Public Policy Researcher Carys Moseley comments on a new Scottish bill on prostitution which would criminalise people for purchasing sex
Scottish MSP Ash Regan has unveiled a private bill in the Scottish Parliament to introduce the Nordic Model of legislation on prostitution to Scotland. The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill was published last week.
This bill is the most recent attempt internationally to put the so-called Nordic Model (criminalising purchase of sex, decriminalising selling sex) on a statutory footing, and setting up a requirement for exit support services.
The bill would change the law in four ways:
- It would make paying for sexual services a crime
- It would decriminalise soliciting or importuning by prostitutes
- It would quash previous convictions by prostitutions
- It would provide an exit pathway from prostitution for those who want to leave
Christian Concern encouraged people to respond to the public consultation on the bill last September.
Criminalising paying for sex
A man who pays for sex from a prostitute could be imprisoned for up to six months, or face a fine of up to £10,000.
In Scotland, some activities relating to prostitution are currently illegal:
- running a brothel; people are regularly imprisoned for doing so.
- soliciting or loitering in a public place for buying sex (kerb crawling)
- soliciting or loitering in a public place for selling sex
- human trafficking for sexual exploitation
- persuading or causing someone into prostitution, or attempting to do so
It is not illegal for a person to sell sexual services from a residential or other establishment.
Regan’s proposals cut across the distinctions of where prostitution can and cannot happen by criminalising buying sex altogether. The aim is clearly for the criminal law to deter men from sexually exploiting women and girls.
We welcome the proposal to criminalise paying for sexual services. Prostitution is inherently immoral and unethical and profoundly detrimental to all those who are prostituted as well as to society more widely. It exhibits degradation of women, girls, men and boys who are prostituted by requiring them to sell sexual acts and body parts, thus impairing their own mental and physical integrity and well-being. Those paying for sexual services are facilitating degrading treatment of these people, mostly women, and a legal deterrent is required to uphold true justice.
Decriminalisation of selling sex
Section 2 of the bill decriminalises soliciting and importuning by prostitutes, by repealing section 46 of the Civic Government (Scotland) 1982 Act.
We did not agree with these proposals in the public consultation. We agree with the bill’s supporters that the evidence shows that most of those who are involved in prostitution are in that situation due to having been groomed, coerced, trafficked, or due to severe restriction on ability to earn a living. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that some people in prostitution are advocates for decriminalisation due to approving of prostitution as ‘sex work’. These people naturally oppose the bill provisions for criminalising purchase of sex. Due to this we consider that it is necessary to keep the criminalisation of soliciting, as this preserves the message that prostitution is inherently immoral.
Quashing previous convictions for prostitution
Sections 4 and 5 of the bill would also quash a person’s previous convictions for prostitution under Scots law. A similar moral problem arises here as with the proposal to decriminalise soliciting and importuning. A certain message risks being given out that would normalise prostitution in society.
Providing support to leave prostitution
The most positive aspect of this bill is that Sections 6 and 7 place a duty on the Scottish ministers to provide support and assistance to people who are or were in prostitution. The support and assistance which they may provide should include (but would not be restricted to) the following elements:
“(a) appropriate and safe accommodation,
(b) material assistance (including financial assistance),
(c) assistance in obtaining healthcare services (including counselling),
(d) appropriate information on any matter of relevance or potential relevance to the particular circumstances of the person,
(e) translation and interpretation services,
(f) assistance in obtaining legal advice or representation.” [Section 6]
We expressed our view in our response to the consultation thus:
“Given that long-term grooming, coercion and exploitation are likely to have had a mental effect on people in prostitution, their sense of hope for a better life earning a living in a normal way is likely to have been severely diminished. Creating the legal right to support should, if implemented through properly staffed, funded and advertised mechanisms, make the hope for exit into normal, mainstream society visible and possible.”
The inclusion of support for leaving prostitution in the bill means it would be put on a statutory footing. If successful, this would be a significant government policy milestone in the UK. We hope this would require a regular review by a committee of the Scottish Parliament. In addition there should be regular recording and publishing of data monitoring the background and characteristics of those being helped: for example, were they brought into prostitution as children, were they trafficked from within or outside the UK, etc.
The bill revives debate over disguised prostitution
This bill is timely, given that last year the Scottish Government published its analysis of how prostitution amounts to violence against women and girls. Interestingly, now that the bill has been published and received widespread coverage in the Scottish press, some people are doing a public U-turn on their attitudes.
Susan Dalgety, a former deputy leader of Edinburgh City Council, has apologised to women trapped in prostitution for having licensed saunas that she and her colleagues knew very well were brothels. She said that in the 1990s the public health orthodoxy was that managing prostitution would enable management of HIV and drug abuse. She also admitted having been persuaded by the argument that prostitution can be ‘empowering’ for women as ‘sex work’.
Interestingly however, earlier this year Edinburgh City Council failed to pass a new policy that would have closed all its brothels disguised as lap dancing clubs. A group of lap dancers sued the council, defending the belief that ‘sex work is work’.
Who is most vulnerable?
The bill’s documents include an extensive Policy Memorandum that reviews the evidence on the vulnerability of women and girls in relation to prostitution. These included a very high risk of violence (sections 24-29), very high rates of anxiety, depression and PTSD (sections 30-31), major gynaecological problems as well as cardiovascular and respiratory complaints (section 32) and very high rates of drug and alcohol abuse as core concerns.
If this isn’t enough there is the reality that between 50% and 90% of those involved in prostitution were abused as children and most have experienced homelessness (section 36). This evidence holds true internationally.
Children and teenagers pushed into prostitution
The Policy Memorandum quotes extensively from the Scottish Government’s research on prostitution back in 2016, which found that many women had been in care as children before being drawn into prostitution. It also warned about the greatly increased use of online technology to entrap people. This is particularly important given that prostitution and also pornography increased greatly during the Coronavirus lockdowns.
The effect of penalising the purchase of sex
One of the most significant issues around this Scottish bill is whether its provisions can lead to a reduction in prostitution. At section 86, the Policy Memorandum cites research from Norway since it criminalised purchase of sex in 2009 showing that this happened. Section 84 found a lower rate of prostitution in Sweden since it changed the law compared to neighbouring Denmark. Section 82 cites a 2024 report on France, where the government found 845 exit programs with the vast majority of women involved obtaining stable employment.
ECHR ruled that France’s law does not violate ‘right to private life’
Interestingly, sections 79-80 of the Memorandum also discusses two legal challenges, one in France and the other in Canada, against the new laws penalising the purchase of sex on the grounds that they infringed on human rights. Those bringing both cases lost.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2024 that France’s law of 2016 criminalising the purchase of sexual acts did not violate human rights, specifically the right to private life under Article 8. This is encouraging for the Scottish bill’s supporters.
The significance of the debate over Northern Ireland
Opponents of the Scottish bill claim that the legal change in Northern Ireland in 2015 did not achieve the desired results. They cite an official review by the Department of Justice of Northern Ireland on the workings of that law, published in 2019. This claim was repeated in the press just before Ash Regan’s bill was published. However the bill’s Policy Memorandum states that she had spoken with the Northern Ireland authorities and discovered that the problem was due to the law not being implemented properly (section 87). Campaign group Nordic Model Now had argued back in 2019 that the fault lay with Northern Ireland Police Chiefs’ Council using outdated guidance. This was from the National Police Chiefs Council and was deemed by Nordic Model Now to normalise prostitution as essentially harmless.
Regan’s bill memorandum goes on to quote a 2024 reanalysis of the official Northern Ireland review, again by Nordic Model Now, arguing that the available evidence shows a decrease in on-street prostitution and no increase in human trafficking. The paper also shares evidence that rates of prostitution are much higher in countries that have decriminalised purchase of sex, such as Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands, than those that have criminalised it such as Sweden and the Republic of Ireland.
Weighing up the bill
We were in the minority in giving it partial rather than full support, due to wanting to retain the criminalisation of soliciting. From a Christian standpoint it is very difficult to justify decriminalising soliciting, given decriminalisation of an action always criminalised for immorality is likely to give out a message of silent approval to society. We could compare this to the law on drugs: sellers are penalised for offering something that contributes to and is dependent upon the corruption of character of the buyer. The Nordic Model, on the other hand, treats those soliciting as akin to slaves who could never choose to sell themselves (even though this can actually happen). Viewed comprehensively in Christian terms, prostitution harbours aspects of both of these.
Where the Nordic Model is on surer ground is in criminalising purchase. It is to be hoped that treating the purchase of sex as unethical and abusive will foster a better culture in public services such as the police and local authorities. Strikingly, all public authorities that responded to the bill supported it. Building a framework for enabling women and girls, men and boys to exit prostitution and stay out of it should be a priority for any government. What this bill needs most is enough debating time for enough politicians to be persuaded that it should become law.
