Ash Regan is a Scottish MSP who tried to introduce a Member's Bill that would have brought the Nordic Model to Scotland. This would have criminalised men who pay for sex, as has happened in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
I have already commented on this in this post. I stated that she is incorrect in her assertion that the amount of prostitution is Sweden decreased by almost half after the introduction of the Nordic Model there. This is something I have discussed at length on this blog, especially on this page here.
On the post I also discussed what happened in France since the introduction of the Nordic Model there. Ash Regan's approach is that the Nordic Model hasn't worked in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland but this is because of lack of enforcement. France, according to her, is a success story because they have enforced the law properly. She stated that there have been thousands of prosecutions in France. This is not true though. There have been thousand of fines over the years but if men pay the fine they don't get prosecuted. If they don't pay the fine they often don't get prosecuted. Most fines are not for the maximum amount that a man can be fined.
In this page, I want to discuss the other issues that she has put forward in support of her bill. There is an Official Report from the Criminal Justice Committee from Wednesday 26 November 2025. I have read up to page 32, after which is the Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-2027 and Subordinate Legislation which don't interest me.
inherently dangerous
Her idea is that prostitution is inherently dangerous, violent, abusive and exploitative. That is because of the nature of sex buyers. You cannot make it safe but you can decrease the amount of prostitution as has happened in some countries that have enforced the Nordic Model. This is just standard Radical Feminist ideology. She is wrong that everyone agrees on that.
"I turn to what we all agree on. People on my side of the argument who want to adopt the Nordic or equality model, and those who suggest that we should be pursuing another model, all agree on one fact: prostitution is inherently dangerous, violent, abusive and exploitative. The reason for that is the behaviour of the buyers, or punters. That is what makes it unsafe. I put it to the committee that, if prostitution is unsafe, dangerous and violent—I will give the committee the murder rates by country in a minute, to illustrate my point—that means that the larger the prostitution market in the country, the more women are going to be dragged into that and harmed, and possibly murdered. The smaller the prostitution market, the smaller the number of women who are going to be harmed.
I will not say to you that you can ever make prostitution safe. You can never, ever make prostitution safe—it is violent and abusive. What you can do, by using the Nordic type of legislative approach, is shrink the market down as much as possible, and the better you enforce the legislation, the smaller your market will be, as we have seen in countries where they follow robust enforcement."
The fact is that you can make it as safe as any other way of earning money. Estate Agents have suffered from abduction and murder in the past but there have been no recent examples of this. They are permitted to do what they need to make themselves as safe as possible. Obviously, allowing women to work together is going to make them a lot safer.
reasonable inference and welfare model
She has said that her version of the Nordic Model will be different because of reasonable inference and the welfare model. Reasonable inference means that less evidence is needed to convict someone. Reasonable inference is common in law, but it works best when the conduct is public, the behaviour has few innocent explanations and the evidentiary trail is concrete (e.g., fingerprints, CCTV, financial records). Buying sex indoors meets none of these conditions.
She said that in Sweden police have moved from a surveillance model to a welfare model. This happened in 2024 and they are getting more 'proceedings'. It is unclear what this means. It seems to mean that the police are nicer to sex workers and are getting more cooperation. I doubt it means less surveillance. In fact, it seems the opposite has happened in the past couple of years.
screening and the pyramid
She thinks that screening is a myth. Critics of the Nordic Model say that it makes it more difficult for sex workers to screen their clients, try to work out then refuse men who they think might harm them. Ash Regan thinks it is a myth because she thinks that sex workers indoors - the majority - work for pimps. It is the pimp who decides who the woman will have sex with.
Many women working indoors will be independent and a few may be working with other women. Even women whose movement to Britain has been organised by someone will have some control over who comes into the flat. There isn't a pimp who opens the door to customers, they are alone in the flat.
Ash Regan is convinced that only 2% of prostitutes freely enter prostitution to make money then exit. 38% have little choice and are abused. 60% have enormously restricted life choices, many been physically coerced into prostitution. They don't get to keep the money that is given by the punter. She says that we have to make legislation for the majority but not the majority.
If you try to find out where these figures come from you are told 'Sources are from a large number of peer-reviewed scientific studies, from agencies who offer direct services to those in prostitution and to those who seek to escape it, and from policy experts'. This seems to be false. It is only Melissa Farley who believes in it, no sensible academic, and it's difficult to see what studies it is based on.
 |
| "Ash Regan: We have a pyramid that we can share with the committee—Maren Schroeder or Anna Macleod will find it for me in a minute, and I can show it to you—which shows, basically, the distribution of those women." |
Katy Clark asked her "what you are proposing gives women in that situation less time to negotiate and to check. That is presumably an argument that you have had put to you. What is your response to that? Why are we are being told that?" Her response was "You are being told that because the pimp lobby does not want to criminalise demand. Pimps and traffickers are making a lot of money in Scotland, and they want to continue to make a lot of money in Scotland". So anyone who disagrees with her pyramid nonsense is 'pimp lobby'. Yet women become more reliant on pimps under the Nordic Model.
murder statistics
She said that in the UK 180 prostitutes were murdered between 1990 and 2016. Then she said that in Germany 86 prostitutes were murdered between 2002 and 2017. Three quarters of these 86 women were murdered indoors. She wants to make the point that women who work indoors are not safe. I've tried to check these figures but found it impossible.
However, if we take these figures, it seems that Germany has a lower rate of murder than the UK. It works out as 5.7 murders per year (86/15) in Germany and 6.9 murders per year (180/26) in the UK. We don't know if the murder rate in Germany dropped after the 2002 legalisation. What we do know is that the murder rate in Sweden did not drop after the Nordic Model came in there. There were no murders of prostitutes in the decade before 1999 when the Nordic Model came in, you have to go back to the 1980s when there were 2 or 3. So it is wrong for Ash Regan to say "In Sweden, since the law was changed to the Nordic model or equality model, which is what I am suggesting for Scotland, there have been no murders of women in prostitution". And this "I want to get us to a position where we are like Sweden and where we do not see 12 women in prostitution murdered in Glasgow within a certain time period—where we do not see any more women in prostitution in Scotland being murdered—because we have changed the law".
power balance
"Pauline McNeill: I have some questions about evidence from the Nordic model. You have made specific reference to Sweden, where we know that the number of men paying for sex has halved. What can you tell the committee about what has happened to the illegal sale of sex in a country such as Sweden? I presume that some of that has gone underground.
Ash Regan: It is often indoors, if that is what you mean, so I imagine that it is similar to Scotland. I think the committee has raised the fact that, even in a country such as Sweden, where they changed the law a very long time ago and there is relatively robust enforcement, prostitution still exists. You are right about that.
However, I have heard from Sweden that, when you criminalise the buyer, you change the power balance. It gives women who are in prostitution a sense that they have slightly more power in relation to the sex buyer than they had before, because now they have the law—and, one would hope, the police—on their side. If they have a problem with a sex buyer, they can go to the police about it. That makes an important difference to the power balance."
She's managed to convince everyone there that 'the number of men paying for sex has halved' without producing any evidence for it. She admits that in Sweden prostitution still exists, but 'has heard' that the power balance is better. That's not true either, sex workers in Sweden fear the police, they fear eviction and other penalties.
most people will obey
"Ash Regan: If the bill is passed into law and the offence is created, we want the legislation to work. As I said in answer to an earlier question, we have seen from other jurisdictions—particularly Northern Ireland and Ireland— that such legislation has some effect even when not enforced. That is because a lot of people do not want to break the law. If you tell people that they must wear a seat belt or that they cannot smoke indoors, most people will obey that and it will have an immediate effect, even without enforcement."
If punters are as nasty as she makes them out to be then obviously that's not going to happen. What might happen is that sex workers lose some of their nicer customers. At least until they realise that if they are careful they are unlikely to be caught.
supposed damage to sex workers
"I am concerned with the majority of people in prostitution: the women and girls who have been trafficked here from other countries, who have no control over what is done to them and who will probably leave prostitution infected with a sexually transmitted disease. They will probably have, or might have, irreversible damage to their bodies, including damage to their eyesight. I can go into detail with the committee as to why that might be the case. They might be incontinent. They will be traumatised. Studies have shown that they have rates of complex post-traumatic stress disorder at about 70 per cent, which is higher than rates among combat veterans and victims of state torture."
I don't know where she gets this stuff from, I have not heard most of this before.
other false statistics
- about a third have come through our care system
- a quarter to one third of the women and girls were sexually abused as children
- or entered prostitution under the age of 18
- trauma, addiction and mental health problems are the norm
- about 80 per cent of them reported mental health issues
- and a half to four fifths had substance abuse problems
- homelessness and poverty are major drivers for entering prostitution
Well, the last point makes some sense. Poverty is a major driver for millions of people for entering any job. Although that doesn't account for the students who do sex work instead of waitressing or bar work.
No comments:
Post a Comment