Official Report 221KB pdf
The next item on the agenda is consideration of further evidence on the Prostitution Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Margo MacDonald, the bill's sponsor, and Councillor Kingsley Thomas, Mark Turley and Ray de Souza from the City of Edinburgh Council. Although we have received a written submission from the council, I ask Kingsley Thomas whether he wishes to make some introductory comments.
I will not keep the committee long and certainly do not intend to repeat the evidence that we gave a year and a half ago, although I know that some different faces have joined the table since then. I gather that all the information from the previous committee's deliberations is available. Instead, I will speak briefly about the council's most recent submission, which stems from our current concerns and the work that we have been carrying out to deal with the present situation in Edinburgh rather than from the period up until 2001 when the non-harassment zone was in operation.
Following Margo MacDonald's bill in the previous session of Parliament, the Executive set up an expert group to consider the issues. How involved has the City of Edinburgh Council been with that group?
We were invited to give evidence to the group and we answered a range of questions. The questions focused on the thinking behind the use of antisocial behaviour orders, but they also sought our views on alternatives to the creation of some sort of managed zone.
In evidence to the committee, SCOT-PEP suggested that the use of ASBOs against street prostitutes could disperse prostitution even more widely and that, as a result, there could be less harm reduction and less access to the new future services. Would you comment on that?
It is possible to attach something like a bail condition to an antisocial behaviour order, so that a person is not allowed to go to a particular part of town. Such a condition could be used with a person—I hesitate to use the word "offender"—who is causing problems in that area and it could relieve problems for local residents. However, we have never said that antisocial behaviour orders are the be-all and end-all. They are not a panacea. There must also be a route into rehabilitation services. Our ultimate aim is to assist women to make their own choices and to come out of street prostitution. If we are to achieve that aim, antisocial behaviour orders must go along with other support mechanisms.
Your submission to the committee discusses the impact of the loss of the non-harassment zone in Edinburgh and the resulting dispersal of prostitutes across the city. Can you provide more information regarding developments in Edinburgh since the previous bill was considered by the old Local Government Committee and Parliament?
That question and the previous one highlight the fact that dispersal is already taking place. I would not go so far as to describe it as dispersal across the city, but it is certainly dispersal across a huge part of Leith. From time to time there are concentrations in the Leith links area. Our interventions—which were simply to gather evidence—have, in themselves, had the effect of dispersing people. If we are successful in securing ASBOs, that will also increase dispersal. From what we have heard from all the stakeholders to whom we have spoken, the scene has become much more violent, the level of drug dependency has become even higher, and the ability of any organisation to engage with prostitutes has diminished.
I am interested in your use of the expression "managing" the situation. There was a lot of hostility to that expression in the evidence that we received from Glasgow City Council, which believed that the issue was more about trying to achieve zero tolerance. Where do you see the balance lying between zero tolerance and managing the situation?
Edinburgh seeks a more strategic approach to the problem. We believe that we could do more in the areas of prevention and rehabilitation; prevention and rehabilitation happen already, but they need to happen more intensively. A prerequisite to such an approach is a managed environment. One cannot easily engage with women to offer support and routes-out services if one cannot even get hold of them and have a regular means of engagement with them.
It was an interesting reply.
You referred to a physical environment. What kind of location are you thinking of? Has work been done on where the proposed tolerance zone should be located? Are we talking about an industrial area or an area where people pay upwards of £250,000 for a detached house?
In our submission, we said that we have not minimised the challenges ahead. Should the bill become law and we have the powers to identify a tolerance zone, there will be tremendous challenges in identifying that zone in the first place.
What you are really saying is that a desirable area will not be proposed for the location of a zone. It will be an out-of-sight, out-of-mind area that developers will not want to develop and regenerate. You are asking us to deliver legislation that you understand will be difficult to implement and you are not clear about where such a zone could be located.
The situation at the moment is difficult to manage. We are saying that we might be able to manage it a bit better with the powers that are proposed in the bill.
There are areas with few houses and businesses around the docks that may be amenable to a tolerance zone. There are probably no areas left where there would be no objections whatsoever. We face a choice. We can design a zone, provide facilities, consult people on the zone's establishment and management protocols and perhaps face a small number of objections. In contrast, an area such as Leith links would be the last place in the world where we would seek to introduce prostitution. We would face objections from hundreds of people, with no management protocols whatsoever. Neither situation is ideal, but it is clear which is preferable.
The flipside is that a number of people from various backgrounds have raised concerns that I have great sympathy with and support. If the City of Edinburgh Council is so concerned about the issue, it should be delivering those services in areas where communities are already located. Why should we be saying that we should have an out-of-sight policy? Effectively, that is the road that we would be going down if a zone were to be created around the docks, which is an undesirable area in which you might not be able to deliver the best possible support service. In addition, you are asking us to introduce legislation, which we will have to consider, but we may not be able to pass it because of the opposition that it will face. The alternative is to introduce the projects that have been set up in other parts of Scotland.
I am sorry, as that is not what I intended to say. We would work in an area to ensure that the services and best possible facilities were available. At the moment, we are doing our best to provide services, but realistically we cannot do so when prostitutes are scattered over an area of many square miles. My reading of the bill is that, providing that we go through appropriate consultation and a possible appeals procedure, we do not necessarily need to achieve 100 per cent agreement. Indeed, there was never 100 per cent agreement on the part of residents in the area of Coburg Street, but that situation was manageable. If residents are consulted and involved in the management protocols, we can minimise the potential impact on them. Compared to the hassle that is being caused at the minute, I am absolutely clear which option is preferable.
Several members have indicated that they wish to ask supplementaries. I ask members to be brief. I will take Margo MacDonald and Iain Smith, then I will come to Rosie Kane. I will give you further chances to come in later, Margo.
I have information for Paul Martin. Freelance research has been done on possible areas. He is wrong to combine an out-of-sight policy with an out-of-mind one. The whole idea is that a policy should try to be out of sight but dare not be out of mind, because councils have to deliver the services. The police would tell you that they can police properly if they know where the zone is and who is involved.
Is not that the crux of the problem? The problem is not the legislative framework but identifying an appropriate area. Whether we have the legislative framework that existed when Coburg Street was operating as a non-harassment area or the framework in the bill, it will not work if residents object to an area. Is not that the problem?
No, because the difficulty with the previous arrangement was that there was no legal protection. The council did not have the power to identify a zone; there was an operational arrangement by the police and we worked within that arrangement in our role as providers of care services, cleansing services and the other services that councils provide.
I am still not clear why you need additional powers. What power did you have in the past when you operated the zone that no longer exists? The council provided services in the past and it would not need more powers to provide services in another non-harassment area.
The zone worked in the past because there were very few residents in the area and the few that there were tolerated it. There are now no obvious areas where that would be the case. Wherever a zone is sited, there will be some complaints from businesses or residents. I believe that we can find a site where the number of people who would be affected would be very small indeed—I will make it my mission to find such a site. However, the profile of the matter is such that there would be complaints. To answer those complaints, we would need to have complied with the framework of consultation and appeals that the bill sets out.
I am sorry if I go over old ground—I am here to fill in for Tommy Sheridan.
I am not aware of any such evidence, but we must accept that tolerance zones have not really been evaluated. Most of the research that has been undertaken has been soft and has produced mixed results.
I imagine that women must comply with certain rules in order to be allowed to use a zone and that, for example, women who are involved in drug or alcohol abuse are not permitted to work there. There is a danger that we might end up with several tiers.
Given the culture and the sub-culture that exists, what you suggest is certainly possible. Our experience of the tolerance zone is that there is some degree of—dare I say it—regulation among women, to allow them a safer environment in which to operate. There was less likelihood of the effects that we are seeing now, such as violence, a lot of coercion of prostitutes by pimps, a lot of drug trafficking and a lot of high-risk, aggressive behaviour. There is a degree of self-regulation in a tolerance zone that would not be there without one—if that answers your question.
Thank you.
A practical problem is involved. The witnesses know Edinburgh and have said that there may well be an appropriate area within Edinburgh. They have also said that they believe that they can find a site that will cause minimal complaint. If the bill becomes law, could it be put into practice?
I would be the person charged with doing that. This is not the only issue where we face such problems. I am reminded of how difficult it is to find sites for Travellers. We do not shy away from that and tend to crack it eventually. It is difficult to say too much publicly when these are relatively early days, but if the bill goes through, I am confident that we will commit totally to using it, because all stakeholders in Edinburgh agree that it is the best possible way of managing the situation.
Without naming them, are you saying that you know of sites that would work and where there would be a minimal number of complaints?
I believe that we will be able to identify sites that will work.
You say "believe"—do you not know?
I believe that we will identify sites that will be made to work.
But do you not know right now? Without stating them—I do not wish to press you that far—do you know of sites that would work?
I am not trying to avoid the question, but the bill requires councils to go through a fairly substantial consultation process. It is only when they have been through that process that they can say whether sites are suitable. If I were to say to you that I know of sites, would I not be prejudging the outcome of the consultation process? There will be sites that will work, but we have to go through that due process.
So how would you envisage the City of Edinburgh Council utilising the proposed powers? What would the process be?
We would draw up a shortlist of sites that have been identified as potentially suitable. We would have to address issues of ownership, because it might well be that the potentially most suitable sites are not always entirely in our ownership. There might be a process of negotiation, but once that was resolved, we would simply follow the procedures that are laid down in the act for establishing protocols and the consultation process.
I suggest that the zone will not be located in Morningside. We have discussed the issue previously, and what concerns me is that we are getting hung up about whether it is called a tolerance zone, a management zone or a non-harassment zone. We have looked elsewhere for models for the management—for want of a better word—of prostitution, and we have discussed the Swedish model, in which those who purchase sex have been criminalised. Have you considered that model? What are your views on it?
I tried to make that point in my introductory remarks on the use of antisocial behaviour orders. The council was keen that we should consider trying to apply that sanction to men as well. There would not be a supply of prostitutes if there was no demand in the first place. The balanced programme and strategy that we are trying to put in place must address that; it may be that that is an issue for the committee to examine. It is not a criminal offence to pick up a prostitute—to get the balance right, perhaps there needs to be a stronger law on that side, too.
I have been trying to get my head around the logic of the matter, but perhaps logic does not apply to it. We are talking about a criminal act, whether it is a man purchasing sex or a woman selling herself as a prostitute. You say that we should put in place harm reduction, identify service needs and deliver services to people who are involved. However, if we follow the logic of what you are saying, we would apply that to other illegal behaviour, such as drugs offences. Taking drugs creates problems; we need harm reduction and we need to deliver services, but we have never talked about drug-taking tolerance zones. Young people who drink in the streets create problems, both for themselves and for their neighbours, but we are not talking about drinking-in-the-street tolerance zones, nor are we talking about tolerance zones for illegal parking. If behaviour is illegal, we should surely try to eradicate that behaviour. Is that not the flaw in the tolerance and non-harassment management project? We are talking about an essentially illegal behaviour.
I agree with you—ultimately, that is what we should all try to achieve, but we also have to recognise the situation. Prostitution is the world's oldest profession, as the saying goes, and it will never go away. It certainly will not go away if we bury our heads in the sand and fail to address the issues. The analogies that you draw with drug taking and drinking in the street do not hold out. On the solutions that work for prostitution, evidence shows that having better management control can ease the problems for other people who are affected, such as local residents. We have to find the best course of action for the particular problem and deal with it, as we have said, by using ASBOs and, perhaps, stronger legislative powers. We have to use all the clubs in the bag and all the tools that are at our disposal.
I understand that, but the point that Mark Turley made earlier in response to Iain Smith, which also defied logic, was that you operated a tolerance zone because you found an area in which it was acceptable. What you now want is the power to impose such a zone on an area that might not find it acceptable, and I think that we have real difficulty in following your logic on that.
First, the council has never had a tolerance zone. The so-called tolerance zone that we have been talking about is the non-harassment zone that was operated by the police. The council has no powers whatsoever in relation to prostitution, other than general powers and duties for the well-being of people who are affected. What existed was a default—it did not cause a major problem and, in effect, the police turned a blind eye. However, people will no longer turn a blind eye.
Therefore we should have drug users in the same area using their drugs—
I think that you are getting into a debate with the witnesses.
I just cannot understand the logic behind the argument and I wish that someone would give me an answer to the point that I am trying to make. If one applies the provision to one set of circumstances of antisocial behaviour, why is it not being sought and applied in others? Why does the council need the power to do something that it could manage before?
There are many examples. If we were to lock up everybody who commits a criminal offence, society would break down and jails would be full. The job of the police day in, day out is to manage people's criminal behaviour and not simply to arrest people when they commit a criminal act. The police's attitude is that they increasingly want prevention, management and problem solving. We are talking about trying to apply such approaches to the difficult problem of prostitution. It would be nice if we did not have to do so, but arguments about what should not be done or what did not have to be done are irrelevant when something has existed for so long and will clearly continue to exist unless we begin to try to manage it properly.
I want to come back in briefly. I think that Mark Turley said that he thought that there will be areas in which there will be a minimum of opposition. I take it that there will be small populations in those areas. Is it unfair for residents to be told that they are in such a position because they live in an area in which there are not many people who can oppose the creation of a zone? I am elaborating on the point that Michael McMahon raised. I ask Kingsley Thomas whether the City of Edinburgh Council would take the same view if someone wanted to build a waste plant in such an area, for example. They might say, "We'll just build this plant here because we know that only six or a dozen people will be able to oppose it." I want to deal with the issue of people being given the opportunity to oppose. You are saying that you are proposing such an approach because the residents will be in a minority.
I will use the example of unofficial encampments for Travellers. We could take the view that we could simply let people camp unofficially wherever they want to camp, but from our experience in Edinburgh, such an approach would, typically, bring serious disruption to many communities. Alternatively, we could seek to set up a well-managed site, which would undoubtedly be controversial in the local community in which it is sited, but it could then be proved to people that, with good management, a managed site for Travellers does not have to be disruptive. There is definitely an analogy in that respect. How fair is what is now happening in Leith links?
To be fair, a managed Travellers site is a different situation. A completely different application is being proposed. We are talking about street activity, and many issues are related to such activity. The impact of traffic and activities other than those of the women themselves will be involved. I want to consider ways in which we can support women and would argue that there are much better examples. People will travel into such zones in a way that does not happen for a Travellers site. The situation in your analogy is completely different.
I do not think that it is.
I think that it is.
With respect, the sort of site that I envisage would not be a residential street. We envisage areas that are off normal streets and in which few—if any—residents would be affected. There might be businesses that could be affected to a small extent, but if the management of hours, for example, that is talked about in the bill was applied properly and there was consultation, the impact could be far less than the impact of the current situation.
I think that we have explored the issue as much as we can.
Mark Turley makes a serious point. Previously, there was a managed system, but there has been a move to a system in which management of the situation has basically been lost. When we previously discussed the matter, Margo MacDonald talked about the danger that more serious drug taking and child prostitution and trafficking would result if we did not have some form of management. You might not have concrete evidence of such things because dispersal will obviously prevent you from finding out too much about what is going on. However, do you have any evidence that there has been an escalation in the seriousness of what is going on in relation to prostitution?
We have evidence that drug taking has increased. There have been increases in the availability of drugs and a certain type of drug taking has escalated—there is more high-risk drug taking, if I can put it that way. A related issue is that more aggressive pimping has developed. We are not aware of evidence that trafficking of young people or children, which has been referred to, takes place and there is no evidence of an influx of young people under 16 into prostitution—the number is small.
I am conscious that Margo MacDonald will give evidence next week, but if she has any further questions, she can ask them now.
There was some anecdotal evidence about under-age girls appearing in the area for the first time. Nobody questions that—it is a matter of record that it was reported. Also, I think that the rise in reported attacks on women has been about 1,000 per cent. The police can confirm that.
We are likely to be in court in June to seek an ASBO against one individual. It took us much longer than we expected to gather the evidence, but if that case is successful, we have built up significant evidence against other people and could pursue orders against them. However, as the measure is experimental, we do not want to dive in; we would rather see the impact on a small scale before we consider expanding the use of the orders if the feeling is that they work. The person against whom we are seeking an ASBO does not live in the Leith links area, but if someone lived there, we could get round that by seeking a different type of order in which the condition might be to restrict the person's behaviour rather than their presence.
If the council has to take that sticking-plaster approach, how much more will it cost in manpower resources? I presume that you will have to have people to monitor the situation.
We have staff out at night, which costs a heck of a lot of money. As you will know from another bill that is being considered, getting an ASBO is an expensive business. For the group of people whom we are discussing, it is doubly difficult because of the typical hours that they work. The approach is certainly expensive.
That brings us to the end of our questions. I thank Kingsley Thomas, Ray de Souza and Mark Turley for their evidence.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome our final group of witnesses this afternoon, who are Councillor Martin Greig and Leslie Brown from Aberdeen City Council. We have received written evidence on the bill from Aberdeen City Council. I offer Martin Greig the opportunity to make any introductory remarks.
Our written evidence speaks for itself, but I want to fill in some details of the amendments to the evidence that we gave to the Local Government Committee in December 2002. We have submitted a two-page document on the amendments and additions, but I will give a little more information on the community planning approach that we are taking to the problem of prostitution in Aberdeen. Our community plan includes a challenge forum called the community safety partnership, which I chair. It involves a number of partners, including the council, Grampian police, the NHS, the fire and rescue service and Drugs Action. The community safety partnership has a fairly pragmatic approach to the problems with which it deals, one of which is prostitution.
Thank you for those helpful introductory remarks.
Will you briefly outline to the committee the developments that have taken place in the non-harassment zone in Aberdeen since the previous Prostitution Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill was considered? I think that you heard the similar discussion that we had with our witnesses from the City of Edinburgh Council.
I am not aware of any changes.
If anything, the situation has improved slightly since we gave evidence on the previous Prostitution Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill. There is a general feeling that services such as the council and the police have got their act together a bit more. We have been working with businesses that, when we consulted on the previous bill, expressed concerns about the effects that the zone was having on them and the police have taken a number of successful actions to dispel the problems and perceived problems. Cleansing is quite a bit better now than it used to be and the council is not getting anything like the volume of correspondence on the issue that it received when the previous bill was introduced in the first session.
Where do you stand on the spectrum between management and zero tolerance of illegal activity?
We call the zone a management zone and we manage the problem. The council has a policy of zero tolerance and the work of the sex industry forum is informed by the policies of the various partners in the forum. Relevant policies that support the council's work on the management zone include the zero-tolerance policy and our policies on, for example, homelessness, crime reduction and drug abuse.
I note that the Edinburgh non-harassment zone broke down because of the increasingly residential nature of the area, but that the management zone in Aberdeen still operates. Is it correct to presume that that zone is in an area that has a low level of residential property?
Yes. The zone is in an industrial area near the harbour, although there is housing on the periphery of the zone. Footdee is on one side and Market Street and the city centre are on the other. The police work hard to ensure that the problem is contained and managed within the zone and they follow up or prosecute activity outside the zone in the usual way. I understand that cards are issued to the women to indicate where the zone is, to encourage them to work there. All necessary enforcement action is taken in the peripheral area.
I was a guest of Aberdeen City Council as part of the expert group—I wish people would not call us the expert group; I call it the working group—on prostitution. The visit was very interesting and I will tell you about it. It is almost right to say, "It ain't broke, why fix it?" in relation to Aberdeen. Do our witnesses object to the bill?
I do not. Prostitution is an evolving problem and our approach evolves as we try to respond to the contours of the problem. In the meantime, there is no major difference between what the bill proposes and what we currently do in Aberdeen.
You said that almost all the people involved in prostitution are drug dependent. Your submission says:
We set up a drop-in centre fairly recently, although we had a lot of funding problems. It might be too early to say whether there is concrete evidence that people are being taken out of prostitution.
It is very early days, as Councillor Greig said. The drop-in centre has been open only for a matter of weeks, but we hope that it will provide a focus that enables us to build sufficient relationships with women who have fairly chaotic lifestyles to address the wider issues around moving them out of prostitution. We do not pretend that that will be easy—if it was easy, everyone would have done it by now—and we are aware that the work will require tremendous resources. We went to observe the situation in Glasgow and we are well aware that Aberdeen will not qualify for a lot of the funding that Glasgow uses for those services. We will have to be more creative. I hope that the additional funding for drugs treatment, which was announced yesterday, might help us to get into that issue a bit more in Aberdeen.
Is the real problem drug use and abuse?
That is certainly the problem of the moment. However, prostitution has been around for a long time, so the drug problem cannot be the only one.
If the bill became law, what practical difference would it make to your management approach?
I suspect that it would not make much difference, because we have a tolerance zone with which everybody co-operates to one degree or another. The bill might come in handy if we found ourselves in the situation in which Edinburgh found itself, in which the zone's area changed and it became more developed. It is not without the bounds of possibility that more people could be living in the area or that the nature of the businesses there changed and they operated 24/7. In that case, we might have to think about managing the zone differently and having it in a different location. The bill might give us a framework for doing that and for having a dialogue with the community about finding a way forward.
What about the location? You say that you have a suitable location, which is under your management system. The zone would have legal status if the bill was passed. Would the bill make no other difference to you?
The issue is the degree of formality. The management zone that currently exists has been formalised to a certain degree. The bill, if passed, would take things a step further and give more forceful recognition to the zone's existence.
For Andrew Welsh's information, I should explain that the bill is an enabling one, so that, if Aberdeen City Council already had a satisfactory arrangement, it would not have to use the bill's provisions.
I was just wondering about the situation.
Aberdeen might or might not decide to use the bill's provisions.
I take the point, but I wonder what practical difference the bill would make, if it became law. That was my question.
I want to pursue that point. I understand why the bill was introduced, but I am not entirely convinced of the need for legislation. Given that Aberdeen City Council seems effectively to have done what the bill proposes to do, are the bill's provisions needed to enable other councils to do the same? Are there limitations to what has been done in Aberdeen—for example, in the provision of certain services—that the bill would address?
I do not think that, if the bill were passed, it would inhibit anything that we do. However, it is up to the Parliament to decide whether the bill's provisions would benefit cities such as Aberdeen.
We are currently in the position in which Edinburgh was a while ago, in that we have a zone in an area that has traditionally had prostitution. If that area changes—as happened in Edinburgh—the bill's provisions would probably come into their own.
I understand what you are saying, but is it the case that, if the nature of the tolerance zone area changed, the problem would not be the legislative framework but finding an alternative area? Is that not the big issue that you face?
I will ask the same question in a slightly different way. With the agreement of the various agencies and the community safety partnership, you currently have an informal tolerance zone. If the bill became law, is there a danger that you could be challenged legally on the ground that you had created a tolerance zone without going through the formal framework of the legislation? I know that Margo MacDonald said that the bill is an enabling one. However, is there a danger that your informal arrangement could be legally changed because it did not follow the legislation's requirements?
Sorry—
Let the witnesses answer the question, Margo.
It is not for us to decide.
I am not a lawyer, so I hesitate to get into too much legalese, but my understanding is that the bill is an enabling one and that we could be challenged only if we used the legislation in some way. Anyway, councils are always subject to judicial review for anything that they do. It is worth making a similar point to the one that the City of Edinburgh Council made: Grampian police, not Aberdeen City Council, formed the zone.
If Aberdeen City Council were breaking the law, it would most certainly be subject to legal action. However, if it was not breaking the law, how could it be subject to legal action?
Well, the point is—
I do not want us to get into a debate between MSPs. Margo MacDonald will be giving evidence next week and we can address those issues then. I think that the point that Iain Smith wants to make is that, if a council has not followed the consultation procedures that are specified in the bill, it might not be seen to be acting within the law. However, it would be better to leave that issue until next week.
I will bring the Lord Advocate with me.
Can the witnesses remind me of the difference in scale between the sex industries in Aberdeen and Edinburgh?
Although there will have been changes on the periphery, I do not think that the situation has changed materially since we submitted our evidence. We suggested then that the police knew of around 170 women in street prostitution—not other forms of prostitution, but street prostitution. The police have good relationships with the women in and around the zone.
Is that figure lower than the figure for Edinburgh?
I do not know, to be honest.
I will tell you next week. I would tell you now, but I am not allowed to.
Okay, Margo—we will let you make one brief intervention, to answer Sylvia Jackson's question.
When the Edinburgh tolerance zone moved to Salamander Street, around 20 women were working at any one time. That figure was agreed and the women complied with it because their representatives had negotiated it.
Is there an exit strategy? Are we saying that the women will be there in perpetuity? Are we saying that Edinburgh will have a tolerance zone for ever? Alternatively, are we saying that one day we will not need a tolerance zone—which I think is what we all want? I appreciate that there will always be some challenges.
No. The services are not exclusive to those women. I keep emphasising the word "evolving". We have an evolving attitude. We are working within existing law and trying to improve service delivery where it is needed. The community planning approach has been successful because the agencies know where the problems are. Getting together and talking about those problems helps us to share knowledge and to take joint action as part of a more strategic approach to solving the problems. Drug abuse and prostitution are problems that will continue to evolve—the situation is not static. By working together, we will continue to find ways of responding to the changing culture and the social contours of those interrelated problems.
I do not think that the question has been dealt with. You are saying that the situation will continue to evolve, so there will always be zones. I argue that the street is not the best place in which to provide support mechanisms—it is probably the most dangerous place in which to do so. Earlier, Margo MacDonald referred to the indoor sex industry. Why should we not create a support mechanism for that industry, rather than an external zone? Why are you taking this approach?
We look forward to finding out what the expert group has investigated and what its conclusions are. We are aware that the problem is multifaceted. We can only deal with what we know, move forward in a pragmatic way and tackle the problem as it confronts us. We are limited in what we can do.
What kind of work has Aberdeen City Council done on alternatives to the lifestyle that we are discussing? Some of the evidence that we have received from other organisations has focused on providing such alternatives, rather than sending out a message to young people that prostitution is tolerated because we have created a tolerance zone. Talking about tolerance is not the same as talking about alternatives.
Glasgow has the Routes Out partnership. Leslie Brown can fill us in on what is happening in Aberdeen.
As I said earlier, the work of the sex industry forum is in its infancy. The drop-in centre has been open only for a few weeks and only a couple of nights a week. We are looking to expand the service and to make it the kick-off point for work to get women out of prostitution. We emphasise that what we have is not a tolerance zone, but a management zone—we are managing the effects of prostitution, rather than prostitution itself. That may be a matter of semantics, but I am not convinced that it is. We do not want to suggest that we are tolerating prostitution as a lifestyle choice—none of those involved in the forum sees the issue in that way. As partners, we will do everything that we can to reduce the likelihood of other people falling into prostitution.
So you are doing work on that.
Now that we have established the drop-in centre and sorted out its funding, the next step is to look forward. We will plan a more specific approach to getting women out of prostitution.
That relates to what you were saying a moment ago and to the issue that Paul Martin raised. You said that the majority of women in prostitution are victims or survivors of child sexual abuse, abuse by partners and so on. This may be a question for the Scottish Executive, rather than for you, but are we doing enough to locate and catch vulnerable people who may end up in prostitution before that happens? It is to be hoped that we can prevent people from ending up in that situation.
The easy answer to the question is that we are clearly not doing enough—if we were, the problem would not exist. Earlier, Councillor Greig referred to zero tolerance. Aberdeen City Council is a long-standing supporter of zero tolerance of violence towards women. We have done a lot of work on improving services to women who are vulnerable to domestic abuse and rape. We have also received considerable funding support from the Scottish Executive. We will talk to those services to see what they can offer to the developing approach to prostitution that Aberdeen City Council is putting together in order to deal with precisely the issues that you raise.
Michael McMahon mentioned the Swedish model. I understand that, in Sweden, if a man approaches a woman, she agrees to supply a service to him and he is abusive to her in any way, she can report what has happened. That shifts the balance of power a wee bit towards women who are prostitutes. Do you think that we should consider such an approach?
We can always improve the delivery of our services, where needed. The council is doing its best, with limited resources, to help those who are most in need. As you suggest, it is for the Scottish Executive to start to take this agenda on board. We are doing what we can within the bounds of the existing law.
That brings us to the end of questions. I thank Martin Greig and Leslie Brown for their evidence and thank members for their attendance. Next week, there will be a further evidence-taking session on the bill, at which the star turn will be Margo MacDonald.
Meeting closed at 16:10.
Previous
Rail Industry