Chamber and committees

The world is watching. As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal finally unravels, it exposes something that survivors and whistleblowers have been telling us for decades: that sexual exploitation does not persist because no one knows about it; it persists because those with power choose not to act.

We must honestly ask ourselves today what Scotland can truly say that we have done. Have we listened to survivors, many of whom are in the gallery with us today? I am sad to say that, shamefully, very few in the chamber have listened to survivors. Too often, survivor voices have been drowned out by louder ones with platforms, enviable access to power and the presumption to speak over those who have lived experience. Politicians might write bold strategies on prostitution, but they repeatedly fail to confront the root cause of sexual exploitation, which is, of course, the demand to buy sex.

In the gallery today, and watching from home, are survivors who have tried time and again to be heard. They have submitted evidence, spoken to committees and attended parliamentary events, reliving their trauma not for themselves but to protect the next wee girl from what happened to them. Today, they have entrusted me with something profound: to be their agency, to speak truth to power and to ask this Parliament finally to act.

I will be absolutely clear about what the bill does. My unbuyable bill recognises prostitution for what it is—a system of exploitation and violence that is sustained by demand. It would decriminalise those who are sold, recognising them as people who are constrained by vulnerability and not as offenders, and it would place criminality and accountability where they have never properly sat in Scots law: with those who buy sexual access and those who profit from the sale of sexual access to human beings.

That is not radical. It would close a gap in the law that has existed for almost 20 years. Police Scotland is clear and is fully supportive of the idea that buying sex is a form of exploitation that should be covered by law. The majority of those who sell sex are vulnerable and most are at risk of violence and therefore should be supported, not criminalised. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service tells us that, although such offending often happens behind closed doors, that

“does not mean … that the difficulties are insurmountable”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 November 2025; c 2.]

The Lord Advocate is unequivocal and has said that

“those who purchase sex … are statistically more likely to perpetrate domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women and girls”,

making this a matter of clear

“public interest and societal harm.”

The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has stated plainly that prostitution

“constitutes torture, inhuman and degrading treatment”

and is an aggravated form of male violence, facilitated by demand.

This bill is not out of time; it is overdue. Why do this now? Because exploitation is not going to wait for more reviews, more consultations or more Government strategies. The electorate did not send us to the chamber to observe the harms that are going on outside; they sent us here to act and to do something about that. Public support for the bill is strong, yet Scotland remains in the extraordinary position where protecting women and children from sexual exploitation was not a fully funded, year 1 priority for the Government, which, after 19 years in power, has still failed to act.

The Government’s own expert adviser on grooming and child sexual exploitation, Professor Alexis Jay, said in 2018:

“The big issue here is tackling the problem of demand.”

The demand for sex with children is growing worldwide. Most women who are in prostitution entered as children, many of them from the care system and many already carrying the scars of sexual abuse, domestic violence and trauma. Surely the public expect us and the Government to do everything in our power to protect those vulnerable women and children, so why will we not do that?

The UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner has warned of a surge in trafficking, calling it a demand-led crime that grows faster than our ability to protect victims. This is a market where buyers believe that they are never going to be challenged, and that belief is our collective problem to solve in this place today. For nearly 20 years, inaction has allowed that belief that buyers have to harden.

I am sorry to say that, although the Parliament speaks eloquently and at length about equality, it is searching for reasons not to act where action is required. Inaction is not neutrality; it is a decision, and it has a cost. Dismissal of international evidence as being contested is not caution; it is intellectual laziness. The data exists if we choose to engage with it.

Sweden pioneered the equality model in 1999, criminalising the purchase of sex while supporting exit and recovery, and men consistently report a fear of legal consequences as being the primary deterrent. No Nordic model country has ever reversed its position. Instead, those countries have strengthened their laws, expanded their support and refined their enforcement. Once a society decides that human beings are not commodities, it does not go back from that position. That is what the global sex trade fears: losing its market of misery for profits.

The United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, is clear that prostitution is incompatible with women’s equality. Legal frameworks that normalise the buying of sex entrench violence and discrimination. Her message is that we have a duty to address demand, rather than to manage exploitation.

Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, France and Canada are all demonstrating positive outcomes of their laws. They have reduced demand, fewer people are in prostitution, they have improved safety and they have world-leading sexual health outcomes. In Sweden, there have been zero femicides in prostitution in 26 years. Sweden has the lowest demand for paid sex, it has world-leading HIV eradication, and it has strengthened laws to tackle online exploitation. That is not ideology—it is the evidence.

Let us remember Scotland’s legislative history.

I want to make a point to the chamber about the timing, because that is an issue that the Government has raised. We never seem to know our own history in here, so I note that the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill, which was passed in 2007, moved from introduction to enactment within a matter of months, and that was in an election year. Stage 1 was in January and stage 3 was in February. There was seemingly no panic about that bill, even though it was more complicated than this one.

We have to ask whose interests are being threatened. It is not the little girls in care homes who are vulnerable to grooming, not the women who, as we speak, are being trafficked in vans across Europe towards Scotland, not the students who are being lured in by free accommodation, not the abused, not the addicted and not the desperate women who are being coerced by debts and threats. That is the reality of prostitution.

It has been an interesting afternoon. I reiterate my point that the Parliament is at its best when we are wrestling with such debates. However, it is very clear to me that the approach that I outlined in my bill has won the argument decisively in the chamber this afternoon. There have been excellent speeches from Michelle Thomson, Ruth Maguire, Fergus Ewing and Stephen Kerr. However, we have not heard from the buyers.

The bill criminalises the purchase of sexual access, yet, throughout the committee’s scrutiny and throughout its evidence, the people whose behaviour would be criminalised are very conspicuous by their absence. There were no sex buyers—no men coming in front of the committee to account for or justify why they believe that their power entitles them to purchase access to another human being’s body. That matters because, when concerns are raised about safety, as they have been again today, we are told again and again that criminalising men will make women less safe, sellers will screen more carefully and women will be forced to vet in order to survive. Let us be honest: screening is not a safety measure; it is an attempt at a survival strategy that is used by women to try and navigate all the risks that are stacked against them—risks that are created by male entitlement, power and demand. It does not offer protection from violence.

I am sorry, minister, but if you had taken the time—

If she had taken time to listen to survivors, the minister might have heard people explaining that point.

There is a question here that is never answered.

I will not.

If men are refused by those at the very top who are able to do some kind of vetting, where do those men go next? I will tell members where they go: they just go down the chain, to women who are poorer, more desperate and more vulnerable. That is a choice, but too many people in prostitution do not have a choice. They do not have agency, and they do not have an ability to plead.

We are told that sex buyers are ordinary men, and I believe that they are. They are men who want privacy. The evidence—academic, operational and survivor led—tells us a different story, however. The Lord Advocate put this in her written evidence to the committee. She said that

“women involved in prostitution are disproportionately likely to be—”

If she had taken time to listen to survivors, the minister might have heard people explaining that point.

There is a question here that is never answered.

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention on that point?

No, that is not true.

The problem that we are wrestling with is that it is our job as legislators to engage with the data and the evidence. It is fine for people to have opinions. People can say, “I think this might be more safe,” but that is not supported by the evidence. We analysed the evidence from the other side of the debate that was submitted to the committee—because the committee was unwilling to do so—and that evidence shows that the Nordic model is the only model that reduces harm.