'It shouldn't be illegal for men to buy sex' Ash Regan bill won't work

The Herald Scotland

05-06-2025

The details of his crimes are harrowing and heartbreaking. The case exposed just how deeply seated the police's systemic bias towards sex workers was. Just how vile and entrenched its institutional racism towards Indigenous people was – many of the missing women were Indigenous.
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The failures in this case made one thing crystal clear. To the police in Vancouver, sex workers had no value. Pleas from families and the community to trace missing women were ignored over and over again. To say the results were devastating is an understatement.
It is for this reason that I do not think sex workers or the people (men) who buy sex should be criminalised. Because the involvement of police with prostitution historically does not bode well for the women involved. It also ignores the agency of women in sex work and ensures the industry remains stigmatised. And marginalises those within it further.
This week, Alba MSP Ash Regan introduced her 'Unbuyable Bill'. The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill would see the buying of sex criminalised and the selling of sexual services decriminalised. It hinges on the principle that prostitution is a form of male violence against women.
The Bill would also quash historic convictions and create a statutory right to support for those in and exiting prostitution. Essentially following the Nordic model. Though, will those statutory support services be funded properly? If not, they are redundant. Right now, in Scotland, the sale of sex is not illegal, but it might as well be. Running a brothel and soliciting or loitering in public to sell sex are against the law.
In Canada after the Robert Pickton trial concluded, outrage over the way the way the missing women were ignored led to the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. A direct result of the inquiry was a new policing strategy in Vancouver that effectively decriminalised sex work.
Alba MSP Ash Regan (Image: free) The result was meaningful change, and sex workers were safer for it. But despite recommendations to replicate the Vancouver approach nationwide, in 2014, Stephen Harper's Conservative Government introduced Bill C-36, which followed the Nordic model. Buying sex became illegal. Advertising someone's sexual services was criminalised. So was accepting money to place those ads and profiting from someone's sexual services.
It has been more than ten years since the Nordic Model was introduced in Canada, and sex workers have argued that it still polices sex work, and they still face harassment from the force. They also say that it makes it more difficult to screen clients, which pushes the industry further into the shadows. The other issue is that the model does not recognise the autonomy of sex workers. Not all sex work is survival sex work, and no abolitionist policy will be able to control the fact that consensual sex work does exist.
Bill C-36, like the 'Unbuyable Bill', is rooted in radical feminist and abolitionist views. The law claims to address gender inequality and coercion, but it paradoxically limits women's ability to choose sex work, keeps their circumstances criminalised and fails to provide viable alternatives.
A paper published in the Melbourne Journal of International Law found that if you separate Bill C-36's rhetorical claims from its actual effects, the law in reality 'is exposed as little more than a moralising condemnation of female sex workers, designed to limit their freedoms and capacity for self-determination, in order to induce their exit from sex work, in a manner which is wholly irreconcilable with the pursuit of 'gender equality'.' Legislating sex work is inherently difficult. It's crucial to make sure that the most vulnerable are protected, but it's contentious to paint everyone with the same brush.
In Ireland, where buying sex was criminalised in 2015, sex workers reported that demand actually increased following the introduction of the new legislation. A report on the new law by the Department of Justice published in 2019 found that the law had a 'minimal effect' on demand. Sex workers also reported a heightened fear of crime, and it contributed to a climate where they felt even more marginalised and stigmatised.
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Scotland has a history of institutionalised abuse of working-class women and girls that is intertwined with its view of the 'social evil' of prostitution. The Glasgow System of the mid-nineteenth century saw the systemic policing of women and girls. Aged from seven to 39, they were plucked off the streets by police officers at will and taken to places like the Magdalene Asylum or the Lock Hospital for brutal and intimate examinations (often carried out by men) and barbaric treatments for venereal disease that often killed them.
The Lochburn Magdalene Institution closed in 1960. Not that long ago. The case of Emma Caldwell, a 27-year-old woman murdered in 2005 by serial rapist Iain Packer, highlights how stigma against sex workers remains a serious issue in Scotland, just as it does in Canada. Failures in the police investigation have led to a forthcoming independent public inquiry. It took 19 years for Packer to be brought to justice.
Regan's Bill is good in the sense that it has sparked fresh debate about the rights of sex workers. Though the reality of it becoming law before Scottish Parliament elections in 2026 is pretty unlikely. As in Canada, decriminalising sex work does not win as many votes as clamping down on it. And the Nordic model, as far as I am concerned, is still a crackdown. Shifting the burden of criminality does not constitute gender equality.
Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am each morning, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1