment to bring it into effect. No support services should be conditional in that way.
Rona Mackay has a very brief supplementary question.
I will be brief in picking up on an earlier point about safety, although I have further questions to come.
Regarding safety, you have mentioned Professor Jo Phoenix a couple of times and have spoken about her 30 years’ experience. I put it to you that the landscape of sex work has changed dramatically in 30 years and that most of that work now happens online. Do you think that your bill addresses that change enough? Is there enough in the bill to reflect that change?
That term “sex work” is a contested and disputed term, but it tends to encompass other things. I would say that it would probably be understood as including things such as web cams, OnlyFans or porn and not only prostitution, which slightly changes the way that we might think about it. It can also include pimps and managers, who are also termed as sex workers, so we need to be very careful with the terminology that we use.
The internet has made it much easier to exploit women. It used to be the case that prostitution was, for the most part, on street, but there was a limit to the number of hours women could go on the street and the number of punters that they could see in that environment. The reason that sex trafficking is now so profitable is because of online advertising. Women can be advertised to punters all over the place and punters can easily find them and can make appointments to go and see women who are exploited in prostitution in indoor settings. That is much easier.
The internet has not changed the nature of prostitution, which is still violence against women.
I am sorry to interrupt because I know that we are short of time, but you have not actually answered my question. Does your bill address that?
Of course it does, because the nature of prostitution as gendered violence has not changed at all. The fact that women are advertised online is a change because we used to have mostly on-street prostitution and we now have mostly indoor prostitution, but the nature of prostitution has remained the same.
I would like us to move on.
I was also going to ask about that. One of the reasons that the minister gave for having reservations about the framing of the legislation was specifically about that. What do you think she meant? I thought that she was talking about proving the offence.
Can you be more specific, Ms McNeill?
I thought that you might have read the evidence given by Siobhian Brown last week.
I have read that. Was it to do with safety?
She did say that one reason why she has concerns is because the sale of sex has moved online. She said that specifically. You may want to have a look at that.
Let me clear that up: the sale of sex is not online. We are talking about prostitution, which is separate to talking about porn or OnlyFans, because this is a targeted and narrowly defined bill that is only four and a half pages long and covers only in-person sex acts. That is what the bill covers.
It is right to say that the advertising is online. The bill does not cover that because it is my understanding that regulating that would be a matter reserved to the UK Government, which I know is also looking at this issue. However, my bill is an attempt to make a difference to violence against women and girls in an area in which this Parliament has the power to make a big difference.
I have some questions about evidence from the Nordic model. You have made specific reference to Sweden, where we know that the number of men paying for sex has halved. What can you tell the committee about what has happened to the illegal sale of sex in a country such as Sweden? I presume that some of that has gone underground.
It is often indoors, if that is what you mean, so I imagine that it is similar to Scotland. I think the committee has raised the fact that, even in a country such as Sweden, where they changed the law a very long time ago and there is relatively robust enforcement, prostitution still exists. You are right about that.
However, I have heard from Sweden that, when you criminalise the buyer, you change the power balance. It gives women who are in prostitution a sense that they have slightly more power in relation to the sex buyer than they had before, because now they have the law—and, one would hope, the police—on their side. If they have a problem with a sex buyer, they can go to the police about it. That makes an important difference to the power balance.
You said that you had had a discussion with the Lord Advocate about the offence itself. This is from memory, and you probably know it better than me, but my understanding of the evidence that we heard from the Crown Office was that it had difficulty with the offence in terms of evidencing the crime. I think that the Crown Office witness said that there were issues with the offence as framed and that they did not feel that there would be many prosecutions in relation to it—correct me if that is wrong. Will you talk us through that and through the framing of the offence? What evidence would need to be shown?
I have the wording of the provision framing the offence in front of me. It states:
“A person (‘A’) commits an offence if it can be reasonably inferred that A has obtained or intended to obtain for themself the performance of a sexual act by another person”.
The Lord Advocate said that she is happy with how the provision is drafted, but I think that the evidence suggested that there would be difficulty in proving the offence. That is my understanding of what was said.
Yes, you are quite right. It was Dr Emma Forbes—I will paraphrase what she said, as I do not have it in front of me, but I looked at it again this morning. She said that there would be the same evidential challenges that there are in other offences, such as rape and domestic abuse—I am sure that the committee is well aware of what those challenges might be. However, that does not mean that we should not do this and change the law, nor does it mean that the difficulties are insurmountable. If the Crown Office thinks that there are evidential challenges in the same way that there are with other offences, that is its opinion. Obviously, no one is suggesting that we should repeal the offences of rape and domestic abuse. They are very important in Scotland, and we would not even think about repealing them.
I have had a conversation with the police about what evidence they might gather. The police think that there is a gap in the law. They would like to have the powers to arrest and charge sex buyers. A number of different pieces of evidence would be used—I listed some of them in answer to an earlier question—and I imagine that some of that evidence would be digital, such as screenshots and so on. The evidence shows that, if the police move to more of a welfare model, they are more likely to develop a relationship with women who are working in prostitution, in which the women will often voluntarily share evidence with the police, particularly from their mobile phones. That model is working very well in Sweden. Because of the way that we police in Scotland, we are quite close to that model anyway. I had a number of conversations with both police and prosecutors, in which we imagined that some version of that model would work in Scotland.
Is that accepted by the Crown Office? I think that I am right about the Crown Office saying that it did not think that there would be many prosecutions. That is what Dr Forbes said, although I acknowledge that, as you say, there is sometimes still a point to legislating despite that. Do you think that that situation would change over time?
If the bill is passed into law and the offence is created, we want the legislation to work. As I said in answer to an earlier question, we have seen from other jurisdictions—particularly Northern Ireland and Ireland— that such legislation has some effect even when not enforced. That is because a lot of people do not want to break the law. If you tell people that they must wear a seat belt or that they cannot smoke indoors, most people will obey that and it will have an immediate effect, even without enforcement.
It is important that we have laws that are enforceable. That is why I have spent extra time checking the bill and the way that it has been drafted. We have not come on to this, but something that came up in relation to the definition of the “sexual act”. I would be happy to speak to the committee about that.
It appears that enforcement is an iterative process and that is certainly what we saw in Sweden, which has changed the way that it polices this area. As a result, Sweden has more convictions. When Sweden was using the surveillance model, it was getting something like 200 proceedings a year. In 2024—the year for which we have the most recent data that we have—Sweden moved to what we would understand as more of a welfare model and it is now getting 500 proceedings a year.
10:00I know that the committee understands that all contexts are different but justice partners have assured me that the proposed legislation is enforceable. If we in Scotland are taking it seriously and if we think that it is violence against women, we will need to enforce the legislation robustly. I imagine that we would go on an iterative journey, as we are doing with other types of offending. The Lord Advocate has obviously made some changes in respect of other types of sexual offences, so it might end up being something like that.
I am familiar with the Nordic model. I hosted the Swedish prosecutor about 15 years ago, so I know what claims are being made about their model, particularly for human trafficking. It is accepted that some of those models have reduced human trafficking but did you have any discussions with the national agencies about whether the way that the law is framed is a barrier to prosecuting and investigating human trafficking in Scotland? We have the National Crime Agency, which has a decent record on identifying and investigating human trafficking. Are you saying that the way in which the law is framed is a barrier or are you just saying that the model will help to reduce it?
I am not sure that I understand the question. Are you talking about the way in which our current laws are drafted or are you asking about the way in which the bill is drafted?
Sweden claims to have reduced human trafficking through the Nordic model. Human trafficking is a crime in Scotland. The National Crime Agency is responsible for reducing it and, to my knowledge it has a decent record. I am therefore saying that surely we are already reducing human trafficking in Scotland through what we are doing. I am asking about the way that the law is currently framed.
It is just a thought, because that is one of the claims that is made about the Nordic model, and I am wondering about the role of the National Crime Agency. Is there a suggestion that there is a barrier to tackling human trafficking?
I would say that the trafficking legislation that we have is good. In the conversations that I have had with the police, I have heard that it can be difficult to gather evidence in those cases, but they do it and we have seen some high-profile convictions because of that. I am sure that members will be familiar with the one in Dundee that happened not that long ago. The investigations are very painstaking and involved, and I am sure that it is a good thing to have trafficking legislation and to catch and convict traffickers.
What I am suggesting, however, is that we want our country to have a legislative framework that shrinks demand. The smaller the prostitution market is, the less profitable it is for traffickers. Countries that have lax prostitution laws, such as the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand, have higher trafficking inflows. That is demonstrated in the evidence, and I can send that evidence to the committee. Countries that have adopted the equality model have lower inflows of trafficking.
Trafficking legislation is good if you want to convict your traffickers, but if we want less trafficking—and I suggest that the Parliament does want to see less sex trafficking of women and children—we will need to reduce the market for prostitution and to make it as difficult as possible for traffickers. What makes it difficult for traffickers is not so much that they fear arrest—they just see that as a possibility in any jurisdiction. They want to know how much money they can make and how fast they can make it. The more buyers that there are, the more money they can make.
They would be less likely to come to Scotland.
That is what the evidence shows.
I want to go back to some of the previous questions that you have been asked. Regardless of the legislation in various countries, there is still a sex trade, and we have heard from sex workers who are concerned that criminalising the buyer will lead to more violence against them. They will not be able to do safety checks or identity verifications, and more of the work will take place at the buyer’s location of choice. You have said that you had discussions with some of those groups. What concerns were raised by those sex workers? You said earlier that there is no evidence that they have genuine concerns. What are your thoughts about their genuine concerns about the unintended consequences of the bill?
We have extensively covered the claims about the bill making prostitution more unsafe, and we have covered screening. There is agreement on three parts of the bill—the majority of the bill. If you are involved in prostitution, the bill will be very beneficial, because you will be decriminalised, any convictions that you have will be removed from your record and you will be able to access support services—
I am sorry to pause you there, but my question is specifically on their concerns. I know that you have given some of the other reasons, but some women have said that, for whatever reasons, they choose to be in sex work—
Yes—I have acknowledged that.
They have concerns about the bill. What was the conversation with them, and how are you going to address their concerns?
The bill will shrink the prostitution market, but it does not make any judgment on whether any individual woman should want to stay in prostitution—that is obviously a decision for them and them alone to make. I am suggesting that we legislate based on the majority of women who are in prostitution.
In jurisdictions that have adopted the proposed model, the relationship between the women who are in prostitution and the police improves. I think that those women feel that they are able to engage with the police and report things that have happened to them. As the committee probably understands, there are an awful lot of unreported rapes and assaults against women who are involved in the sex trade. It will be very important for those women to feel that they are able to go to the police to report that. I genuinely hope that, if we change the law in this way, all the women who are involved in the sex trade in Scotland will feel that all parts of the proposed law are beneficial to them.
In relation to indoor prostitution, the Crown Office has said that people involved in prostitution might be required to give evidence to prove the offence. What are your views on that?
That is quite right—that has come through in the evidence, and it has been raised with me in my meetings with the Crown Office.
For obvious reasons that the committee will understand, women working in prostitution will often not be willing to go to court. Many of them fear for their safety, they might have threats made against them and so on. Obviously, they might not want buyers to know that they have gone to court to get convictions. My view is that it would be good if we could get as many convictions as possible without relying on the women’s evidence. I believe that that can be done, but I accept that there will be occasions when the women will need to give their testimony.
That brings us back to the previous point about people who choose to be sex workers having concerns about safety. They will not choose to give evidence against a buyer.
They might.
How will the bill result in more prosecutions?
Those women might well decide to give evidence. If a punter commits an assault against them, they might want to report that to the police, as I believe they should. They should feel able to do that, and they should feel that the police will support them in making a complaint.
I have already acknowledged in front of the committee that a small minority of those who are involved in prostitution have chosen to be involved—the research puts the figure at about 2 per cent. I am sure that they would tell you that that is their choice and that they feel that they can manage the risks against them. No one is saying that we do not acknowledge that that is the case; we do.
I am concerned with the majority of people in prostitution: the women and girls who have been trafficked here from other countries, who have no control over what is done to them and who will probably leave prostitution infected with a sexually transmitted disease. They will probably have, or might have, irreversible damage to their bodies, including damage to their eyesight. I can go into detail with the committee as to why that might be the case. They might be incontinent. They will be traumatised. Studies have shown that they have rates of complex post-traumatic stress disorder at about 70 per cent, which is higher than rates among combat veterans and victims of state torture.
I believe that, as a Parliament, we should concern ourselves with those women, and we should seek a legislative framework that will reduce the prostitution market, because that will reduce the harm to the women and children who are dragged into it.
I turn to the financial memorandum. Police Scotland has stated that it will need additional funding if the bill becomes law. In a submission commenting on the bill’s financial memorandum, it said:
“Capital costs are currently estimated to be around £112,500 and Capacity/Opportunity Costs are estimated to be around £524,200 over the first 3 years of implementation.”
It went on to describe those as a “conservative estimate”. Do you agree that the policing costs are likely to be higher than those set out in the financial memorandum?
We set out in the financial memorandum the costs to the police, as we were obliged to do. The financial memorandum went to the Finance and Public Administration Committee and was passed back, with no further questions asked, because the committee was entirely happy with what is in it. Maren Schroeder can explain the difference between what we set out and what the police have subsequently raised with us.
The police did not dispute our estimated figures for operational costs, which are for enforcement actions and preparing files for court. Before the bill was published, they said that only after it was published could they do a scoping exercise on how much it might cost to prepare to implement the bill—those are the costs that you just mentioned. There are costs that would be split over three years and one-off costs that would not be repeated afterwards. They did not dispute the costs of enforcing the offence.
The Scottish Government has stated that, to calculate the potential costs associated with the statutory right to support, there needs to be more clarity on what support would be provided. Do you accept that?
It would be up to the Government to decide how it would design and implement that. I have suggested, based on engagement with stakeholders in Scotland, that the cost for support would be about £1 million a year. I suggest to the committee that it would be a case of spend to save: if you spend the money, you will save further money in justice, health, social work and so on over time. We have international examples, too. Ireland spends €1.9 million a year on its support services, which suggests that there are comparable international examples that converge on that amount of money.
It is important that we address the fact that very few support workers are working specifically on the challenges that prostituted women have and are able to work effectively with them. I suggest that it is very important that, in Scotland, we move away from the current fragmented approach to a consistent national picture of support.
The costs are set out in the financial memorandum, but the bill, as primary legislation, is not the appropriate place for the details of a delivery model to be set out. The right thing will be for the Government to set that out in regulations, and the bill gives it the opportunity to do that.
I thank the witnesses for their evidence so far. Quite a few of the issues that I was going to raise have already been covered, but I want to raise some of the concerns that we have heard from people who are currently involved in the sex trade. Sharon Dowey explored with you, and you brought up in your opening remarks, the issue about choice—people who choose to do it—and necessity. Does the bill take that into account? From the evidence that we have taken, we can almost distinguish between people who choose and make a decision to do it—who say that it is a good move for them—and those who are forced into it. If the bill were passed, what would be the implications for those who make that choice?
We have a pyramid that we can share with the committee—Maren Schroeder or Anna Macleod will find it for me in a minute, and I can show it to you—which shows, basically, the distribution of those women.
I keep saying “women”, and I hope that the committee will forgive me for doing so. I acknowledge that there are men and boys who are involved in prostitution, but women and girls account for 96 per cent of the people who are exploited in prostitution, so I use “women” as shorthand.
10:15As I said, we have a pyramid that I can share with the committee. It covers some of the figures that I have set out already. The 2 per cent at the top of the pyramid are the sexually exploited elite. I think that the people in that 2 per cent would say that they made a choice to go into prostitution, and it is their choice to do that. Next is the 38 per cent. We start to see the choices and agency of the people in that group reducing quite dramatically. They are forced into prostitution by things such as inequality, poverty, racism, sexism and lack of opportunities. Next is the 60 per cent—the majority, obviously. There is a high number in that group, and they are enslaved. They are there against their will; they have not made the choice to go into prostitution. Sex buyers quite often report on punters sites that they suspected that somebody was trafficked but that they did not do anything about it and carried on with the transaction anyway.
I want to ensure that the committee understands that, of the women who end up in prostitution in Scotland, about a third have come through our care system. We really need to do better for girls who have been in care. The committee will understand the situation better now, due to the public focus on the grooming gangs scandal. That is an extremely common model for forcing girls into prostitution. Girls who are 13 or 14 years old and have been through the care system are groomed into prostitution by older men.
In this study, a quarter to one third of the women and girls were sexually abused as children, or entered prostitution under the age of 18, so we can assume that they did not make a choice to be there. Trauma, addiction and mental health problems are the norm. About 80 per cent of them reported mental health issues, and a half to four fifths had substance abuse problems. Homelessness and poverty are major drivers for entering prostitution, which is why I am suggesting that our support model would include advocacy to mainstream services, because that is a very good model for providing support. Fifty per cent of the women grew up in poverty.
The figure for trafficking is very significant. Unfortunately, I believe that our figures on trafficking are not accurate. As the committee will probably understand, because most of this takes place indoors, we do not have a good understanding of the true nature and scale of sex trafficking in Scotland. In this study, the figure for such victims was between 36 and 39 per cent, but I suggest that the numbers are much higher than that. I had a conversation with the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner a couple of weeks ago, and she agreed with me—she thinks that those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
I suggest to the committee that these women and girls are worth more than a life in prostitution and what that will do to them. It is important that we change the law as a matter of urgency.
We also heard that people who are currently involved often feel that services—whether that be police, social work or health services—treat them pretty badly. They almost feel subhuman at times. From our evidence, there is a fear, as other members have expressed, that that situation would become worse if the bill was passed. What are your thoughts on that? Is there any evidence from other countries that would either back that up or disprove it?
If we introduce the model that I am suggesting and we have joined-up trauma-informed advocacy into mainstream services, as well as specialist services for people who are in prostitution, I imagine that things will get much better. In their evidence to the committee, the Crown Office and the police said that support is an important part of the issue. If the police are using a policing model in which they do welfare checks, they need to be able to signpost women to adequate support where they can feel that they are getting help.
You are quite right to mention that, quite often, women who are involved in prostitution have difficulty in engaging with mainstream services because of fears about what might happen to them in relation to accommodation and what might happen to their children if they disclose that they are in prostitution. Often, they do not want to make such a disclosure. That is why it is important that we spend more money on support services. A large part of that involves advocacy for women who are in prostitution so that they get the housing, financial support and so on to which they are entitled but which they might be afraid to access. We need to make sure that people get the support to which they are entitled. Often, for the reasons that Mr MacGregor set out, that does not happen.
You heard the minister say last week that the Government is generally supportive of the general aims of the bill and what you are trying to achieve, but that it feels that this is a big and complex issue, with various different moving parts. What do you think of the notion that your bill is perhaps not the right place to do this just now but that a bigger piece of work needs to be done in the next parliamentary session to marry up all the different strands? Do you have a thought on that?
I do have a thought on that, because I used to be the minister in that portfolio and, when I was in Government, this very bill was on the slate to be a Government bill. It should be a Government bill. Because I am attempting to legislate against organised crime, pimps and traffickers, it might be more appropriate for the Government to take the issue forward rather than an individual member, but we are where we are.
I have been working on this issue for a very long time and I just cannot get the stories of what has happened to some of those women at the hands of sex buyers out of my mind. I do not think that, as a society, we should be looking away from that any longer.
I have been in the Parliament for almost 10 years now and we spend a lot of time talking about how we are very serious about combating violence against women. I do not believe that the individual members of the Parliament can look at themselves in the mirror and say that we are serious about combating violence against women if we do not address this issue. It is violence against women and we must combat it. Parliament should have done it earlier. The Parliament has been going for 25 years and this is exactly the type of legislation that it should be looking at and implementing. It is a very small change in the law, but it will have an extremely large impact.
My questions follow on from Fulton MacGregor’s line of questioning. As we know, the bill is not a Government bill and the Government has said that significant amendments would need to be made to it. Do you have any indication of what those amendments might be? Can you outline those and anything on which you might be prepared to compromise?
Absolutely. I am pleased with the stage 1 scrutiny, because it has brought to the surface issues that we had not thought about. This is the first time that I have introduced a bill by myself, without the support of a Government team behind me, and it is a very different experience. However much research we do and however much work we put into it, it is always good to have other people look over the bill and perhaps suggest ways of improving it.
A number of issues have come up and we have touched on most of them already. One improvement would be to remove automatic quashing from the bill, as it was one of the minister's concerns, and move to the more appropriate model to achieve the same policy intent, which is an automatic pardon and voluntary disregard. I put on the record today that I intend to lodge stage 2 amendments to do that.
The Law Society has also helpfully suggested that we might change the definition of a sex act because it thought that the definition was too widely drawn and, as the Crown Office has also pointed out, it might make it more difficult to get convictions if it is that widely drawn. I have taken that on board and I intend to lodge an amendment at stage 2 that will change the definition of a sex act. It will be explicit, but it will be the way that sex acts are described in other legislation, so it will be familiar to MSPs and our justice agencies. It will make the law clearer, more understandable and, I hope, more enforceable.
Those are the two main issues that I have thought of. I have also taken on board a couple of small issues about sentencing that have been raised and I intend to lodge amendments to clear those up, but they will be more technical amendments.
We have heard very polarised evidence. Should the committee have taken more evidence? Would you have liked more evidence from people with lived experience?
My understanding is that the committee has taken evidence from people with lived experience, including a group of people who are in prostitution, and I think that there was also engagement with a group called Scotland for Decrim, which has given some further information.
I understand that the committee is finding it a little bit challenging to sift through conflicting viewpoints on the main part of the bill, which is about criminalising the buyer, but the evidence that has been given to the committee is compelling. It comes down to the basic fact that if we believe that prostitution is violence against women, we have to legislate to show that we do not believe that it is right and we have to create a new offence and be able to arrest, charge and convict people who commit that type of violence against women and girls.
The bill fits into the continuum of the increase in violence against women and girls. In fact, crime figures that came out this week show that crimes in prostitution have gone up by 33 per cent. I know that the member understands that we are looking at a culture of escalating violence against women and girls and my contention is that the bill is very much rooted in that. It addresses some of the same people who are committing other types of offence against women and girls. It is a very good place to start sending a serious message to Scotland that we value our women and girls, that trafficking is not acceptable, that any form of violence against women is not acceptable, and that, under the Government’s definition, prostitution is violence against women.
You are absolutely right that we all agree that violence against women and girls is never acceptable and we have to try to eradicate it.
My final questions just require brief answers from you. Do you think that, as it stands, the bill is enforceable? Does it do enough to reflect the differing nature of sex work?
As I said earlier, the bill addresses in-person prostitution only, but it is a good place to start. I will probably not be here in the next parliamentary session, so if we pass the bill into law, which I hope we will, it will be up to the new parliamentarians to continue with the work and look at other ways of working against violence against women and girls in the area of commercial sexual exploitation. I am starting here because it is where we see the greatest amount of harm to women in prostitution and we have the powers to do something about it, which is also important.
I think that the proposed legislation is enforceable. That has been echoed back to me by our justice partners. However, I accept that, if we pass the bill into law, we as a country might have to go on an iterative journey on enforcement, as other countries have done.
Ash Regan, you must have been pleased that the minister supported the general principles of the bill on the criminalisation of purchasing sex. However, when I read the Official Report of last week’s meeting, I saw that the minister also went on to make significant excuses, let us call them, about why she would not go on with the bill, which were about time, and how the police would deal with the offence operationally. She brought up the introduction of operation begonia, the violence against women strategy and the equally safe strategy. She brought up the fact that the Government is tackling societal issues such as poverty and addiction.
As you have said, the minister had a bill ready on paper and you had it ready on paper when you were a minister, so why did the Government not really commit to making women safe and work with you on the bill within the timeframe that you have?
The timing is very tight, but—as I have said before—the bill is so important that I hope the Parliament will come together on it. The committee is playing its part. I am doing my best, and I hope that the Government will help me with that. We are talking about women’s lives. I want to get us to a position where we are like Sweden and where we do not see 12 women in prostitution murdered in Glasgow within a certain time period—where we do not see any more women in prostitution in Scotland being murdered—because we have changed the law.
I am therefore pleased that the Government has put on the record that it supports the principles of the bill and I am happy to work with the Government. As Ms Mackay said in her question, the Government has issues with the bill and I intend to lodge amendments to deal with the issues that have been raised. When the Government sees the amended bill, I hope that it will be able to offer its full support.
We will have to bring the session to a close now. I thank Ms Regan and colleagues for a helpful evidence session.
We will have a short suspension until 10:35 to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:30 Meeting suspended.Air ais
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Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27