Paul Givan

Paul Givan is a Northern Ireland politician, a member of the DUP. He, together with Jim Wells, were largely responsible for the introduction of the Nordic Model into Northern Ireland in 2015. Lord Morrow was too. Both Givan and Wells aggressively questioned Laura Lee, the sex worker and campaigner, in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The reason why I have created this page is because Paul Givan was given information by Swedes which convinced him that the Nordic Model would be good for Northern Ireland. I want to address these and show why they are wrong.

The two pieces of information are:-

• the deterrent value would reduce prostitution by about half
• the Dutch police said between 50 and 90% of the women working in legal brothels in the Netherlands were there against their will

Politicians in Northern Ireland were told by Swedish police that they could expect a reduction by about half. Paul Givan said this:-

"The Swedish police service said — and I have no reason to suggest why they would tell me different - that the deterrent value in clause 6 [later clause 15 ie the Nordic Model] would reduce things by approximately half. That was the deterrent value that allowed them to put their resources into the harder cases. The deterrent value would reduce it by about half. Why would we not have that same kind of deterrent value?" (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2014b, n.p.)

The Swedish police have no business telling UK politicians something that is false. They have no proof for what they said. UK politicians have no business accepting without scrutiny this falsehood then repeating it. Paul Givan worked closely with Jim Wells, and we know that Mr Wells stated the falsehood that 127 prostitutes had been murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation there. So it seems the Nordic Model gets accepted because of lies. See here and here for more about Givan and Wells.

In the second of these two links above it talks about covert surveillance such as phone-tapping and how police in Sweden can use it but police in Northern Ireland can't to catch men who pay for sex. So that could be another reason why it didn't work in Northern Ireland and can't work in Scotland.

Why do some people believe that prostitution in Sweden reduced by about half? There were 3 key statistics deriving from surveys in Sweden. Two of them show an increase in the amount of prostitution in Sweden after the introduction of the Nordic Model there. One of them showed a decrease. That is the one they use. This is how Swedish lawyer Gunilla Ekberg put it.

"Before the law existed, in 1996, research interviews with Swedish men about their experiences purchasing somebody for prostitution purposes were conducted. 13.6% of Swedish men over 18 had bought somebody once or more for prostitution purposes. In mid-November 2008 when a new research study was published, the number of purchasers or buyers was down to 8%. This is a good and trust worthy study -- solid, strong, and empirical."

There are a number of things wrong with this statement and I have dealt with this here and here.

When you put this information together with the fact that the amount of street prostitution in Sweden reduced by about half, then in their head they feel justified in saying that prostitution overall decreased by about half. However, only between 10% and 20% of the total number of prostitutes were street based. The number of street based sex workers were already decreasing according to official reports, so I don't see why the Nordic Model can take credit for that. Just because a woman stops being a street based sex worker it doesn't mean that she stops being a sex worker.

The 2010 official report makes no claim that prostitution reduced by half.

In 2013 in a committee Gunilla Ekberg told Paul Givan and others that the Dutch criminal police said between 50 and 90% of the women working in legal brothels in the Netherlands were there against their will.

"Swedish lawyer Gunilla Ekberg briefed the committee on the situation in her country, where paying for sex is illegal.

She rejected the argument that many women selling sex had not been forced into prostitution, stating that the Dutch criminal police said between 50 and 90% of the women working in legal brothels in the Netherlands were there against their will.

Mr Givan asked for her opinion of the argument that prostitution should not be addressed in the human trafficking bill."

It is not the Dutch police who are saying this though. If you read the report by KLPD (National Criminal Investigation Service) Schone Schijn: De signalering van mensenhandel in de vergunde prostitutiesector it doesn't say that.

What it says is that 'prostitution inspectors for the window-based sector' estimate that 50–90% of women were working involuntarily. So, this is not what the police are saying, it is what inspectors are saying. It applies only to the 'window-based sector', not to 'legal brothels'. The police don't know what to make of this information, considering that prosecutions for trafficking are relatively low.

The police speculate that the discrepancy could be because of 'overestimation by the monitors', a 'prevalence of vague rather than concrete indicators', or a 'failure to follow up on the signals received'. They also cast doubt on the methods of the inspectors/monitors.

"Beyond the national and municipal levels, police actions—specifically at the neighborhood team level—do not always align with established policy. Interviews and field research have revealed that not all active prostitution inspectors are certified. Moreover, the code of conduct is not consistently followed. There is also ambiguity regarding which documents may be requested during inspections and which data should—or should not—be recorded. Furthermore, inspection methods varied by city; the current decentralized policy fosters disparities in approaches, regulations, and the practical priority given to combating human trafficking."

How did they come up with the figure 50-90%? Nearly all researchers around the world come up with a figure for trafficking of about 15%. We know that these researchers interviewed hundreds of women to come up with the 15% figure. We have no idea how the inspectors/monitors came up with this oddly imprecise figure of between 50% and 90%.

It is wrong for officials from one country to misinform law makers in another country. It is wrong for a law to be adopted on the basis of false information. A law adopted on the basis of false information can only harm people. It can only harm women.