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The next item of business is a continuation of our scrutiny of the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill. We have one panel of witnesses and I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for the panel. I refer members to papers 4 and 5.
I welcome to the meeting Dr Niina Vuolajärvi, assistant professor in international migration, London School of Economics; Ruth Breslin, director of the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute in the Republic of Ireland; and Dr Larissa Sandy, associate professor of criminology at the University of Nottingham. Professor Jo Phoenix, professor of criminology at the University of Reading, joins us online. I thank those who were able to send written submissions to the committee.
I remind everyone that we are here to look at the provisions in the bill. I would like questions and answers to stay focused on the provisions as much as possible.
I will start with a broad question, which I will direct first to Niina Vuolajärvi, then work around the room, before bringing in Jo Phoenix. What are your overall views of the bill? Is there anything that you particularly agree or disagree with or that you think could be improved?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about my research. I warmly support elements of the bill such as quashing historical convictions, removing the penalty for soliciting, and, of course, the general support measures for sex workers and people in the sex trade. I hope that we can talk later about what kind of measures would be effective, based on evidence.
However, I strongly oppose the criminalisation of sex buying, based on my research among sex workers, people in the sex trade, police and social workers in the Nordic region. I conducted three years of ethnographic participant observations, and my research includes more than 200 interviews, most of which were with people who sell sex. I oppose a law on criminalising the buying of sex because of the harms that that produces to people in the sex trade. I evidence that in my research. Introducing the aim to abolish commercial sex through the criminalisation of buying does not increase the policing of sex buyers, primarily, but targets sex workers, as that is where the police find sex buyers.
It also offers a criminal model instead of a model that is focused on social support. For example, Sweden invested quite a lot of money in policing, but there was no increased investment in social services when that was introduced.
Sex-buyer law, in itself, exposes sex workers to violence and exploitation because it reduces negotiation space and safety practices for sex workers. It also produces overall stigmatisation—increased stigma and social marginalisation—that has broader effects on their everyday life.
In the Nordic countries and in other countries in which that model has been introduced, such as France and Canada, we can see that the overall goal becomes the abolition of commercial sex, which is done through the policing of sex workers. In the Nordic region, the police use other laws on commercial sex, such as immigration laws and pimping laws, to forcibly evict and deport sex workers. In that way, they try to squash the market. Some 98 per cent of my participants opposed sex-buying law, because they wanted to sell sex without criminal penalties and in peace and in safety, and they saw how that law affected their lives.
I also highlight that there is no evidence of positive outcomes from the Nordic model policies. The Swedish state claims that it has had a positive effect, has reduced commercial sex and so on, but we have to remember that that law has become a part of Swedish foreign policy and national branding, and that it has tried extensively to export that model abroad. However, according to the reports that we have, Sweden has no conclusive evidence that the model has actually reduced the market. Rather, we see a transfer of the market from the street and other visible arenas to online and indoor spaces.
As I have said, we can see similar results in France and Canada—and Ireland and Israel—where the model has been implemented. The results are increased violence, an increase in the disruptive policing of sex work and the use of other laws—for example, on commercial sex or taxation—to squash the market. What is more important, relations with the police have worsened, which means that sex workers are less likely to report crime, and are afraid to come forward when they experience exploitation and crime, because of the possible consequences to them.
I will finish there and am happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Thank you, Niina, for your comprehensive opening comments.
Thank you so much to the committee for inviting me to attend and share our evidence from Ireland. I am with the SERP Institute, and I have been writing on and researching prostitution and sex trafficking for about 17 years.
I will say a bit about us and the institute. We began as a research programme in 2017 in University College Dublin. About two years ago, we transitioned into an independent research and policy institute, focusing on all aspects of commercial sexual exploitation. In that period, we have done about eight studies on the sex trade in Ireland, so we have really developed our knowledge and expertise in that time. We have focused on a number of different perspectives, including the health impacts of prostitution for women in the Irish sex trade and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have done many interviews with women to understand their experiences coming into the trade, being in it and coming out the other side—so the experiences of women who have left the sex trade.
A number of years ago, we also did a big piece of work looking at the legislation in this context—the legislation as it has been operating in Ireland, which is our Irish version of the equality or Nordic model. I am very keen to share some of the lessons that we have learned through that research and our experience in Ireland, including some of the pitfalls—some areas where the legislation has not worked for us—that Scotland could perhaps avoid.
Our legislation was reviewed by our Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. The review, which was published earlier this year, clearly says that the legislation is, in fact, making progress towards its objectives. I want to remind everyone—because this connects very much to what you are planning in Scotland—that the kind of law that we are talking about is multipurpose. The law has a range of purposes, and, when we were developing the law in Ireland, the Government and ministers were thinking about a number of purposes.
The first purpose is the protective purpose, and, based on the review and the evidence that we have gathered, that has been the most successful aspect of the legislation in Ireland. It has totally changed the way that the sex trade is policed—particularly how those who sell sex are policed. The police changed from taking a very punitive approach to taking a very protective approach, whereby everyone in the sex trade, regardless of the circumstances, is approached as someone who is vulnerable, and that is because it is recognised that the sex trade is an extremely violent and vulnerable place to be. Therefore, despite what has been said previously, positive engagement with the police has greatly increased, and women are coming forward far more often when they experience violence in the trade.
It is also important to say that all sex trades, regardless of the legislation, are inherently violent. We have seen violence before the legislation, and we see violence continuing, but the legislation has not led to an increase in violence, which is something that has been suggested before. I think that I heard that evidence in the committee’s previous evidence session, so I just want to correct that, because that is not the case.
Where Ireland has struggled is in relation to the punitive aspect—the targeting of the buyers. Yes, buyers are criminalised, but there have been a number of implementation problems in that area. An Garda Síochána—our police force—is very honest and upfront about the difficulties in securing convictions. I can say more about that as we get into questions, but it is an area where we have struggled.
However, the legislation also has a deterrent purpose, which has been quite successful in Ireland overall. There is an understanding that the state has said that it is not acceptable to purchase sexual access to the body of another person, particularly when, in almost all cases, that person is somebody who is much more vulnerable than you. Our legislation has been able to hold the size of the sex trade at bay. Despite many push factors over the past few years—things that have happened internationally to push more women into the trade, such as various humanitarian crises, wars and conflicts—our sex trade has remained static.
The issue of scale in this area is really important, and I refer you to some of the evidence that I have shared on paper—I have a two-page document that I have shared with everybody. We see a link between having the Nordic model in place and having a smaller sex trade. At the same time, anywhere where another model, such as decriminalisation or legalisation, is introduced, we see a growing and expanding sex trade. The figures are very clear about that, so we are confident that we are holding the trade at bay.
We have also seen progress in relation to the normative and declarative purposes of the law, which are about an understanding in society in Ireland that, as I said, the purchase of sexual access is not something that can be sanctioned by the state.
I have made a number of very broad statements, but I hope that, through the questions, we can dig into those matters more deeply. I want the record to reflect that some of the things that have been said about Ireland in previous evidence sessions are not the case, and we can perhaps talk more about the data and some of the visuals that I have shared.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you for inviting me to come here today. I have about 25 years’ worth of research experience with sex workers in Australia, south-east Asia and the UK. I will speak mostly about my experience with decriminalisation in Australia.
11:15I support some of the bill’s aims. The quashing of historical convictions is very important, so I support that. I support the bill’s measures around support provisions, but I also have some reservations about them that I am happy to go through as part of my evidence. I support the repeal of solicitation laws, which I will also go through in my evidence.
However, I really cannot support the criminalisation of clients that would be introduced through the bill. Contrary to what has been said, in Australia and New South Wales, decriminalisation actually changed the approach to policing. It involved policing sex work as work and seeing sex workers as workers with labour rights, which totally transformed the way that the industry was policed and the way that workers worked with and reported to the police.
Another reason why there is very strong support for decriminalisation is that about 10 years ago The Lancet published an absolutely landmark scientific study on HIV and sex work. The study actually showed that decriminalisation would reduce HIV infections by about 33 to 46 per cent globally over the next 10 years. The promise of that has not been realised, because decriminalisation has not been introduced in some places. Some of that has also been because of client criminalisation, and we have very little evidence to support that it achieves its aims.
Australia remains one place where states and territories are actually pursuing more evidence-based policy and policy making. Several jurisdictions have recently decriminalised sex work: Northern Territory, Victoria and Queensland. I believe that Western Australia is also considering decriminalisation. Where decriminalisation has been introduced, there has not been an increase in the industry or the number of workers. I can expand on that as part of my evidence.
We have very strong, robust and extensive evidence on the harms of criminalisation. I point the committee to a 2018 study that was done by Professor Lucy Platt and her colleagues, who undertook a systematic review of 40 quantitative studies and 94 qualitative studies that were published between 1990 and 2018 on sex-work-related legislation and policing and health outcomes. It is one of the largest systematic reviews that we have on sex work research, and it is methodologically robust and rigorous. It found that all forms of sex work criminalisation, including the criminalisation of clients, did not prioritise sex workers’ health and safety, which is particularly the case for more marginalised sex workers. They found that sex work decriminalisation actually worked to facilitate sex workers’ access to health, services and justice.
In my evidence today, I hope that I can share more about my experiences of researching sex work under decriminalised settings in New South Wales and New Zealand.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you for the invitation to speak. Before I say what I think about the provisions, I note that I have been doing research in this area since 1993. However, I stopped doing so around 2010 for a very simple reason: I began to feel that the research base itself was becoming moribund. I will talk about that in a second. Having said that, I have kept my eye on the research as it has come through. In one way or another, I have been involved in thinking about prostitution policy reform for a very long time.
If you had asked me my views on this bill perhaps 15 to 20 years ago, I might have said, similarly to some of the panel members, that I did not support the criminalisation of sex purchasers. However, I have changed my mind.
To cut to the chase, I support all aspects of the bill, not just warmly but very strongly. The reason for that—and I am happy to go into detail on any of this—is that, after 35 years, we know many things. We know that prostitution is both work and violence. It is not just one thing or the other, despite what people will tell you. We know that it is an incredibly diverse industry that has people working from the street right the way up to hotels, and so on. We know that prostitution has always been connected to illegal markets, organised crime, and so on. We know that the effects of prostitution can devastate the lives of women and girls—we must not forget the girls—who are involved in it.
We also know something else. In Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, we have benefited from 20 years of reform to prostitution policy. We are not dealing with the same landscape that we were dealing with when I began.
I say that because, when I began researching the area, England and Wales had something like 10,000 convictions for soliciting and loitering for the purposes of prostitution. In the 2021 figures, which are the latest figures I looked at, there were only 301 such convictions. That is a massive change that has taken place over a relatively short period of time. In the past 20 years, we have seen a de facto decriminalisation of soliciting and loitering for the purposes of prostitution. However, at the same time, no support has been put in place. We have therefore ended up with this Janus-faced approach to dealing with prostitution generally that distinguishes between forced and voluntary prostitution and a rhetoric of victimisation for the women and girls who are involved without necessarily providing support measures.
We are seeing the legacy of that in the grooming gang crisis in England. What we saw there was a reformation of the policy on girls and prostitution that was based on a rhetoric of victimhood but there were no corresponding support services.
To wind up, the thing that I support most in the bill is the criminalisation of the purchase of sex at the same time as making the right to support services statutory. I am happy to talk as broadly as you would like, and I am happy to take questions on why I think that the evidence that has been presented to the committee is highly problematic, but I will end there because I know that the committee wants to ask questions.
Thank you all for your helpful opening remarks. Although there are different views in the room, you have articulated those views very well in a way that is helpful to members.
I will bring in the deputy convener to ask questions in a moment but, in the interests of getting through as much as we can this morning, I ask for succinct questions and answers, although I know that that is sometimes difficult. I also draw members’ attention to the research and studies that have been mentioned this morning, which we can access if members would find it helpful.
With that, I hand over to Liam Kerr and then I will bring in Sharon Dowey.
I will ask two questions and will give each of our witnesses an opportunity to respond, starting with Dr Vuolajärvi. I want to pick up on the point about evidence that you raised during your opening remarks. What does the evidence tell us about the impact of the Nordic model—the criminalisation of the buyer—on the number of people who are involved in prostitution, the experience of those people of safety, stigmatisation and access to support, and the involvement of organised crime, including trafficking, in prostitution?
I am happy that you brought up the issue of evidence. It is very difficult to get numbers from the trade. Journalists, policy makers and so on ask us all the time to give them numbers, but it is hard to assess the extent of the sex trade or of trafficking and it is difficult to make comparisons between the two. Trafficking can be registered in different ways and the detection of those crimes is very much dependent on how much police investigation is done.
On the number of people in sex work or prostitution, we have some evidence from Sweden that street prostitution has decreased by 50 per cent. That is quite well documented. However, the problem is that the law came into force in 1999 when online platforms and the use of the internet started to rise. It is hard to say what happened, but we can see that there has been a high increase in online advertisements. For example, between 2006 and 2014, there was an increase from 304 ads to 6,965 ads. Of course, people may have several profiles, but there has been a clear transfer from street sex work to online sex work. That change—we have evidence that it is happening everywhere—makes it hard to assess the situation.
The problem with Sweden is also that there was no effort to make a before and after comparison and no systematic effort to look at the changes. Of the other countries where such legislation has been implemented, the only place for which we have reliable before and after knowledge is Northern Ireland. Peter Backus, from the University of Manchester, carried out research that involved comparing the number of advertisements, which showed that, at the beginning, there was a decrease in the number of advertisements, but they returned to the same levels 18 to 24 months after the law was enforced. There was a scare effect, and then activity continued.
Coming back to Sweden, there has been no data collection to show what has happened to trafficking levels as a result of the law. The police claim that the law has created a hostile environment. In my field research, I found evidence that, when the police use pimping law and the hotels are policing sex work, it makes it more difficult for sex workers to operate on their own by finding apartments or places to sell sex. Some have to turn to people who know that the apartments that they are renting are being used for commercial sex. That means that those people ask for higher prices, because they are taking the risk of being accused of pimping. Therefore, in a way, the way in which the police enforce the law in Norway and Sweden actually increases the vulnerability of sex workers and their chance of exploitation.
There are many reliable qualitative studies showing sex workers’ experience under the Nordic law. The law hampers their safety practices and makes client screening difficult, because clients do not want to identify themselves. Rather, sex workers need to show that they are real people and not police. Many of my interviewees talked about those issues. There is also more demand for out calls, meaning that sex workers go to places that they do not know. For example, they may go into a private apartment where they do not know how many people are there or who is there, instead of a client coming to their place where the sex worker can be aware of their surroundings, which is safer.
11:30As I said, street sex work accounts for quite a minor section nowadays, but the street workers I talk with have said that, on the street, clients hurry negotiations, so the workers have less time to assess the client before jumping into their car. Also, clients might want to do the transaction in the car or in other locations that are unknown to the sex worker, instead of in a hotel, for example, or another safer location. That poses a risk. We can see how, in those ways, street sex work increases individuals’ exposure to violence.
I might stop there, although I would also say that policing in this area has, in the Nordic region, severely endangered the relationship between the police and sex workers. Generally, sex workers said that they did not want to go to the police and that they were worried about other problems, such as losing their apartment, being deported or being reported to social workers, which would mean trouble with the custody of their children and so on. That presents a really big risk for sex workers when it comes to violence, because, as my field work evidenced, some criminal elements use the knowledge that sex workers will not go to the police to target them, for example, in robberies and so on.
Dr Sandy, I think that you would take a similar view of the Nordic model. Do you have any evidence to add to that from Dr Vuolajärvi?
The experience in decriminalised settings would support what Niina Vuolajärvi talked about. In New South Wales, Australia, we have very robust longitudinal data on the three questions that you asked. One of the largest studies was done in 2012 and was commissioned by the New South Wales Ministry of Health. It is a very comprehensive report on decriminalisation that was carried out by the law and sexual health team—LASH—at the Kirby Institute, the law department of the University of New South Wales and the Sydney Sexual Health Centre. I can share that report with the committee if you would like me to do so.
Over 200 sex workers were surveyed, and the researchers also analysed the Sydney Sexual Health Centre database from 1992 to 2009. They did research with New South Wales councils—that is how decriminalisation works in New South Wales. As I said, it is a very rigorous and high-quality piece of research that was carried out by global experts. The LASH report concluded that the size of the sex worker population in New South Wales had not increased since decriminalisation was introduced, which is marked as 1995, although it was gradually brought in over a period starting from the 1970s.
In 2017, Rissel and colleagues confirmed the findings of that study by surveying buyers of sexual services. Their study was based on over 8,000 interviews with men in New South Wales. The size of the sex worker population has remained steady since the introduction of decriminalisation.
Often, a big argument about the Nordic model relates to the demand for sexual services. With the introduction of decriminalisation, demand for sexual services in New South Wales has been no different to that in other states and territories. Although women and men purchase sexual services, a lot of research in Australia has involved Australian men. By world standards, Australian men are pretty infrequent consumers of sexual services. Rissel and colleagues did a study in 2003 with Australian men, in which 2.3 per cent of New South Wales men reported buying sex in the last year and 16 per cent reported ever buying sex. The statistics for New South Wales men were the same as those for Australia overall—there was no difference on that at all.
In 2010, Harcourt and colleagues compared the Perth, Melbourne and Sydney sex industries. That is a very interesting study, because sex work is criminalised in Perth—it works through de facto legalisation with police-operated illegal brothels in the city—and, at the time of the study, Melbourne had legalisation, which resulted in a two-tier legal and illegal sector, and Sydney was decriminalised. It was a very interesting study. The study found a very active and diverse sex industry in each of those three cities. The number of brothels was about the same per capita in each of those cities. The finding was also consistent with population-based data on rates of buying sex within the Australian population.
That led the authors to the conclusion that the legal climate had no impact on the prevalence of the purchase of commercial sex; what it did have an impact on was health and safety for workers and in businesses. It also had an impact on rights and legal protections, and on accessing health programmes. In Melbourne, which had licensing, there was an illegal sector: the study said that there were somewhere between 30 and 70 illegal businesses operating. Those businesses were not supported by outreach or health services; they were pretty much invisible and inaccessible to health promotion programmes. Police-operated illegal brothels in Perth also meant reduced access for health services and peer educators. The research showed that, in Sydney, the Sex Workers Outreach Project in New South Wales—SWOP NSW—had access to all brothels and sex premises.
Therefore, although the research showed that the legal context did not seem to matter to or have an impact on demand, it did affect health promotion programmes in the sector, and it introduced isolation from peer education and support in Melbourne and Perth. It was also a significant issue in ensuring occupational health and safety, and health promotion. Similar results have come from New Zealand on the size of the sex industry with decriminalisation. The New Zealand Health Research Council and the Ministry of Justice commissioned two projects, one in 2007 and the other in 2008—
Dr Sandy, forgive me for interrupting, but the question that I need evidence on is less about decriminalisation and specifically about criminalisation of the buyer. What is the evidence on the impact there?
The evidence on the impact of criminalisation of the buyer is that most of the policing happens through sex worker surveillance, and that forces sex work further underground. The evidence that we have shows that it is a form of indirect criminalisation, because it is through clients that sex work is criminalised. We also see the introduction of brothel-keeping legislation, which makes it difficult or almost impossible for sex workers to work safely. That is what the research shows. The picture is different in models of decriminalisation.
I am very grateful. Ruth Breslin, you take a different view of the Nordic model—the criminalisation of the buyer. We have just heard evidence that tends to a view that criminalisation of the buyer will not achieve the ends of the bill. You would take a different view.
Yes.
What is your evidence?
Before we talk about the criminalisation of the buyer, it is important to understand the nature of how the sex trade operates. I speak from the Irish experience; we also need to think about who is in there and who is selling sex. Over the past decade, we have developed a profile of who is involved in prostitution in Ireland. It is, of course, primarily women—it is a highly gendered trade; the vast majority of those who are selling sex are women and the vast majority of those who are buying it are men. Every day, about 800 or 900 women are advertised online in Ireland—or, at least, there are 800 or 900 advertising profiles—and fewer than 1 per cent of those are male.
As I shared in the written submission, we have developed a bell curve profile. We have found that about 10 to 15 per cent of the women in our trade fit that classic definition under the Palermo protocol of having been trafficked, which is what our legislation is linked to. They are migrant women who have been brought into Ireland; they have been forced, coerced or deceived into that situation. Then, there is a small group of approximately 5 per cent of the women, who would say, “This is something I chose. This is labour—I had many choices, but this is what I decided to do to earn money.” Many of them would describe themselves as sex workers, but they are quite a small percentage of the group.
Right in the middle is what we would call the vulnerable majority, of about 80 per cent of the women, who would say that they chose to be involved in the sex trade—but, looking at the circumstances in which they entered it, theirs was a choice from no choice and from constrained circumstances. A lot of those women are migrant women, who arrived in Ireland with very limited English and very limited social capital. Their families are back home in South America, Asia and Africa, desperately waiting for the money that the women are going to send from Europe. These women have no choice but to get into something where they can earn money as quickly as possible, and they remain in a vulnerable and precarious situation.
We have interviewed many women who are involved in prostitution now, as well as women who have come out the other side and exited. Most of those women do not describe themselves as sex workers. Many of them will say, “I am working,” and they will often say, “I am escorting,” as the trade is almost entirely indoors and online. They do not adopt the idea of “sex workers” in their identity, however. They say, “Prostitution is not who I am. It is just something that I have to do.” That relates to the profile of the women.
Then we think about the profile of the buyers. Although the majority of the women who have been drawn in are migrants and are vulnerable in many different ways, including the fact that many of them do not speak English and are experiencing poverty and coercion, particularly in the case of trafficked women, most of the men who are buyers are Irish and middle class. They enjoy incomes above the average, they are well educated and most of them are in a relationship. In our work, that is where the understanding of sexual exploitation comes in. Those men are using their superior status in society and their superior economic power to purchase sexual access to the bodies of vulnerable women, who generally do not enjoy the same status or power. In almost all circumstances we see that power imbalance between the buyer and the seller, and that is where we feel the sexually exploitative context comes in.
I have interviewed so many women who have told me that it is of course unwanted sex. They do not want to go out every day and have sex with multiple unknown men they have not met before, but the money is holding them there. They are desperately in need of the money, so they are exchanging sex to get that money, which they desperately need.
Forgive me for interrupting, but I am conscious that I am monopolising the floor here. Given the context that you have set out, what happens if the bill criminalises the buyer?
When Ireland developed its legislation, people started to understand the exploitative dynamic that was going on there. The idea involved using the declarative and normative purposes of the law to send the message to men that it is not acceptable to purchase sexual access to the body of another person, particularly one who is more vulnerable than them. That is exactly what we did in Ireland.
Although one of the weaknesses in our implementation is that we have had very few successful prosecutions, buyers are at least aware that the law now targets them. The women are also very much aware of that. The women now report quite positive experiences of the way that prostitution is policed in Ireland. The police entirely changed their policing approach to shift the burden of criminality away from the women and on to the shoulders of the buyers—and, of course, the organised crime gangs that run the trade. You asked about organised crime and trafficking. As is still the case to this day, the trade is rife with the involvement of organised crime. The idea of the legislation was to place the burden of criminality on those shoulders.
You can see that in some of the data that I have shared with the committee. The first bar chart is on “The decriminalisation of those who sell sex”. You can see that the level was falling year on year, even slightly before the legislation came in, when people were starting to understand that criminalising women was the wrong thing to do. Then, in the chart on “The criminalisation of sex buyers & profiteers”, which is the second graph that I have shared, you can see the numbers represented in the red bars going up, showing policing attention. The data are from official crime statistics showing how the attention of policing is placed on the buyer.
One issue with our legislation is that it involves a summary fine on conviction, which means that the buyer is required to go to court to plead their case. The recorded crime statistics show that, more than 300 buyers were progressed against and about 160 cases made it to court, but there were only 15 convictions. That was because, in the intervening period, the buyers had armed themselves with good lawyers, and they were able to argue their way out of the situation. With the review in Ireland, we have recommended ways to address that situation. The Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration is now considering on-the-spot fines for buyers, so that the criminalisation element can be realised a little more easily.
Thank you very much for that. You will probably be asked about how it can be made better going forward.
I will bring in Professor Phoenix by asking a straight question. If this bill comes in and criminalises buyers, what will the impact of that be, based on the evidence that you have seen?
11:45
After 35 years of paying attention to the evidence, I know that there will be one direct impact: it will resolve some of the Janus-faced policing that we have. Let me talk you through that for a tiny bit.
Any regulatory framework that distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary prostitution forces the police to focus on the women who are involved in prostitution to assess whether their involvement is voluntary or involuntary. If we remove that framework altogether and say that prostitution is decriminalised and that we are going to criminalise only the purchasers of sex, it forces the police’s attention towards the punters.
You have heard from all of us today that there is a real problem with the policing of prostitution. That is what unites all of us, weirdly. My other learned colleagues have talked about the challenges of implementing criminalisation and how the police have failed in Sweden and so on. We know that the black box underneath all this is what the police do. If you remove the necessity for the police to assess whether somebody’s involvement is voluntary or involuntary, it removes that altogether and it refocuses attention. Ruth Breslin’s evidence provided some helpful insights on that.
I will come back, though, to one thing about the evidence base. I said earlier that I stopped doing direct research in this area. I did so because of the nature of the research that was being done. We have a real problem with the evidence base, one way or the other, and the problem is that research tends to proceed from an a priori assumption about what prostitution is.
If we start from the presumption that prostitution is sex work, every part of the research process thereafter is going to lead to what we in academia call a confirmation loop. We have seen consistently during the past 15 to 20 years research that continually reproduces its own assumptions, which is a real problem. It means that, for all of you, trying to pick through that evidence is challenging, to put it mildly, which is why I am going back to some very basic principles. What are the police going to assume? Do they need to focus on the women? Do they focus on the punters? Anyway, I hope that that was helpful. I will keep my comments relatively short.
It was all very helpful. I am very grateful to you all.
It was fascinating and very helpful but, again, I urge succinct responses, if that is possible.
I will ask about assistance and support, which a lot of you mentioned in your opening statements. The importance of support for people who are or have been involved in prostitution has been highlighted in evidence to the committee. What should that support look like? Secondly, are the provisions of the bill on that issue helpful? Thirdly, are you able to comment on the estimated costs of providing support as set out in the bill’s financial memorandum?
Do you want to know what kind of support I think would be needed based on my research?
Yes.
When it comes to services for sex workers, I think that we have all established that people who sell sex—sex workers—are a very diverse group of people, who often have various needs and various understandings and interpretations of commercial sex. What is needed is services that are non-judgmental, which means that they do not assume that sex work is violence against women or that it is necessarily work that someone identifies with. Rather, services should take an open view on the interpretations of people who sell sex.
My research demonstrates that there is a significant need for various types of support services. Many people want to move away from sex work—it is not a long-term career choice—but that often requires several types of support to be provided. For example, support with housing and income support are very important for some people, and vocational training services are important in enabling people to acquire skills. It is also important that vocational services are directed towards professions in which people can earn enough money, because many people who do sex work—especially the migrant workers I often met—have families to support in their home countries. Therefore, working in a nail salon will not be the right option for them, as they need work that will enable them to support themselves and their families. Of course, support such as mental health assistance and help with drug use will also be required.
It is very important that those support services have a low threshold, are non-judgmental and start from the viewpoint of the person who wants to access them. Stopping sex work should not be a condition for accessing services—as it has been in France, for example, where the Nordic model has been introduced—because, as I said, many people need to feed their families and children, pay rent and so on. It is important that people have enough economic support, and, in some cases, it might be important for people to be able to do sex work while they transfer to other forms of labour.
As I understand the bill, no money is earmarked for such services. In countries such as Sweden, we have seen that, if the money is not earmarked in that way, it might simply go towards the policing of sex work. It is important that we do not introduce another criminal law without thinking about what is needed on the ground. As many of us have said, many people engage in sex work because of their need for money—because of poverty—and criminalising the buying of sex will not remove that need for money.
In addition, I emphasise that, when such services are planned and executed, it is extremely important to start from the viewpoint of people who sell sex—sex workers—so that we do not end up creating policies and services that do not reflect the needs of people in the field. I often see that happening.
Dr Sandy, would you like to respond?
Yes, I would be happy to. I will not reiterate what Niina Vuolajärvi said, all of which I fully agree with.
With regard to my work, I did a large project in Melbourne on exiting or transitioning programmes for sex workers. That was a very large project that looked at best practice and tried to establish what best practice was in service provision. The project involved a Melbourne-based sex worker support agency that provided an exiting or transitioning programme for sex workers. As well as reviewing the evidence base, we did that work with sex workers.
One of our key findings was that it is absolutely necessary to do a needs assessment. That assessment needs to be carried out with sex workers to find out what supports they need. It also needs to be a very diverse needs assessment, because we are talking about a very diverse range of workers who have a diverse range of needs. The first thing that would need to be done would be to establish a comprehensive needs assessment.
As I said, leaving sex work should not be the mainstay of that work; it should be about the provision of support and services for sex workers. It must not be conditional on sex workers reducing their hours or exiting sex work.
Those services also need to be part of general services that are provided by sex worker organisations, and quite significant funding is needed for that. I can go into that a bit more. Those services need to be based on quite a few different things. We did a literature review of the global evidence base on programmes and found that a lot of those that are offered come from the perspective that sex work is not work. For best practice, you need to understand that sex workers view it as work. That is how the majority of sex workers understand it. Not all of them see it that way, but it is the dominant view.
A lot of programmes see sex work as unskilled labour, but they need to be provided from the point of view that sex work is skilled labour. There is also the idea that sex workers have never done anything but sex work, so you are starting from a sort of ground zero. That is not the case at all. Sex workers have diverse employment histories and trajectories, and sex work is just one part of that. You need to take into account sex workers’ skills, education and experiences.
The biggest issue that we came across was stigma and discrimination that sex workers face in the community, which is a barrier to them accessing services and retiring or moving out of sex work to do other sorts of work. It is important therefore that programmes address that and work with the community to reduce stigma and discrimination. One of the big things that we noted was the need for sex work to be recognised in equality legislation as a protected characteristic and occupation. That would give sex workers access to legal rights under discrimination and vilification laws.
I will quickly address funding. In the work that was done on the exiting programmes that were offered in Melbourne, 4 million Australian dollars was earmarked by the state Government before decriminalisation to review the services that were being provided. That was part of the work that I did, and it included a needs assessment and a review of the funding that was needed to provide services. That took place over a short period. It is work that requires significant support, resourcing and long-term funding.
Ruth Breslin, do you have anything short to say?
I will be as brief as possible. It is essential that support is provided. We are in a situation in which women are trying to survive and rely on that income, which is not just for them but for their families, particularly in their country of origin. Those women are feeding children and sending them to school, and caring for sick parents, so we cannot just take that income stream away overnight. It is important that supports step in and offer women other options.
It was suggested here previously that support services in Ireland require women to leave or exit. That is absolutely not the case. The services describe themselves as meeting women where they are at. That might be a woman who is saying, “This is what I’m doing right now. I’m happy doing it and it’s going well, but I still need some support,” or it might be a woman who is saying, “I really need to get out. Please help me.” There need to be a multitude of supports. Harm minimisation and keeping women safe while they are in the sex trade is important, but that sells women extremely short, because the vast majority of women, and certainly the women who I have met, want to get out of the trade as quickly as possible and need specialist support to do that.
We did a whole study on women’s barriers to leaving, and to recovering and rebuilding a new life, and the top barrier is not stigma but the deep trauma that women have experienced in the sex trade as a result of multiple counts of unwanted sex, rape, sexual assault, violence, beatings, attacks and robberies, on such a frequent basis that, when they come to services, the first thing that needs to be addressed is that deep trauma. The women need help to rebuild their lives and create new identities for themselves.
You said that there was a big cohort of people in Ireland in the middle of the curve who had no choice. If we get the services right, do you think that a lot of people will leave the sex trade?
Absolutely. Women need options, and what they tell us in the research all the time is that this is not what they want to do. They all have hopes and dreams for the future. They all have other plans. Even unprompted, many women tell me that they want to set up their own business, go back to school or learn English. They say, “I don’t want to be here for ever.” If you have the right supports in place, women will engage with them, and most of them will not choose to stay inside this very dangerous trade.
12:00
Professor Phoenix, do you have anything to add?
I have only four short points to add.
We have heard a lot about diversity. There is diversity, but it is not symmetrical or even. From 200 years of research into prostitution, if not more, we know that the vast majority of women in prostitution have come from backgrounds in which there is physical or sexual abuse. We know that the vast majority have drug and alcohol problems and economic problems. We know that, at least contemporarily in the UK, some of the social and welfare needs of women in prostitution are profound and complex. I am talking about the majority. Even though there might be diversity within prostitution, we know that there is an intensity of women with profound needs.
We also know that, to deal with the issues that women have, we have to look at the drivers further upstream. I suggest to you that the main drivers are poverty and male violence against women. If we can address some of the connections with male violence against women and poverty, we can create support services that help women to get out of prostitution. However, more importantly, if we divert some of the women who have the type of risk factors that make it likely for them to end up in prostitution—if we divert them before they get there—we do tremendous work.
I want to highlight two programmes that have been hugely successful down here in England—I am happy to send the reports on them afterwards. They were run by the Nelson Trust, by a woman who was formerly involved in prostitution. One was the Griffins programme; the other was the Phoenix project. The success rate of those projects was phenomenal. I am happy to send information about that.
However, all I want to do is underscore the fact that what makes the bill unique in my mind is that it puts such support services on a statutory footing. That is critical, because we know another thing about women in prostitution: when it comes to the funding of support services, they tend to lose out to many other needs. They are a forgotten and easily ignored population, partly because their needs are so complex.
Thank you. If you could send us information on those two projects, that would be helpful.
Thank you very much for your evidence thus far. I have a few questions—I flag that early. If you can assist me by not testing the patience of the convener in working through them, that would be—
In that spirit, I ask members to consider the option of putting their questions to specific witnesses. It is not necessary to put each question to all the witnesses, although I am sure that they all have a contribution to make; we can come back if we have time.
As I am going to draw on the written submissions, I probably will operate on that basis.
The first issue that I want to ask about, which Liam Kerr touched on, is the impact of any legislative change on the safety of those who are involved in selling sex. That must be absolutely paramount in our consideration. We should not do anything that makes their circumstances more harmful; anything that we do should improve their situation.
Dr Vuolajärvi, in your written submission, you provide some pretty stark information. You say that
“criminalizing sex buyers increases rather than reduces harm to sex workers.”
That seems to be based on the evidence that you gathered in speaking to those who are involved in selling sex, who cited “increased violence exposure” and “reduced safety practices”. It would be helpful if you could speak about that.
However, I was also struck by Ruth Breslin’s point that that has not been the experience in Ireland, so it would be helpful if you could speak about that as well.
As I said in my written submission, we can see how the will to get rid of commercial sex leads to repressive policing. Such policing is supposed to target the sex buyers, but where do you find the buyers? You find them through people who sell sex.
The impetus to see sex work as a harm to society has led to the will to suppress the market. In Norway, for example, just before the sex purchase law was implemented, the police engaged in what they called operation houseless, which meant clearing the indoor market before the law was enacted, because they were worried that the market would move indoors. The police have retained that practice. They might be able to catch one or two buyers outside a flat, but after that, they will use other laws to forcibly evict, such as the pimping law, or they will say that the landlord—
I have a question about policing, so could we come back to that later? I am thinking more about the increase in violent incidents and the adoption of more unsafe practices. Could you say more about those? We can come back to the issue of policing.
Okay. Rather than policing, I will talk about what the sex purchase law does. It reduces the negotiating space of the buyer, which means that less can be demanded from the buyer. Instead, the sex worker might be forced to take a picture of themselves with that day’s newspaper to prove that they are not the police, to meet in a place that is decided by the client at the last minute or to go to the client’s house. Those are all factors that expose people to violence when it comes to the sex purchase law.
The same goes for street-based actions, where the clients are worried about being caught, so they rush the negotiations, they want to go further away from the street location and so on. Does that answer your question?
That is helpful. Ruth, you talked about that exact experience.
One thing that I mentioned that we have observed in our research is the success of the protective factors of the law in Ireland. I described that as shifting the burden of criminality away from the women. I mentioned that the police decided to approach everyone in the sex trade as vulnerable because of the incredibly risky environment that they operate in.
It is very clear that the police’s approach changed—they moved away from raids and battering down a door and frightening everyone, which is an experience that the women always told us in the research that they hated, to welfare visits, which involve a much more gentle knock on the door and a quick word to say, “Just to let you know, we’re the specialist police in this area. We’re here if you need us. Here’s our contact details.”
On those welfare visits, the police are sometimes now accompanied by specialist workers from the front-line support services, who are not police and do not represent the state because they are members of non-governmental organisations. That means that, if a woman is very wary of interacting with the police—it is absolutely understandable that many women are—she can interact with someone who is more independent. It is all about offering support.
The gardaí, our Irish police, tell me that, on the day, the women will often say, “I’m fine. I don’t have any problems. I’m grand.” However, the police will leave their details and then—in a week, a month, six months or a year—they will hear from one of those women when something really serious has happened to her inside the sex trade.
Forgive me, but can we come back to that later? I am actually asking whether the evidence suggests that there has not been an increase in violent incidents.
I point to the wider context, which is the violent nature of the sex trade. We looked at the data from about three years before the law was introduced and the data since then, and it showed that the violence levels have remained high but consistent throughout that time. It was previously suggested that there has been a 92 per cent increase in violence. That is categorically not the case—that statistic cannot be proven in any way, shape or form.
Women say that they now feel more comfortable about getting in contact with gardaí, our police, if they have a problem. Women are also gaining an understanding of the law. Sometimes, sex buyers threaten women by saying that they will call the police on them if they do not do a certain thing for them, if they do not give them a discount or if they do not perform the act that they want them to. As women have told me in interviews, they are now able to say, “No, you’re the one in the wrong—I’m going to call the police on you.” Women have told me numerous stories about such interactions.
A key change that I want to emphasise has been in relation to women’s access to justice. Over the course of the last number of years—before and since the law—there have been some extremely violent attacks against women in the sex trade by individuals who go out to target them because they know that they are very vulnerable. I am talking about robberies, severe beatings, rapes and sexual assaults.
Since our law came into place in 2017, we have documented dozens of cases that have come in front of the courts in which those perpetrators have been prosecuted and the women have achieved justice. The women felt comfortable enough to interact with the police, to give evidence and to be witnesses in court. We have heard about many successful prosecutions of very violent men who have deliberately targeted women in the sex trade. That did not happen before 2017, when women were still criminalised and there was no way that they would interact in a court environment. Therefore, we have seen a very significant increase in women’s access to justice, which is extremely positive and did not happen before we had the legislation.
Yesterday, I spoke to the head of our garda national protective services bureau, because the policing of prostitution and sex trafficking comes under protective services in the police. I spoke to Detective Chief Superintendent Colm Noonan, who let me know that he has been in conversation with Police Scotland over the past few months about the whole approach of the Nordic model that we are using in Ireland and the fact that, although, as I said, we have faced a number of implementation difficulties, he, representing the Irish police, is very much recommending that approach to Police Scotland. Those conversations are on-going.
That is useful, and I take your point about violence, which tallies with the evidence that we heard in the previous evidence session. One witness who supports the bill made the point—which I think we all understand—that no change can ever make the selling of sex truly safe.
Ruth Breslin can correct me if I am wrong, but before the Irish law was introduced, the selling of sex was criminalised. If the criminal penalties for the selling of sex are removed, it has exactly those effects, but that has nothing to do with the sex buyer law itself; it is the decriminalisation of the act of selling sex that produces more safety, because it means that someone who is a target of crime can report it to the police. That is extremely important.
With the Nordic model, we see that, in many cases, sex workers become de facto criminalised through other policing measures, which is why I am against increasing criminalisation around commercial sex. The Northern Ireland Department of Justice has noticed an increase in reported assaults on sex workers, but I am not an expert on Ireland; that is just the knowledge that I have of the Irish case.
New Zealand has a lot of research that shows that workers felt protected by the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. They were more able to refuse clients; there was less client blackmail, extortion and violence; and more workers reported those incidents to the police. Therefore, there was a significant increase in access to justice, which came about through the decriminalisation of sex work.
However, that is not on the table here—we are not considering that as part of the list of propositions.
Yes, but I wanted to present that evidence for the committee to consider.
I appreciate that. Ruth Breslin has pre-empted my question—
I think that we are all agreed that the women should be decriminalised—of course they should; they should not be criminalised for the exploitative circumstances that they are in. However, decriminalising the buyer and the pimps is a whole different ball game. I have two things to say about that, very briefly, convener—
I will pause you there. I am conscious that a number of other members want to come in. I would like to bring them in and then come back to Jamie Hepburn’s second question, to ensure that everybody has a chance to ask their questions. I will bring Ash Regan in, too.
Good afternoon. My first question is a quick question for Professor Phoenix.
In your opening statement, you said that sex work is always linked to violence, organised crime and so on. Is the logical conclusion not that decriminalising it would improve the situation? If sex work is decriminalised, it would not have those implications.
12:15
No, not necessarily. Sorry—I was trying to figure out what you meant.
If we decriminalise the entire industry, would that reduce the amount of criminality connected to it? No—it would introduce a two-tier system, because there will always be men who are violent and who exploit women.
A lot of the problems with prostitution have to do with male violence, gender stereotypes and women’s life chances and histories of violence and abuse. There will always be a system in which men exploit women, so the idea that if we simply get rid of all the laws, the market will sort out the problems is naive, to say the least. The idea is that if we decriminalise this thing called prostitution, the market will regulate it, but the invisible hand of the market has never been the sort of thing that helps women, much less provides safety for them, if that makes sense.
Conversely, one could say that the industry would be easier to police if it was decriminalised. I agree that there are violent men and there always will be, but if it was decriminalised, that could be the case. That is just a different viewpoint. I agree with my colleague Jamie Hepburn that the overriding concern for us all, regardless of what side of the issue we are on, is women’s safety; I do not think that anybody would disagree with that.
I come to Ruth Breslin, again on the aspect of women’s safety. We heard in previous evidence about general changes that would make sex workers less safe under the proposed model. One of those relates to the potential impact on an app that sex workers currently use to flag up dangerous customers, clients or whatever we want to call them. That is quite a concern.
On your point about migrant women, I am struggling to see how they would be safer if the buyer was criminalised. Again, we heard in previous evidence about a migrant woman who was charged with brothel keeping. She was trying to keep herself safe with colleagues, but she was arrested by police, who appeared—we were told anecdotally—with a battering ram, and they made stigmatising comments about her.
I hear what you are saying, but we have heard evidence that that is not the case. I want to ask you, and the other witnesses, what your thoughts are about the fact that brothel keeping is not in the bill.
It has been suggested that the brothel-keeping legislation that remains on the statute books in Ireland has been used against individual women in prostitution. You mentioned one case, but that is one case that has occurred. It is a very problematic case indeed, in which the standards of policing really fell down. Nevertheless, it is one case in all the years for which we have had the legislation in place, since 2017.
If you look at the data that I have provided, you can see that, overall, recorded crime for brothel keeping has been going down. If you dig into current cases in which people were proceeded against, you will find that police are targeting not individual women who are operating together for safety, but crime gangs who are organising a network of brothels.
In all the cases that are now being reported on, we are talking about individuals—not always men; it is men and women—who are organising a network of brothels in which they move groups of vulnerable women around from location to location. To correct that suggestion, the brothel-keeping legislation is not being used in a negative way against individual women.
There is the idea of women working together for safety, but so many of the attacks that we see happen in those circumstances. There may be two or three women in a premises together, but what can they do when nine men armed with knives come in? I think that there is a bit of false hope in the idea of working together for safety.
There was some concern that an app on which women can make reports would somehow be legislated against or be seen to be facilitating prostitution. We have an app like that in Ireland, and that has not happened—the app continues to run and has not been the target of any kind of policing.
I want to pick up on the wider issue of decriminalisation, and decriminalising those who organise prostitution. You asked whether, if we decriminalise everything, that makes it safer, but who continues with the organisation of prostitution after decriminalisation? It is not your local greengrocer or florist who decides to become a brothel owner—it is the organised criminal who was previously organising prostitution in your jurisdiction, who has been given carte blanche to grow that business even further, because suddenly his illegal activities have become legal. That is what happens with decriminalisation or legalisation, as we have seen in other countries.
Do you have evidence of that?
Yes, absolutely. New people do not enter the market and say, “I was a florist yesterday, but now I’m going to become a brothel owner.” That is simply not what is happening. It is those who are profiting and benefiting under the illegal regime, who then find that their activities suddenly become legal under the legalised or decriminalised regime.
Can I speak to the Australian experience of decriminalisation?
Of course.
The industry is not regulated by the market—it is actually still quite a heavily regulated industry. It is regulated through council planning laws, development laws, zoning applications and so on. There is rigorous regulation of sex work in New South Wales; I am happy to provide a lot of research to show that.
The evidence shows that it is really not organised crime—actually, bringing in decriminalisation has stopped the link with organised crime and criminality. Brothels are regulated like all other businesses in New South Wales and must face those legal obligations that all other businesses have—
I will ask you to pause there, if that is okay, given the time.
I have one final quick comment. To go back to Ruth Breslin’s point about the difficulties with prosecutions and possibly bringing in an on-the-spot fine, my instinct would be that men who pay for sex would pay a fine; I do not think that that would be any great deterrent. That is just my view.
There are some who are entrenched in their behaviour, but I think that there is still a deterrent element with a fine, because there is still potentially paperwork involved. Men do not want their employer or their family to find out, and there is still the opportunity for that to happen, so there is a deterrent effect in that regard.
I will bring in Jo Phoenix, as I think that she wants to respond—I ask you to be brief, Jo.
I will be exceedingly brief—I will just highlight some evidence about the nature of organised crime and its connection with prostitution.
In 2023, the International Labour Organization estimated that forced labour generates something like £236 billion globally in illegal profits, and that around 73 per cent of that total comes from sexual exploitation. The idea that we can have a nice little cottage industry of prostitution in which sex workers are in control of what they do, and which does not have a connection with organised crime, is, I would suggest, extremely naive. That is all that I wanted to say.
There are a couple of members still to come in. If folk can bear with us, we will run the session for another 10 minutes or so in order that we can get through as much as possible.
I say to committee members that I propose that we defer our final agenda item to a future meeting, if that is okay.
I will bring in Pauline McNeill and then Fulton MacGregor.
Good afternoon, everyone. I will start with the global exploitation of, and sexual violence committed against, women and girls—mainly by men; I would like to think that we probably all agree on that.
I am not probing whether you are for or against decriminalisation; that has been well covered. I am interested in hearing, in particular from Dr Sandy and Dr Vuolajärvi, what happens if we go down the path of removing stigma.
I know that there are various levels of stigma attached to the industry, which you have articulated very well; I agree with that. However, the normalisation of the sale of sex is what concerns me most and what I want to ask about. Niina Vuolajärvi, are you not concerned about going down that path? Can we really stop men sexually exploiting women by normalising the sale of sex?
I am not completely sure that I understand the question correctly. The sale of sex is not the same as sexual exploitation, and it is important to make that difference, legally and in a common sense way. For example, if we think that, every time that somebody sells sex, it is rape or sexual exploitation, how can that person demand justice when they actually get violated? So—
I am sorry to interrupt. I have listened to some sex workers who talk about their experiences of being exploited—sexually exploited—by men who ask them to do things that they did not want to do so that they went beyond what, I suppose, the initial agreement was. Surely that happens.
Of course—that is what I am concerned about. What I see is that criminalising the sex buyer increases the vulnerability of women who sell sex to that exploitation—
That is not what I am talking about. Maybe we do not agree on this. The global exploitation of women and girls is, primarily, carried out by men; organised gangs are mainly male; and the buyers are mainly male. There is lots of evidence that men are exploiting women in these situations, even though the women are entering into an agreement for the sale of sex. That is what I have heard. Surely you must agree.
Yes. Maybe I am now getting the gist of your—
Men cannot be trusted, is what I am really saying. Can they be trusted?
Trafficking and exploitation of women in the sex trade is a really big issue. The law can serve different purposes. First, it is a question of resourcing. Where do we put the police resources? In my opinion, and from my research, policing the clients does not seem to be the wisest way to use police resources. For example, I think that it would be wiser to direct more resources to detecting and investigating trafficking and sexual exploitation or the sexual abuse of children.
Then there is the symbolic message that proponents of this kind of law often argue for. However, in Sweden, we see that, okay, the stigma around buying sex has increased but so has the stigma around selling sex, and people in general see engaging in commercial sex as something that is harmful for the person. That has led to the marginalisation of women who sell sex. They experience stigma in health services and from social workers. If they say that they sell sex, they might get in trouble with their social worker or their child welfare officer. Therefore, in a way, I understand the bigger concern about male sexual violence, which we know is rife—we see the evidence all the time—but I do not think that that means that we should have this symbolic law, which does not necessarily have the effect of reducing violence against women. What we see on the ground is that it actually increases violence towards people who are already vulnerable and marginalised. That is where I struggle with regard to the symbolic messaging of this law. I am sorry that that was a bit of a convoluted answer.
The experience of decriminalisation in New South Wales has not really led to normalisation at all. We need to make a distinction between sex work and sexual exploitation, as Niina Vuolajärvi has been saying. However, one aspect of what has happened is that understanding sex work as work provides boundaries for someone as a worker, a labourer and a person who is providing a service. That is one of the ways in which a lot of workers have been able to address some of the issues around exploitation, and to challenge clients, too.
However, I think that what is at the heart of what you are asking is the financial need and the need to address it—
12:30
It is not, really, no. I do not think that you have understood me. I hear loud and clear what you are saying about the pros and cons of legislating. I understand that, and that is the balance—we have got to decide whether we think that the legislation protects women or not. My concern is about the wider harm. If we agree that men tend to exploit women and if we agree that men are the main problem, the question, whatever we do—even if we protect women who sell their bodies, reduce the stigma and all of that—is whether we can really stop men exploiting women. That is at the heart of what I am saying. Can we really stop the wider harm to other women who are not in the sex trade by saying that it is a perfectly acceptable thing in society? For me, those who are against the bill need to answer that question.
For me, it is a pragmatic response. There is the financial need, and, if you are not going to do anything to address that financial need, which has been discussed by everyone around the table and by the committee’s previous witnesses, too, the question is how we can make sex work safe. That is the issue that the New South Wales Government faced in making its decision around decriminalisation: how can we improve safety for people working in the sex industry, make that paramount and prioritise it? That was the decision-making process behind the decision to go with decriminalisation rather than further criminalisation.
Do you think that your argument harms women who are not involved in the sex trade who are exploited by men? Does not wanting to protect the sale of sex in any country, which is what I think that you are arguing for—for all the right reasons; I understand that—cause harm to other women, because of the very nature of men’s attitudes to women? Alternatively, do you think that it does not harm them? If so, that is fine, but I would like to know.
I do not think that it harms other women, because, if you think of sex work as work—if you think about it within that framework—you are starting to change those gender ideologies, which are what you are talking about. It is a way to transform those gender relations, too. Fundamentally, looking at sex work as work is one way in which we can address that.
Professor Phoenix, do you think that there could be wider harm? I am not taking a view on criminalisation or decriminalisation. I do not know what I am asking, really—I am asking about the fundamentals. Can any law really protect women with regard to this global issue?
You have basically asked the big money question. I want to talk specifically about whether decriminalising prostitution will create more or less harm, broadly. The simple fact of the matter is this: we have a problem with male violence. We have a massive problem in the UK; we have a complete crisis in the policing of male violence in the UK. Any move to reinforce women as a commodity is always going to be a problem.
Does prostitution have a knock-on effect on other women? Yes, absolutely—100 per cent it does. We are not talking about a small cottage industry. For instance, I draw the committee’s attention to OnlyFans. It comes as no surprise that we are looking at a global industry that has now gone viral on the internet and has all sorts of different manifestations. It is not surprising that street prostitution has moved online and elsewhere, and that connects to the global scale of the issue.
To me, the idea that decriminalising prostitution can somehow keep safe just a particular group of women from the broader problem of male violence—I have said this before, and I will say it again—seems naive in the extreme.
There was a very helpful piece of research a number of years ago from the University of Edinburgh in which men who had been sexually violent towards women were interviewed. One of the key takeaways from those interviews was that the men saw the women against whom they had aggressed as slightly less human than them. Those men did not see that the women had quite the same human value as themselves. There is nowhere in the world where women are more dehumanised than in the global sex trade, with prostitution being the sharp end of that.
I do not think that the inside of a woman’s body is a workplace or some kind of service provider. The message from the sex trade seeps out into our wider culture through prostitution and pornography. It is telling young girls that their body, and how they look and how sexually attractive they are to the opposite sex, is their primary currency.
Professor Phoenix mentioned the likes of OnlyFans. Given the way that the trade has been glamorised in the online world in particular, I very much feel that the bar to entry is being lowered, because young women are being told that it is a quick and glamorous way to make good money, it is empowering and sexy and so on. However, when we talk to women who have been in prostitution, they say that it is the least empowering thing that has ever happened to them and that it was not about them expressing their sexuality, but about sex buyers acting out their own sexuality on the women’s bodies.
I will leave it there.
We move to Fulton MacGregor, and then I will bring in Jamie Hepburn.
Good afternoon. As in the previous evidence sessions, we have heard two strong arguments for and against the bill. In general, opponents of the bill seem to imply that its implementation will put women at more risk—that seems to be the general feeling from the witnesses on the previous two panels who are opposed to the bill.
Although this is not my final position, at this point I am not overly convinced by that argument. I find myself inclined to identify with what Ruth Breslin said: that prostitution is inherently dangerous and violent, regardless of any legislation.
I want to look at the other side of the question. You might have a view on whether or not the bill should have been introduced, but it has been, by the member in charge, and it is here in front of us. If the Parliament does not pass it, what are the implications? What would that say to vulnerable women and girls, to those who are currently sex workers and to those who purchase sex? In addition, what message does it send to our young men and boys in Scotland? I have real concerns about that, because we now have the bill in front of us.
To go back to what the convener said earlier, I will pick one person on each side of the debate. What, in your view, are the implications of starting a conversation on this issue in our national Parliament and then not acting?
As I mentioned you, Ruth, I ask you to come in as somebody who is for the bill.
If you accept the argument that we have been making about an inherently and intrinsically violent trade—I do not know exactly the profile of those in prostitution in Scotland, but if it is anything like the profile that we have in Ireland, which I show on the bell curve in my submission—and if you do not act and you continue with the current approach, or even with some of the decriminalisation approaches that have been mentioned, the trade grows.
Right now in the world, there are a lot of push factors for women going into the sex trade that are related to a host of reasons such as migration, international crises and cost of living crises. There are really tough push factors that are pushing vulnerable women into the trade. If you leave things as they are and decide not to tackle the buyer who is creating the demand for the trade in the first place, there is a risk that the trade will grow.
With regard to the bell curve, if you leave things as they are and do not address the buyer, there is the opportunity for the numbers of everyone inside the curve to grow. That includes not only the people who choose the trade and describe it as work, but the trafficked women and the vulnerable majority that I describe in the middle of the curve.
I come back to the point about scale, which is important. New Zealand has been mentioned a number of times as a positive example of decriminalisation, but it happens to have almost exactly the same population size as Ireland, and it has a trade that is between six and nine times larger than ours. If you want to take a laissez-faire or decriminalisation approach, you risk a growth in the trade, and that means more trafficking, more violence and more trauma, which I think is not something that Scotland wants.
I go to Dr Sandy next. While I am not opposed to the bill—it would not be right to say that I am opposed to it—I have some concerns about it as currently drafted.
First, I highlight that in New South Wales, where sex work is decriminalised, instances of trafficking and modern slavery practices are very rare. I am happy to share the data that we have on that.
With regard to the situation that Scotland is facing and the question that you ask, I think that the law in Scotland needs to change; I do not think that it should stay as it is. However, my advice would be to talk with sex workers and take time to consult with them to find out what it is that Scottish sex workers think might be best for them and how their work might best be regulated.
That was what the Victorian Government in Australia did in bringing in decriminalisation. It spent a very long time consulting with sex workers, non-governmental organisations, service providers and the police, and through that consultation process, which involved all key stakeholders, it came up with the model of decriminalisation in the legislation that it put through in 2022.
My advice would be to talk with sex workers and find out what it is that they think would be best in respect of how their work can be regulated.
I will bring in Jamie Hepburn and then Ash Regan.
I said that I was going to return to the issue of policing, but I am not going to do so, I am afraid, simply because I do not have time. I think that the witnesses have said enough for us to be able to pick up the issues with Police Scotland directly.
I have a question about demand reduction. Part of the notion behind the bill is that it will drive down demand. I think that I heard Ruth Breslin say that that has been the experience in Ireland—you can correct me if I am wrong, Ruth.
Niina Vuolajärvi has presented some information. Perhaps you can clarify something, Niina, as there is seemingly a contradiction, from my reading, in what you say in your submission. You state that in Sweden, after the law was introduced, there was a
“Decrease from 13 percent to 8 percent of men reporting having bought sex”.
However, you go on to say that in Sweden,
“10-15 percent of men have bought sex”.
If you could explain that difference, that would be helpful. You also say that there is
“No significant difference between countries with full sex buyer criminalization (Sweden, Norway) and other Nordic countries”.
Could you speak to that a bit more?
Ruth, if you then want to come in and speak about the Irish experience, that would be helpful.
That part of the submission refers to separate studies. The mention of a
“Decrease from 13 percent to 8 percent of men reporting having bought sex”
refers to a survey that was done before and shortly after the Swedish sex purchase legislation, which was implemented in 1999.
There have then been other studies that show the extent of people who have bought sex in the Nordic countries. In those, the numbers are a little bit different. In Sweden, it was found that
“10-15 percent of men have bought sex”.
Another survey, in Finland, found that it was 11 to 13 percent; in Norway and Denmark, the figure was 13 per cent. Of course, those figures are approximate, so in Sweden it could be between, let us say, 8 and 15 per cent, or 17 per cent; it depends on the number of people who responded to the survey.
The point is that we do not see a massive difference in the percentages of men buying sex in countries in the Nordic region, which have very similar welfare state models and levels of gender equality. That is very important in relation to women’s engagement in commercial sex, with regard to the types of supports that are in place and so on.
I am putting words in your mouth, so you can tell me if I am wrong, but the conclusion that you are drawing is that changing the law to criminalise the purchase of sex does not alter the dynamic.
12:45
The study showed that after the law was introduced, the proportion of people reporting buying sex went from 13 to 8 per cent. After buying sex was criminalised, they might not have wanted to state their response in the same way, but I am sure that if you criminalise something, some law-obedient people will not do it. Therefore, I am not saying that such a law would not have any effect, because laws have effects.
Okay. Is the point that you are making about the comparison between jurisdictions?
The point is that the law did not lead to a massive change. In general, the figures are not massively different across the different countries in the region, which have similar social models.
Misogyny and violence against women and women’s sexual exploitation are very serious issues, but they cannot be solved by introducing laws that regulate prostitution. The issues need different approaches—that is my bigger point, because I share the concerns of others.
What is the Irish experience, Ruth?
I understand that Sweden’s own review observed a reduction in demand.
The Irish review of the legislation says that, overall, the legislation is making progress towards its various objectives, which I have talked about, but it has yet not been successful in really having an impact on demand, which speaks to some of the implementation issues that I referred to. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, the Department of Justice has decided to go back and look at how to strengthen the law’s provisions. That means that the police must be well resourced to do the work effectively.
Also, I recommend that a proper public awareness-raising campaign is undertaken across Scotland, which, unfortunately, we did not do in Ireland. We needed to get the message out more widely that we had decided that the purchase of sex was now an offence and that everybody needed to be informed of that.
We have hope that we will make inroads in reducing demand in future, because, again, the aim is to reduce demand in order to shrink the size of the trade so that fewer vulnerable women and girls end up in it.
It is maybe too early to conclude, but is the bigger challenge societal and attitudinal? Cultural change would reduce demand more than the law per se.
Yet, what we saw in Ireland was that the law came first and policy followed. There was a bit of a national conversation about the issues at the time and policy followed because when we developed a new strategy on gender-based violence, just a few years ago, for the first time ever, prostitution and sex trafficking were placed in the framework of violence against women and girls.
Okay, that is helpful.
My final question relates to the bill’s provisions around support and assistance for women—it is primarily women—who seek to exit prostitution. I think that I am right in saying that three of the submissions highlight the need to support women, whether or not they intend to leave prostitution. Support does not necessarily have to be predicated on the desire to leave. Could you speak to that?
In the committee’s previous evidence session, it was suggested that, in Ireland, only women who want to leave get support, but that is just not the case. In my submission, I talked about the idea of services meeting women wherever they are at. Whenever the woman comes in through the door—she might describe herself as a sex worker or a victim of trafficking, and she might want to leave or she might want to stay—it is essential that the service is non-judgmental and holistic, that it meets a woman where she is at and that it assesses her needs and provides support from that point.
I absolutely concur with Ruth. Services must be non-judgmental, so in order to access the services, there must be no condition that you are leaving sex work or reducing your hours. Those services need to be provided to all workers within a non-judgmental framework, and they need to be properly resourced and funded.
I concur.
Professor Phoenix, do you have anything to add?
I have nothing to add.
Thank you, all.
One of the difficulties for the committee is that research, evidence and a number of studies have been presented to the committee—in writing or through oral evidence sessions—that appear at face value to directly and completely contradict each other. One side says one thing and the other side says the other. Is there any guidance or criteria that the committee can apply in order to spot whether research or evidence meets a high bar?
When we look at things that are presented as evidence, I suggest that we need to look for high sample sizes and at whether the research is statistically representative, and we need to ensure that any research that has been undertaken does not have any links at all to the sex industry. It must not be funded by the sex industry; it should be independent.
I direct that question to Jo Phoenix, in particular, because I think that she mentioned that, but Ruth Breslin might also want to comment. How should the committee work its way through all the research? If it is possible to work it out, what percentage of the research meets a very high bar of robustness?
Wow, okay. That is a really big question, so I will answer you in bite-sized chunks. I said that there is a problem with research in this area, the extent of which must not be underestimated. If I were to guide you on how to find good research that does not suffer from some of the classic problems, I would say that you should get skilled up on what those classic problems are.
There are some simple things that help you almost immediately see the good and the less good. I do not want to say that any research is bad; it is just good and less good, or robust and less robust. You can literally see that by looking at the researcher’s assumptions, which can be seen by how they define their terms of reference. The second that you see a research study that starts with, “We are going to be looking at the effects of criminalising the purchase of sex,” or “we believe that sex is work,” that means that that assumption is hard baked in there—it is a “sex work is work” approach. That means that everything in that study will have been designed on the basis of that assumption, so you will end up with confirmation bias.
I suggest that any research that starts from an a priori political position that individuals ought to be free to sell sex, if the conditions are right, is problematic, because that assumption will be baked into what has been done. However, the problem is that the research on the other side also suffers from that same confirmation bias. The question then is, how can you sift through all that? I suggest that you do not look so much at high sample sizes—although that helps—but rather look across all the research and at what it says. For example, we know that all the research describes particular problems in prostitution and particular problems around the policing of prostitution.
I will add one more thing, because I do not want to go on too long. Let us have a little think about the confirmation loop and where else you can find that. The confirmation loop problem has an associated problem, which is the false causality problem. With the greatest of respect to my academic colleagues on the panel, when I hear things such as, “The evidence shows that there are more harms when we criminalise the purchase of sex,” the first question that I ask is, how? What is the causal mechanism? In fact, the research never shows the causal mechanism beyond the myth that we have heard—I have heard it at any rate—since people started talking about criminalising kerb crawlers, which is that women do not have the chance to assess potential purchasers. That is the only causal mechanism that I can see in the research.
Therefore, I suggest that you keep in mind how a priori political positions shape the very nature of the research. Do not buy into the bottom-line numbers; look at how the research was conducted and for the causal mechanisms that researchers offer.
That is not a complete response, but if the committee would find it helpful, I can certainly add a little note about some of the main problems. I can select some of the main studies that the committee may have looked at and pick out some of the logical academic errors in those.
I cannot speak for the committee because I am not a member, but I am sure that it would be interested in taking up that suggestion. Do you have anything to add, Ruth?
Yes, just briefly. In the run-up to the review of our legislation, Dr Geoffrey Shannon, who is quite an eminent legal professional in Ireland, prepared a report for our Government that made a number of recommendations on how the review should be conducted. He noted the need to rely only on evidence that was reliable, verifiable and gathered in a rigorous way. He said that the “origin of data” must be “verifiable” and, if possible, able to be triangulated from other sources. He added:
“Researchers should have no past or present association with or financial relationship with the sex trade organisers or those profiting or benefiting from or promoting the sex trade.”
Some of the evidence that ended up in our review does not essentially meet those conditions. The same is true of some of the data that was gathered about the law in Northern Ireland.
If I can—
I am afraid that I will have to close the session there. We are well over time, so I am sorry, but I have to draw things to a close.
Thank you all for joining us. Thank you for coming online, Jo Phoenix. It has been an invaluable session and there is lots for us to think about.
12:56 Meeting continued in private until 13:08.Previous
Subordinate Legislation