Don't believe Orwellian untruths that would keep women trapped in Scotland’s sex trade

As MSP Ash Regan’s Prostitution (Offences and Support) Bill moves through Holyrood, the public is being bombarded with a set of claims against it that have been repeated so often they have acquired the sheen of truth. But repetition is not evidence, and slogans are not policy.

The debate has been framed as a simple choice between ‘safety’ and ‘morality’, as though the only options are to criminalise the women or to fully decriminalise the sex trade.

This is a false binary. Regan’s Bill does neither. It decriminalises those selling sex, provides support for exiting, and criminalises only the buyers – the group with the power, money, and choice. This is the Nordic model, already adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France, Canada, and both jurisdictions in Ireland.

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Evidence at odds with rhetoric

Yet the decriminalisation lobby insists, loudly and repeatedly, that this model “doesn’t work”. One untruth that’s trotted out over and again is this: criminalising buyers, pushes prostitution underground, increases stigma, and makes women less safe. It’s a compelling narrative – until you look at the evidence.

Countries using the Nordic model have seen reduced demand, reduced trafficking, and a cultural shift in which buying sex is no longer socially acceptable. Sweden’s national rapporteur on trafficking has repeatedly stated that prostitution has not “gone underground” – police can still find buyers, and the law has not made the trade invisible.

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What it has done is make it smaller. Regarding personal safety, survivors tell us that punters can become violent for no apparent reason whatsoever and many of them have experienced this. However, in Sweden, punters know that the women can complain to the police with impunity which has protected the women far more than full decriminalisation ever has.

Consistently, the Bill’s detractors ignore the central pillar of the Nordic model, which is the support for women who want to exit prostitution. The Bill before Holyrood includes this explicitly. To suggest that it would simply criminalise buyers and abandon women is to misrepresent it entirely. But misrepresentation has become a feature of this debate.

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Poverty, addiction and violence

Women with lived experience of prostitution in Scotland have been clear: prostitution is not empowering, not safe, and not a matter of free choice for the vast majority. The Scottish Women’s Convention has documented the reasons women enter prostitution: poverty, homelessness, addiction, grooming, coercion, and male violence. These are not the conditions of a free market; they are the conditions of exploitation.

To frame prostitution as ‘work like any other’ is to erase the structural inequalities that funnel women into the sex trade. It is to pretend that a woman selling sexual access to her body is in the same position as a man buying it. It is to ignore the power imbalance at the heart of the transaction. And it is to ignore who profits from this.

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One of the strangest features of this debate is the sudden enthusiasm of certain unions — including Aslef — for the full decriminalisation of prostitution. One must ask: why are train drivers lobbying on the sex trade? When did the sexual exploitation of women become a core industrial concern for locomotive operators?

Common sense, better known as the Basil Fawlty school of the bleeding obvious, tells us that something doesn’t add up. Because the only people who profit from a fully decriminalised sex trade are pimps, traffickers, and the multinational pimping websites that advertise women like products.

These are industries worth millions. They have a vested interest in keeping demand high, regulation low, and scrutiny minimal. And they are not shy about spending money to protect that interest.

A real threat to sex trade’s profits

When unions adopt positions that conveniently align with the commercial goals of the sex industry, we should not pretend this is a coincidence. We should ask who benefits. Because it certainly isn’t the women whose bodies are being bought and sold.

It isn’t the women who have told inquiry after inquiry that prostitution is violence, not work. It isn’t the women who want out but are trapped by poverty, addiction, coercion, or immigration status. The Nordic model threatens the profits of the sex trade because it targets demand. That is precisely why the industry fights it so hard.

We can continue to accept the comforting fiction that prostitution is a matter of individual choice, a neutral transaction between consenting adults. We can continue to ignore the poverty, coercion, and violence that underpin the trade.

We can continue to pretend that the only way to keep women safe is to keep the market thriving. Or we can look at the evidence from countries that have taken demand seriously and seen real change.

Regan’s Bill is not about punishing women. It is about protecting them. It removes criminal penalties from those selling sex, quashes past convictions, and provides support for exiting. It shifts responsibility onto the buyers – the group with the power to choose whether the market exists at all.

Women are not commodities

No legislation is perfect. But the question before Scotland is not whether the Nordic model solves every problem. The question is whether we are willing to confront the reality of prostitution and act accordingly.

Are we willing to challenge the narratives that have been repeated so often they now pass for truth? Are we willing to follow the evidence rather than the slogans? Are we willing to say, clearly and unapologetically, that women are not commodities?

Scotland has the chance to take a principled, evidence-based stand against exploitation. It should take it.

Dr Jacci Stoyle is secretary of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group for Commercial Sexual Exploitation