Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill
I welcome Margo MacDonald to the committee. It is nice to see her here. She is welcome at any time, of course.
Thank you.
Agenda item 3 is consideration of the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill. Do members have any general comments on the paper that we have on the bill?
In light of our previous discussions and the concerns on which we were trying to concentrate, I am content with what has happened. Although the bill will be only another small step, I am glad that the stage 1 consideration led to a commitment from the Executive to change the bill considerably. The pressure that the Equal Opportunities Committee put on the Executive was useful. The Local Government and Transport Committee did a good job, too.
I concur with what Marlyn Glen said. We had concerns about the bill. Prostitution is a big area for the Equal Opportunities Committee, but we were examining the specifics of the bill. From the paper and the stage 1 debate, I see that the Executive has accepted the need for amendments on every issue the committee raised. I am more than pleased that the Executive has taken those matters on board and am happy with the paper.
The committee felt that the bill was the tip of the iceberg and that there needed to be a much wider discussion on prostitution. We were able to say that in the stage 1 debate and we might want to say it in future or expect a future Equal Opportunities Committee to say it.
I appreciate the sincerity of the members who have spoken, but they are placing far too much hope in the recast bill that is likely to be presented to the Parliament at stage 3, and relying far too much on it. The bill's utility depends entirely on one's objective. The objective might be to eliminate prostitution, but that will not happen if we adopt the measures for which the committee has called. We already have proof that they do not eliminate prostitution. English experience has shown that if the proposed amendments on kerb crawling are adopted, the red light areas will move around the cities, being chased by the police. Liverpool City Council considered having tolerance zones in different parts of the city for, I think, six month periods, to share the misery. Middlesbrough Council and others have tough policies but have not reduced street prostitution.
If reducing street prostitution is the objective, the proposed amendments have failed the test already. We do not need to go in for crystal ball gazing, because there is a history book to read. If we seek to eliminate prostitution by making it impossible to purchase sex, practical experience has proved that that is not possible. Much more would be needed than a small bill such as the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill.
The experience in Sweden is frequently cited by people who have not checked up on what happened there: the sex services trade went underground in the first year after the purchase of sex was made illegal. That resulted in an increase in trafficking and prostitutes' support workers reported that they could not reach them. Sex is now being sold on the streets again and the situation is a great deal worse.
If the objective of the measures that have been proposed, and which may well be adopted in good faith, is to eliminate prostitution, they will not succeed. If the objective is to minimise the physical and emotional harm that is done to prostitutes, I doubt very much whether they will be successful from that point of view, either. The adoption of the proposed measures will mean that prostitutes will not operate in a known red light zone that can be serviced by the local authority, the health authority, the police and the voluntary support agencies, so it will not be possible for contact to be made with women with a view to helping them to exit prostitution when they are ready to do so. I think that the proposals will mean that we end up with a worse situation than we have at present.
Margo MacDonald has done a good job of enticing us into the debate about the subject, but I will resist the temptation because I am supposed to be at another meeting. She has made a number of points that I fully agree with. There is no way that the bill is a panacea; it will probably not even scratch the surface. For me, the issue is whether it will advance how the abuse of women in society through prostitution is tackled—in other words, whether it will be progressive or regressive. Are tolerance zones a progressive or a regressive measure? That is where the debate lies. I have come down on the side of believing that the bill is progressive, even in just a tiny way. My view is that toleration would be regressive for women in society in general, as well as for the women involved—although I know that that is a matter of debate.
Our view of the situation in Sweden depends on which research we read, which academics we speak to and whose experience we listen to. I think that the Equal Opportunities Committee needs to examine the issue for itself. In our legacy paper, we should suggest that at some point after the election our successor committee should investigate at first hand what is happening in Sweden, rather than have opinions filtered through different sources. My understanding is that trafficking has gone down rather than up. I noticed that when the Local Government and Transport Committee took evidence on the Swedish model, it heard from only one witness, who gave a negative picture. It did not seek to take a wider view to balance things up, nor did it speak directly to anyone from Sweden.
We did.
If it did, I missed that. I think that our successor committee should take evidence directly on the direction in which we should go in the future.
The bill is not a panacea, but I do not think that anyone ever claimed it was or that it would eradicate prostitution. We have not yet come to a conclusion in the debate about whether it would be beneficial to eradicate prostitution. Many people still do not understand that it is a problem or that it is even possible to introduce measures to eradicate it. I think it is unfortunate that that debate has still to be concluded.
I take on board everything Margo MacDonald said. I was a member of the Local Government Committee when she introduced her Prostitution Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill a few years ago. For me, the safety of prostitutes, their health and welfare and the support they receive are paramount, but I do not think that prostitution tolerance zones would give prostitutes the protection Margo MacDonald seems to think they would.
When the Local Government Committee took evidence on Margo MacDonald's bill, I was perturbed by the description that we were given of what a prostitution tolerance zone would be. It was not even a street, necessarily. It was just an area, perhaps out of town, where there were buildings such as sheds, or an industrial site, where men could come round in cars to pick up prostitutes. I just could not support such a proposal.
I understand what Margo MacDonald is saying about prostitution going underground, but in certain areas—Edinburgh, for instance, with the Scottish prostitutes education project, and Glasgow—there is a good network of support for the women. I do not think that that support will disappear if there are no tolerance zones. My big fear is that establishing a tolerance zone will mean that we tolerate prostitution, and I cannot condone or tolerate prostitution.
Although I would like to pursue the matter further, I agree with Carolyn Leckie that we should put it into our legacy paper so that it can be considered properly. We have moved on and the bill is the best we are going to get at the moment, despite its narrow focus. I would certainly like to return to the issue, but I cannot support tolerance zones for the reasons that I have just given, which I also gave in 2002.
We are not going to get into a discussion of tolerance zones.
I was not proposing that.
I know you were not.
As I said at the start of the debate, the committee feels strongly that the bill should at least be amended, but that what it addresses is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of work to be done and a discussion to be had before we can even start to think about eradicating prostitution. We must think about how we can protect the women, what we can deal with now rather than in the long term, and how we can move towards the long term. That requires a much wider discussion. I hope that we can include something about that in our legacy paper, so that a future Equal Opportunities Committee can consider how we can move forward and have that wider debate. On the day of the stage 1 debate, there was some frustration that that wider discussion had not taken place. Nevertheless, as other members have said, the bill is a step in the right direction. It is all we can do at this stage. Members will obviously be free to participate in any future debate on the matter in the chamber.
I found it helpful that we had discussed the matter in the committee. I really appreciated the work that the clerks—particularly Zoé Tough—had done. When members are busy, it is difficult for us to look at legislation that has been scrutinised by other committees, so that was really helpful.
Likewise. It is not the practice of this committee to police everyone else, but when there are equalities issues that we feel strongly about, it is appropriate for us to comment on them—and we did.
I remind members that the committee's equalities review event will take place in the chamber on Friday 23 February. I would be grateful if members could ensure that that is in their diaries. The event will consider equalities issues from 1999 to now and will bring together all the equalities organisations. It should be a very good debate in the chamber.
Meeting closed at 12:42.