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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Good morning. Operation begonia is the utilisation by the police and the Government of the existing laws that we have on prostitution, which we have had for some time. It seems to be working very well. Although we have laws that criminalise sex buying, such as the kerb crawling legislation, that is only able to target somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of the whole market of prostitution. As the minister has picked up, prostitution has changed over the past few years and most prostitution is now happening off-street—so, indoors, in various different settings.

If the Scottish Government recognises that prostitution is balanced against women and girls—which the minister has done for more than 10 years and has repeated here today—that off-street prostitution now constitutes around 80 or 90 per cent of the prostitution market, and that no laws at all exist to combat the violence that the Government has said that it does not agree with, then surely this is a good opportunity for the Government to work with and support me to get the bill into law. That way, we can address the violence that the Government says that it is opposed to.

Okay. Thank you.

As Liam Kerr very effectively pointed out, this is quite a short bill, so I would imagine that there would not be anything like the number of amendments that we have seen on other bills that have gone through the Parliament recently.

Survivors have given evidence to the committee. The Casey report into grooming gangs, which the United Kingdom Government commissioned, recommended the removal of prostitution convictions for those who have been exploited in prostitution. Scotland’s justice agencies echoed that recommendation very strongly when they gave evidence to the committee—in their view, it is very important that Scotland send a message that women should not be criminalised, and that that message be updated in law and not only in practice.

The minister has raised concerns in relation to the quashing aspect, and she is quite right to say that we have already had a discussion in private about the issue. I am very open to looking at other ways in which those convictions could effectively be removed, not by the process of quashing but perhaps by another system—a pardons and disregards-type system, perhaps, which would achieve the policy aims but do so in a way that the Government would be more comfortable with.

The fact that the Government supports the principle of criminalising the buyer and not the women surely shows that the Government supports the majority of the bill. Would our coming to an arrangement that suits the Government—perhaps on pardons and disregards—satisfy it and allow it to support the bill?

Not online, but off-street prostitution—indoors.

I will press the minister here. You said that you support the principle of challenging demand and that you are opposed to violence against women; I have pointed out that there are no laws prohibiting that violence whatsoever. If we can get the bill into a position where the Government is happy with it, will the Government support and work with me to get it into law?