Chamber and committees

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?

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?

Good afternoon, as it is now, and thanks to the panel for attending today.

To start with, I want to pick up on the comment that Lynsey Walton made quite a while ago about millions of National Ugly Mugs alerts. I might have heard you wrong, but did you say that the figure was 4 million?

That really sounds like a lot of violent men about whom you have to send out alerts. However, I will move on.

National Ugly Mugs openly states that it is funded by Vivastreet. For the benefit of the committee, I note that Vivastreet makes millions of pounds every year from facilitating the prostitution of thousands of women. Lynsey Walton, do you perhaps see a conflict between representing the women’s interests on the one hand and, on the other, being funded by, and possibly representing the interests of, those who profit from those women?

I want to ask you the same question about the buyers that I asked the previous witnesses. My view is that we very much do not see or hear from the buyers, and that the best that we can get when it comes to understanding their views on prostitution and the women they pay for sex comes from looking at things such as Punternet, where you can see women being reviewed as commodities, like takeaway meals. Do you have any views on why the buyers do not come forward to make the case with regard to their right to buy sex? Do you have any idea why that is?

Well, if we could find any who would want to talk to us, I am sure that the committee would be interested in hearing from them. I will hand back to the convener.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the witnesses. Thank you for attending.

It often seems that a voice is missing from the debate, and for me, that voice is that of the buyers. We know that sex buyers are around 99 per cent male, so it is the voices of the men who pay to buy sex that are missing. Could Diane Martin and Amanda Jane Quick give the committee an idea of what the attitudes of sex buyers are to the women whom they pay? As I probably will not get a follow-up question from the convener, I will add the second part of my question, which is, if the Parliament decides that it does not want to progress the bill, what do you think the consequences of doing nothing will be for Scotland?

Can you tell us a bit more about your members? Who would be in that category? I guess that you would use the term sex workers, but would that include women who are currently working in prostitution, as well as women who do lap dancing, webcam work, dominatrix work and so on? Would it cover that whole range? Would it include managers—pimps—too?

I suppose that I am just curious about it. In the 25 years since Sweden brought in its legislation, there has been a debate about the issue in many countries. The arguments against moving to a Nordic model are always exactly the same in every country, and it is always women who make the cases for and against the proposal. I am genuinely curious as to why we do not hear from the punters in this debate, when it is one that concerns them.

It is a good question and, to be honest, we wrestled with it a little bit ourselves. The reason behind the policy intent is that, as you can imagine, as the law stands, women who are selling are often arrested and have convictions for selling sex under soliciting legislation.

I have one friend who has exited prostitution. She has been out a long time now. She entered prostitution when she was 15 and she had 39 convictions by the time she was 17. I probably do not have to explain to the committee that, if you have convictions in this area, it can create a barrier to accessing services, because women often do not want to disclose that they are in prostitution. We often see women in prostitution having their children taken away from them. If you want to exit prostitution, it could have a damaging effect on your employment prospects, whether you are able to get access to housing and a range of other things. Survivors were very clear with me that they wanted not only to be decriminalised but to have any existing convictions for the offence to be quashed or pardoned in some way.

If the committee still has doubts about that, it is borne out by the Casey review report that just came out. I do not know whether any of you have looked at it. It is about the Asian grooming gangs—well, they get called that, but I call them “rape torture gangs”—and it was commissioned by the UK Government. It has 12 recommendations on that particular issue, and the UK Government has accepted those in full. You will know that many of the girls who were groomed into those situations ended up in commercial sexual exploitation, so they were prostituted. Obviously, most of them were young—in many cases, they were below the age of consent—so one of the recommendations is that no one should be criminalised for their own abuse or their own exploitation. That is the policy intent.

How we get to the outcome, I am not so set on. I very much like the idea of an automatic repeal. The reason for that is that, when the records are looked up, there will not be anything on them. The offence will not be listed and then disregarded—it will not be on there at all. If, when they fill in forms, such women are asked whether they have a criminal record, they will be able to legitimately say that they do not, because it will have been removed.

However, there are other ways to get there. There are three quite recent pieces of legislation, the names of which Maren Schroeder will help me to remember. We have based our approach on the Horizon legislation, because we want there to be an automatic repeal, for the reasons that Maren set out. Only one crime code is involved, and there is no need for a case review.