The Scottish Government’s Delivering Equally Safe fund backs more than 100 organisations tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).
The Equally Safe strategy defines prostitution as a form of commercial sexual exploitation and violence against women. Laura Baillie, political officer at Scotland for Decrim, told The Herald some in the women’s sector who receive the funds do not agree with this.
It is understood that applicants must demonstrate their work aligns with the strategy’s goals of preventing and eradicating VAWG. Ministers have now stated, however, that funding is not conditional on organisations taking a policy stance.
Organisations in receipt of funding include Rape Crisis Scotland, Engender, Close the Gap and Women’s Aid.
Speaking at the event, Ms Baillie said: “I’m thinking of our comrades in the women’s sector tonight who could not be here due to fears that it would jeopardise their funding.
Campaigners and MSPs including Maggie Chapman and Mercedes Villalba who oppose Ash Regan’s bill. (Image: Nix Renton)
“We have many allies in the women’s sector who do not agree with this but cannot speak out due to the very real fears that they would no longer be eligible for funding and would therefore have to close. It is outrageous that government money is being used to stifle debate in this way.”
Responding to the claims, Alba MSP Ash Regan — who resigned from the Scottish Government as community safety minister due to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill — said it was “odd” to suggest she had any influence over funding decisions.
“It is a very odd suggestion that a minister who resigned from Government on principle and later left the governing party would be ‘pulling the strings’ of who receives government funding,” she said. “If that were the case, then the Government would have surely legislated for this bill when I had it on the year four plan as a minister.
“If I had such powers, government funding would look very different and would be founded on value for public money, with success criteria based on the outcome of its impact on the public good in Scotland.”
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A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We fund more than 100 organisations to support the delivery of Equally Safe including those working with women that have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and that funding does not have conditions on providing views on issues of policy.”
Proposed legislation
Currently, it is not illegal to buy or sell sex in Scotland, but activities such as brothel-keeping and loitering are criminalised.
Ms Regan’s bill, which is at stage one in the Scottish Parliament, seeks to introduce the so-called Nordic model. It would criminalise the purchase of sex while removing the offence of soliciting to sell sex.
She believes her proposals — based on the Nordic model of targeting sex buyers — will shift the blame from those involved in prostitution to those seeking it out.
This model is in effect in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada and Israel.
The MSP argues this approach would quash historic convictions and create a statutory right to support for those in and exiting prostitution.
Support for the bill
Supporters, including 24 MSPs from across parties, argue the measure would reduce demand and protect women.
SNP MSP Michelle Thomson, who supports Ms Regan’s bill, told The Herald: “Women will never have equality when they are commodities to be bought and sold for money and to satisfy men’s demand.”
Michelle Thomson SNP MSP (Image: Andrew Milligan/ PA)
Other MSPs such as Labour’s Rhoda Grant are backing the proposals. More than ten years ago she brought forward similar legislation, but it failed due to lack of support.
Ms Regan said her bill has been created from years of engaging with “both those in and survivors of prostitution”.
Supporters also include Fiona Broadfoot, chief executive of Build A Girl UK, who was in prostitution from the age of 15. She described her experience of the sex trade in saunas in Edinburgh in her early twenties.
At the official launch of the bill at Holyrood, she told those in attendance: “Every day, I thought I would be murdered. Every day I experienced rape by ordinary men whose lives were not impacted for one second like the women and girls they used.”
Ms Regan told The Herald her “door is open” to meet with anyone with an interest in the bill if they take up her request.
Ash Regan, Alba MSP (Image: Newsquest) She added: “Not many of the mainly women I have spoken with, either currently in or as survivors of prostitution, are comfortable speaking of their experiences publicly. Their welfare is always my priority, and my heartfelt thanks go to Fiona Broadfoot and others who have chosen to speak out to share their experiences of this industry of exploitation.
Opposition to the bill
But critics — including sex workers and campaigners — argue the bill would make the industry more dangerous by pushing it underground.
A representative from the Street Workers’ Collective in Ireland, where the Nordic model is in place in both the North and South, said this change to the laws has left many feeling “isolated”.
Speaking at the event in parliament, the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “This law isolates us. We cannot work together because of the brothel-keeping law and we cannot properly support each other for risk of seeing controlling or profiting off of each other. We are meant to stay hidden and alone.”
Ms Regan’s proposed legislation does not remove the charge of brothel-keeping.
Victoria, a single mother and sex worker known as Porcelain Victoria, said she was arrested for brothel-keeping during a police raid after running what she described as a “safe and clean” space in Scotland.
Victoria has been a sex worker for over eight years. (Image: Newsquest)
“I now live with PTSD and I am constantly afraid that one knock on the door could change my family’s future forever. I am branded a criminal for just keeping other sex workers safe,” she said.
Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba has also voiced concerns, arguing the new bill is for “white liberal feminists to feel safer”.
Mercedes Villalba, Scottish Labour MSP (Image: Supplied)
“For me, based on what I have read and the conversations I have had with people who work in that area, criminalisation does not work and it does not make the problem go away,” she said. “I think the bill is largely for people who are not in sex work … for white liberal ‘feminists’ to feel safer rather than anyone being measurably safer.”
Speaking to The Herald after the event, Ms Villalba said the bill has not been discussed at Labour group meetings. She said, however, there have been “disagreements” over the years when “considering solutions” to women’s safety.
The Herald also understands both the Scottish Liberal Democrats and the Greens will not support the bill based on their party policy around prostitution.
The Scottish Government’s stance
Community Safety Minister Siobhian Brown has stressed that while the Scottish Government backed the “underlying intent of the bill to challenge men’s demand and to tackle commercial sexual exploitation”, there were still “significant questions and concerns regarding the measures within the bill and how they would work in practice, the extent to which they would deliver on the policy intent, and the associated financial implications”.
Ms Brown stated that quashing convictions, which the bill aims to do for those involved in prostitution, was an “exceptional” measure and “not a step that can be taken lightly”.
The Criminal Justice Committee will begin scrutiny of the bill in the coming weeks.