Dear Members of the Scottish Parliament,
We are writing to you as a coalition of sex workers, sex workers’ rights organisations, and supportive organisations and individuals from across the third sector, trade unions and academia. We urge you to oppose attempts to introduce the Nordic Model on sex work in Scotland, including via Ash Regan’s proposed Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill. The Scottish Government must not introduce a legal model which has failed in its aims in every country where it has been implemented.
Regan’s bill aims to criminalise the purchase of sex, a legislative framework commonly known as the ‘Nordic Model’ or the ‘End Demand model’. It is widely opposed by sex workers and by organisations such as Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, and the UK’s national frontline charity for sex worker safety, National Ugly Mugs.
Scotland for Decrim, which is the only sex worker-led organisation operating solely in Scotland, also strongly opposes this model. It is important to note that no current sex workers were consulted on the drafting of this bill. It is unacceptable for the people whose lives will actually be affected by this bill to have had no say in the matter.
The Nordic Model increases danger for sex workers
Evidence shows that the Nordic Model does nothing for the very groups it claims to protect. According to Ugly Mugs Ireland, crimes against sex workers almost doubled in the two years following the introduction of the law in the Republic of Ireland in 2017. A 2020 study commissioned by HIV Ireland found that sex workers who experienced violence at work were increasingly reluctant to report to the police.
In a 2019 review commissioned by the Northern Irish Ministry of Justice, the policy of criminalising the purchasing of sexual services in Northern Ireland was shown to be an abject failure. Reported assaults against sex workers increased by 225% from 2016 – 2018. Evidence suggested that, while some clients were deterred by the law, dangerous, violent and abusive clients remained unaffected by the legislation. Nearly all workers interviewed felt that the law had increased the stigmatisation of sex workers in ways that made them more anxious and which had a negative impact on their day to day life.
In France, the Nordic Model has been in place since 2016. A Medicins du Monde report found that the law has led to 42% of workers being more exposed to violence, 38% finding it increasingly hard to demand condom use, 70% observing no improvement or a deterioration of their relations with the police, 78% losing income, and 63% experiencing a deterioration of living conditions. A 2018 systematic review of 28 years of global research found that any criminalisation of sex work (including client criminalisation) triples the likelihood of sex workers experiencing violence, and doubles their likelihood of acquiring HIV.
The Nordic Model does not help victims of trafficking, and does not decriminalise sex workers
Proponents of the Nordic Model claim that criminalising the purchase of sex will help victims of trafficking by reducing prostitution, and by extension trafficking. But trafficking isn’t caused by the demand for sex, but by people’s poverty and lack of options: people are made vulnerable to traffickers for a number of reasons. Research from Dundee and Edinburgh Napier University has shown that criminalising sex work is not an effective anti-trafficking strategy.
Criminalising clients has been shown to increase violence for the most marginalised workers, the same workers who are often conflated with trafficking victims. Sex workers are often living with multiple forms of marginalisation: over-represented groups in sex work include women, single mothers, migrants, people of colour, disabled people, LGBT people, and people who have experienced poverty and homelessness.
In countries that have brought in the Nordic Model, sex workers have not, as is often promised, been ‘decriminalised’. Brothel-keeping – which is often defined in law as two or more sex workers working together from the same premises – remains a crime, forcing women to work alone or risk arrest. When police raid workplaces with the stated aim of arresting clients, it is consistently sex workers who are charged. This has happened in Nordic Model countries such as Ireland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
Nordic Model advocates lean on the provision of ‘exit services’ as justification for increasing criminalisation. But in reality, these exit services are incredibly underfunded and do not meet the needs of those wishing to exit, according to the Scottish Government’s own research. In Ireland, Nordic Model supporters acknowledge that “there is no evidence that these things are in place in Ireland”.
Scotland says no to the Nordic Model
The Scottish people have already been thoroughly consulted with, and the public has been clear – Scotland does not want the criminalisation of clients.
We, the undersigned, call on MSPs to take into account evidence about the harms caused by ‘Nordic Model’ style laws. We oppose any legislation which increases the criminalisation of prostitution by criminalising the purchase of sex. Both sex worker-led organisations and the general public do not want the Nordic Model.
It is vital that policymaking is based on evidence rather than ideology, and does not seek to moralise – but rather, to create the best environment possible for vulnerable groups in society. In order to do so, consider sex workers’ autonomy and our ability to ask for what we know is best for us. Nothing about us, without us.
Yours sincerely,
Scotland for Decrim
Sex Workers’ Union
Decrim Now
Sex Workers’ Alliance Ireland
Street Workers Collective Ireland
Ugly Mugs Ireland
Red Umbrella Éireann
English Collective of Prostitutes
Safety First Wales
Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM)
National Ugly Mugs
Scarlet Alliance (Australia)
Sex Workers’ Collective Switzerland
Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP)
ILGA-Europe
Alliance for Choice
Amnesty International UK
Derry Alliance for Choice
Freedom United
Human Rights Watch
Liberty
National AIDS Trust
Reclaim the Agenda
Release
Scottish Drugs Forum
Scottish Green Parliamentary Group
SISU
ASLEF
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union
Equity
Industrial Workers of the World (Ireland)
Industrial Workers of the World (Scotland)
Maria Exall, Chair of TUC LGBT+ Committee
NUS Scotland
PCS Scotland
Dr Ella Cockbain, Associate Professor and Lead of UCL Research Group on Human Trafficking, Smuggling and Exploitation
Dr Laura Connelly, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Sheffield and Chair of the Sex Work Research Hub
Professor John H. McKendrick, Professor of Social Justice, Glasgow Caledonian University
Professor Sarah Armstrong, Chair in Criminology, University of Glasgow
Dr. Francesca Soliman, Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, Programme Leader MSc Crime and Justice in Practice, Lecturer in Criminology, Edinburgh Napier University.
Dr. Kiril Sharapov, Associate Professor at the School of Applied Sciences, founding convenor of the Migration and Mobilities Research Network, Edinburgh Napier University.
Dr. Susan Batchelor, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Glasgow.
Dr Gregor Clunie, Lecturer, Glasgow Caledonian University.
Dr Jennifer Morrison, Senior Lecturer, University of Glasgow.
Dr Sam Lawton-Westerland, Lecturer in Sociological and Cultural Studies, University of Glasgow.
Brit Dawson, journalist.
SWERV (Sex Workers Evaluate Reporting Violence) Project, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Waverley Care
Youth RISE