Yesterday, 3 February, the Scottish parliament voted against moving forward with a bill that would have criminalised sex work.
The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill was introduced by independent MSP Ash Regan. However, it was defeated at the very first hurdle, at which MSPs agree on the general points of a bill. It lost by 64 votes to 54.
The proposed laws would have closely followed the ‘Nordic model’ of criminalisation. The problem, however, is that the Nordic model is incredibly dangerous for sex workers themselves.
‘Very significant’ issues
As the law stands in Scotland, both soliciting in public and keeping a brothel are illegal. However, it is currently legal to arrange to sell sex online, and to pay for sex.
The bill would have made it an offence to pay for sex in any way. Meanwhile, it would have decriminalised the act of selling sex, along with repealing historic convictions for solicitation. In this, it mirrors the Nordic model of sex work criminalisation, which specifically targets the buyers — not the sellers — of sex.
The SNP, Green and Lib Dems opposed the bill, whilst Labour and the Conservatives backed it. However, a small faction of SNP ministers rebelled to vote in support of the proposals.
Minister for Victims and Community Safety Siobhian Brown stated that there were “very significant” issues with the proposals that the Scottish parliament wouldn’t have time to correct.
In particular, she highlighted that the online nature of the proposed offences would make it extremely difficult to enforce. She also pointed out that the bill could reduce sex workers’ ability to gauge the risk that individual buyers pose, thereby increasing the threat of violence against them.
The Nordic model on sex work — doesn’t work
In this, Brown has echoed the sentiments of Scottish sex workers themselves — always a good thing, given that the bill affects them most directly. Grassroots campaign group Sex Workers for Decrim opposed the bill from its inception, stating on social media that:
This will increase violence against us. It will increase our likelihood of being evicted, and it will further isolate us and drive us underground.
As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey explained, in areas where the Nordic Model has been adopted, violence against sex workers has increased at a horrific rate. In Northern Ireland, it increased by 225% from 2016 to 2018, according to the Irish Ministry for Justice.
During the Holyrood debate, Regan stated that:
This ‘Unbuyable Bill’ recognises prostitution for what it is – a system of exploitation and violence sustained by demand. It decriminalises those who are sold, recognising them as people constrained by vulnerability and not offenders.
And it places criminality where it has 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.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we’re completely here for the decriminalisation of sex work. However, if we’re coming out swinging for people who are forced into an exploitative system, we have bad news for you about our entire economic system.
Now, this isn’t to say that sex workers don’t face risk and violence in their line of work. However, criminalisation — of buying or selling — forces that work underground, making it more difficult to report harm or organise for better conditions.
Sex work — ‘overwhelming evidence’?
After the defeat of her bill, MSP Regan said:
Today, Parliament chose cowardice over action – despite overwhelming evidence, survivor testimony, and support from police, prosecutors and international experts.
Inaction is not neutral. It is a decision, and it has consequences.
Of course, that overwhelming evidence doesn’t include Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, or the sex workers themselves who have clearly stated that the Nordic model harms the workers.
SNP MSP Michelle Thomson, who joined the rebellion in support of the bill, spoke to BBC Scotcast on the topic. She argued that her party members should have been allowed to choose which way to vote. Likewise, she also added that women should not be “traded as commodities”, and asked SNPs to reject:
the entitlement of some men to demand the purchase of women.
This framing is itself deceptive. The opponents of sex workers frame the profession as solely female because it allows them to frame the issue as protecting ‘helpless’ women from violent men. Not only is this deeply paternalistic, it also ignores the fact that somewhere between 6 and 20% of sex workers are men.
And again, there’s the fact that most of us trade our bodies as commodities.
The opposition
Across the aisle, Lib Dem party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton took a pragmatic approach in opposing the bill:
We can’t wish prostitution away and as it will forever exist we need to make sure it happens in the safest possible way.
Green MSP Maggie Chapman also spoke out against the bill, in favour of letting people decide what they do with their own bodies:
Where sex work happens between consenting adults, I believe the state should support people not penalise them for how they choose to live.
This, for us, gets to the heart of the matter. We’re not interested in whether you think buying or selling sex is a moral failing — we’re not bloody philosophers.
The debate around sex work foregrounds the fact that it is frequently coercive and exploitative. However, all work involves a degree of exploitation and coercion — you need food, clothes, somewhere to live, and you don’t get a choice in the matter.
What’s true is that most sex work, currently, carries some unique risks of both harm and exploitation. However, criminalisation only exacerbates these problems. Sex work is happening, it’s not going away, and efforts to make it go away harm the workers — so the problem in front of us is making it as safe as humanly possible.
Making sex work as safe as possible for the workers themselves means the same as it does for all workers. It means unionisation and worker’s rights, but those cannot happen without decriminalisation and destigmatisation. Any other option is sophistry.
Featured image via Red Umbrella Fund
This post was originally published on Canary.