 Rwyf gwneud â bod yn digwydd â ddiweddau Covid-19 rydych chi i wneud, mae ddim yn gweithio, ac mae'r cyfrifiad eff Stromers yn cyd-gweithio gyda'r gyfrifiad yw byddem ar y terfwyelt a'r cyfrifiad yw'r cyfrifiad Hyllidol. Yr ucherydd ffordd y byddiwch cyfan y fan hyfforddi tr�wysbeth maen nhw Llawrfyn, 1-6-1-2, bydd i adnw'r yfynod i wych i ailennod ond mae'r model ffordd i Scottland, mae'r ddechrau i meddwl i prosidio'r cyr Treffwydol yn Scotland. Shared to put those members who wish to participate. Press the request-to-speak button, would allow the number of members to join us online. The meeting of Zoom and the members is set, so please proceed forward. I will call Eleanor Whitham to open the debate for around seven minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to have secured the crucial debate on the urgent need to reform our laws on prostitution and thank colleagues from across the chamber for their support. I would also like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Minister Ashúrigh for her strong leadership and unswerving commitment on this issue. Prostitution is violence against women. As a former women's aid worker and homelessness worker, I have supported often very young women who were trafficked from Ayrshire to Glasgow and subjected to the most traumatic sexual exploitation. I heard accounts from women who had been abused by their partners and made to perform sexual acts on their friends and often for his amusement and his financial gain. The Scottish Government rightly recognises that this is equally safe, our national strategy to eradicate violence against women and girls. The Government is to be congratulated for its pledge made in this Parliament through the programme for government to challenge men's demand for prostitution in Scotland. Reducing men's demand while supporting women to exit and recover after sexual exploitation must be the overriding objective of public policy on prostitution. It is clear, however, that this policy objective can't be achieved without legislative reform. That's because Scotland's prostitution laws are outdated and unjust. Men who exploit women by paying for sex enjoy impunity. Online pimping is legal, while women exploited through prostitution can themselves face criminal sanctions for soliciting. We recognise that prostitution is violence against women, but our laws do not, and the consequences are all too real. Firstly, demand for prostitution is being enabled rather than deterred. Only 4 per cent of men in Scotland have paid for sex in the last five years, according to latest figures, and it is demand from this minority of men that is driving the brutal prostitution trade in Scotland and the trafficking of women into it. Men who pay for sex are making a choice. They are not helplessly responding to uncontrollable sexual urges. Their choice to seek out and pay a person to perform sex acts on them is influenced by a range of factors, including the very small risk of criminal sanction. In 2018, as studied by the University of Leicester, asked over 1,200 sex buyers, would you change your behaviour if a law was introduced that made it a crime to pay for sex? Over half of the respondents said that they would definitely, probably or possibly, change their behaviour. Yet right now, unless a man solicits a woman and a public place, there is no risk of criminal sanction for paying for sex in Scotland. A sex buyer knows that if he preparates this form of violence against women, the criminal justice system will be a passive bystander. Another intolerable consequence of our outdated prostitution laws is that commercial pimping websites operate openly and legally, and they are fueling sex trafficking across this country. Those highly lucrative websites make their money by hosting advertisements for prostitution. They are, in effect, the red-like district of the internet. Men wanted to sexually exploit women can anonymously and freely peruse ads on those sites, selecting women from an online catalogue, according to their own location and preferences, and order them as easily as a takeaway. A groundbreaking inquiry into this by the Parliament's cross-party group on commercial sex exploitation found that those websites incentivise sex trafficking and sexual exploitation in Scotland. They make the grotesque business of trafficking women into prostitution and advertising them to sex buyers substantially easier and quicker by centralising demand on a very small number of online platforms. Despite prostitution being recognised in our national strategy as a form of gender-based violence, our prostitution laws can make it harder for women to leave the sex trade and recover. Sanctioning and punishing women for their own exploitation is wholly counter to the policy objective of supporting women to exit. Those women can face enormous barriers to exiting and rebuilding their life—practical, physical, psychological, including the effects of trauma. Injury sustained can be horrific and mental scars long-lasting. Financial difficulties and coercion by pimps and abusive partners and having a criminal record for soliciting also put blockers on the road to recovery. As a society, we should offer victim support and not sanctions. Diane Martin, a Scottish survivor of prostitution and trafficking who was awarded a CBE for her tireless work supporting women to exit and recovery from sexual exploitation, has said, I want to be part of a Scotland that completely rejects the idea that women and girls can be for sale, treated as commodities by men who believe that this is their right and entitlement. I agree. I am delighted to support the campaign that Diane is now chairing to end this entitlement, the campaign, A Model for Scotland. It is an alliance of survivors, organisations and front-line services calling for a new progressive legal model to combat commercial sexual exploitation in Scotland. A model for Scotland must do the following, decriminalise victims of sexual exploitation, provide comprehensive support in exiting services for victims, wipe previous convictions for soliciting from victims' criminal records, criminalise paying for sex and prohibit online pimping. By shifting the burden of criminality off victims and on to those who perpetrate and profit from this abuse, those reforms would bring Scotland in line with the approach taken in countries such as Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Israel and France. Spain will also accept to join the growing list. With the Spanish Prime Minister declaring earlier this month that we will advance by abolishing prostitution, which enslaves women. Two decades after Sweden shifted the burden of criminality in 1999, research reveals that, since the approach was introduced, public attitudes on paying for sex have transformed. Traffickers are being deterred and demand for prostitution has dropped. The most recent research on prevalence found that, from the base sex buyer figure in 1999 of 12.7 per cent, that only 7.5 per cent of men now pay for sex and of those, only 0.8 per cent had paid for sex in the previous 12 months. The smallest proportion recorded in two decades and the lowest in Europe. Evidence from the United States also highlights the effectiveness of action against pimping websites. In 2018, those websites were criminalised in the US and analysis of the impact of the legislation one year later revealed that prostitution advertising market had been significantly disrupted and demand had dropped. Commenting on the legislation, Valiant Richie, special representative and coordinator for the combatant trafficking and the organisation of security and cooperation in Europe told members of this Parliament, that bill passed and the market declined 80 per cent in 72 hours. I am not aware of any anti-trafficking legislation anywhere in the history of the world that has had such an impact on the market in such a short period of time. The Scottish Government has pledged to challenge men's demand for prostitution and support women to exit. It is now time to deliver on that pledge. We need a model for Scotland that shifts the burden of criminality of victims and on to those who perpetrate and profit from sexual exploitation. It will be a model that Scotland can be proud of and its adoption will make mark a historic step forward in the battle for equality between women and men. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate today. I congratulate and thank Eleanor Whitman on securing the debate. That is a complex issue that does not have one simple answer. Indeed, there are many different views and opinions on how to address the matter of prostitution in our society. I think that we need to be clear that criminalising the people who sell sex has not worked and will not work in the future. We need to undertake a review of the laws surrounding this issue, not only to protect vulnerable women, but also to prevent further violence against them. Those selling sex should be able to seek help and support to exit prostitution without fear and without the risk of facing criminal proceedings against them. No one should face the consequences of the law for trying to get out of the sex industry, and we must ensure that the legislation brought forward by this Parliament provides that safe passage for anyone who wants to exit. Prostitution, whether by force or by circumstance, can only be overcome by having a more equal society. Access to adequate income, adequate living standards and an ability to provide for oneself and one's family is fundamental to ensuring that there are other options to prostitution. No one should ever need to sell their bodies to feed their children and heat their homes. We must also challenge the attitude of men with regards to the purchase of sex. There are countries internationally who have different systems, countries who are seeking to educate men while not criminalising the sex workers, and we should be seeking to work with those countries to find a system that works for the people of Scotland. We should be working with those who have lived and have direct experience of prostitution to ensure that Scotland has a system that works for them and with them to protect them from harm. The public consultation, which reported back in July, was an important first step on the journey to improving the legislation around sex work. Women are being exposed to extreme risk every day within the sex industry, while male buyers continue to remain unchallenged and their actions go without consequence. We need a Scottish system that seeks to recognise the outstanding gender inequalities in our society, to provide everyone with an adequate income to live on and support those wishing to exit the sex industry. I urge this Parliament to think out the box and let's find the solutions that benefits and protects so that, in future, no one is forced for whatever reason to be part of the sex industry. Jamie Greene, to be followed by John Mason again in four minutes. It is a great privilege to be able to participate in the debate that the members brought forward. Let's start with the basics. This is a man problem, not a woman's problem. I am happy to say that violence against women and girls, specifically, is no place in modern Scottish culture. We talk a lot about it in this Parliament and the work that the chamber does and the committees do. Here is an opportunity to maybe move that conversation from just words into action. We have recently worked on the cross-party basis on the historic legislation, the redress bill that the previous Parliament worked on seeking to wrong some of the rights in the past. I know that we have a good track record as Parliamentarians of working together on issues like this. I think that we can take a similar collaborative approach with today's debate. I would also like to thank those involved in the various campaigns that have helped to provide us with briefings today, including a model for Scotland, speak-out survivors, rape crisis Scotland and UK feminists. I have all been in touch with me in the past few days. I am pleased to have had calls with some of them individually, no least in my role as a member of the criminal justice committee and also as party spokesperson. Those campaigners are seeking to move away from the status quo. They are being loud and clear with us as lawmakers that they want to see the law in Scotland change. I move away from prosecuting the sale of sex and replacing it with criminalising the purchase of a model commonly and often known as the Nordic model to some extent. However, it is also a very different model that we currently have in Scotland as to some of our friends and neighbours, for example the Republic of Ireland, Iceland and even Canada, who take a very different approach. However, whatever we do and whatever changes we make to the law, it must be informed by those with lived experience. Their stories have been eye-opening and upsetting. Those are largely women who have been trafficked, beaten up, raped, abused and coerced, basically exploited. I found one account particularly distressing in the briefings that we received and I want to quote from it because it puts it into context. I became involved in prostitution in my early 20s courtesy of my then boyfriend. Now I use the word pimp, she said. I often threw up in anticipation and couldn't have done it sober. I then went on to develop PTSD, flashbacks and nightmares. I simply sold myself to fund my habit. It was a vicious cycle. As the member has already mentioned in the opening comment, some 3.6 per cent of men in the UK are reported to have paid for sex at some point in the last five years. That is down from 12.7 per cent in 1996, which is a huge improvement in a long way forward, but it is still 3.6 per cent of men. That is a lot of people. It still allows for serious organised crimes to exploit that on an industrial scale. When I lived in London, I had first-hand encounters with survivors of male prostitution in the LGBT community, and there were many charities around to support them. The underlying trigger for that often was drug addiction and homelessness and desperation for cash. I would like to commend the work of the LGBT Foundation and the men's room in Manchester who have been doing great work on that. We know that irrespective of whether you are a man or a woman, the trafficking, the mental and physical abuse, the trauma, the psychological and the physical, it is something that we need to do something about. Of course, as times change, so does the law. The old-fashioned ideas of what constitutes prostitution, of postcards and phone boxes and women walking the streets are outdated because they have been replaced by digital and new and modern ways of allowing the activity to flourish. Much of it has moved online, and we know that examples where there has been a crackdown, for example in the US through the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, it has, to an extent, worked. However, we all know realistically that for every one website or app or community group that you shut down, surely another one will pop up just as quickly because the scale of the revenues involved in organised crime and gangs is insane. Opinion is divided. I want to put that on the record in today's debate. We did get representation from Dr Anastasia Ryan of the SIP's Workers Advocacy Project on Brella Lline, who is against the Nordic model, and she says that when you criminalise the purchase of sex, all you do is drive the industry further underground. I know that that is not a universal view and perhaps a controversial one for some, but it does make it clear that whatever we do next, anyone who has a voice and a view on that must be afforded the opportunity to share it, and we must listen. In closing, I would like to welcome comments that the minister has previously made on the issue. We are making progress, and I know that there is a desire to work on a cross-party basis to make it happen. Those benches will work constructively on any proposals that are brought forward, and I know that there is an upside in this Parliament to address this issue and get this right, because Scotland has the opportunity here to be world leading in that respect. Thank you, Mr Greene. I now call on John Mason to be followed by Rhoda Grant. Four minutes, please, Mr Mason. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and thank you to Elena Whitsam for bringing this debate. There seem to be a few member's debates this week where male MSPs might be feeling wary about taking part, but I'll certainly give it a go. I very much agree with Jamie Greene when he said that this is a men's issue. In summary, I agree very much with the motion concerning commercial sexual exploitation. Next to no action has been taken against men over the years, despite the fact that it is almost always men who are purchasing and abusing, and if anyone has been subject to criminal charges, it has been the victims who are normally women, but, of course, it can occasionally be men as well. The argument always comes up that some women are choosing sex work as a valid career choice, and I recognise that, as we have sought to encourage increased equality for women over the years, it might be a natural reaction for some to see this issue as one of increased choices for women, so there should be no criminalisation for anyone. I am not denying that some women may be making free choices to sell sex. However, it seems clear that the norm is that women are the victims and are subject to physical, sexual and mental abuse. If anyone has seen the film I, Daniel Blake, it deals very powerfully with the failings of the DWP and the need for food banks, but it also sees a woman who has been failed by the system, who is not eating so that her kids can have food and who ends up by extreme financial pressures being driven into prostitution. That was not her choice or something that she wanted to do, but she was forced into this by a lack of support, and I would suggest that this is a much more typical situation. It might be a partner coercing someone, it might be a drug habit, it might be the result of trafficking from another country, but whichever way you look at it, that woman in dire need is the victim and should be protected by our systems and our law. I think that I first became aware of all that when I was a Glasgow councillor between 1998 and 2008. Roots out of prostitution was pretty high in the agenda and I attended a number of meetings where we heard about the Nordic model and how other countries were criminalising the purchase of sex. Women were clearly the victims in the vast majority of cases, with only a tiny minority actually freely choosing to sell sex. I would just pay tribute to Labour councillor Jim Coleman, others in Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde police, as they were at that time, all of whom were convinced that this was the right line to take. As it is coming to the Scottish Parliament and again hearing from survivors of prostitution, it has become much clearer to me that women and some men are the victims of this while the abusers are almost always men. There were some good briefings for today's debate and I thank the Encompass Network, Care and others. Encompass in particular makes the point that, while not every woman in the sex trade has been trafficked, almost all trafficked women in the EU or Europe are in the sex trade. Scotland has done well and this Parliament has been strong in challenging human trafficking and modern slavery, so surely now is the time to continue that good work by passing legislation to criminalise the purchase of sex. I thank Elena Whitham, Rhoda Grant and the minister for putting their heads above the parapet on what has not always been a popular issue. Hopefully the tide is now turning, as it has done elsewhere, and we can see real progress very soon. I thank Elena Whitham for securing this very important debate. We must criminalise online pimping and paying for sex while decriminalising victims and providing them with holistic support. I want to confront some of the myths that are being pedalled to urge policy makers to do nothing. Take the claim that criminalising paying for sex would simply make the problem worse because it would drive it underground. Prostitution relies on men being able to locate women to exploit and therefore if these men can locate women then so can support services and so can the police. The underground myth is illogical. Then there is the claim that criminalising paying for sex would make it more dangerous because women would have less time to assess a potential sex buyer. Firstly, the claim makes no sense in the case of street prostitution where sex buyers are already criminalised. What the claim also suggests is that it is possible for a woman to assess how dangerous a man is simply by looking at him, but she cannot. That was all too tragically illustrated by the case of Steve Wright, who murdered five women in Ipswich. Wright was a regular sex buyer and was known to women locally. One woman described him as an average normal punter. Alan Canton will be the chief superintendent who reformed policing of prostitution in Ipswich following the murders that he recently wrote. Too many still accept that, as a society, we should be a bystander to this form of violence against women because of threats of what men will do if we try to stop them. It is straight out of the perpetrator's playbook, he says. What unites the myths circulated to opposing criminalising online pimping and paying for sex is the same underlying message. Do not intervene, do not try and prevent it, just accept it, be a bystander. It is time for this Parliament to stop being a bystander. Vested interests will oppose any attempt to shift the burden of criminality of the victim and on to the perpetrators because it would undermine their ability to profit from sexual exploitation. There will also be groups that lobby for their interests. Take the global network of sex work projects based in Edinburgh. For years this group has led an international campaign to remove all criminal laws relating to prostitution and oppose attempts to criminalise paying for sex. In 2015, the vice president was exposed as a sex trafficker and jailed for 15 years. The organisation continues to lobby the Scottish Government not to criminalise paying for sex. Then there is Umbrella Lane, once again based in Scotland, that is regularly quoted in the media, opposing calls to shift the burden of criminality of victims and on to those who perpetrate and profit from sexual exploitation. What is not mentioned is that Umbrella Lane has previously accepted funding from Viva Street, one of the UK's biggest pimping websites, a site on which victims of trafficking have been repeatedly advertised, which stands to lose substantial profits if Scotland outlaws its operations. Escort Scotland, another pimping website, also told the cross-party group on commercial sexual exploitation that it had provided funding to Umbrella Lane. No doubt those involved will try and frame this as an act of corporate social responsibility. However, let's be absolutely clear about what is happening here. Those commercial pimping operations are funding groups that lobby in their interests. It is time for us as a Parliament to come together and stand against the vested interests of the sex industry and to stop being bystanders. Presiding Officer, it is time for a legal model to end commercial exploitation in Scotland. Thank you, Ms Gant and I call Evelyn Tweed to be followed by Mercedes Villalba, four minutes, Ms Tweed. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to Eleanor Whitham for bringing this important debate today. I welcome our Parliament looking at reform of prostitution in Scotland. It is unacceptable that, in 2021, there is still so much to do to tackle violence against women and girls. Let's be clear that prostitution is an extreme form of violence primarily against women, but that is something that society, not just government, needs to address. Attitudes need to change. The old trope that prostitution is the oldest profession reflects the subordinate position women have always held in society and their exploitation by men. Women and girls are forced into prostitution through inequality and not choice. As the Scottish Government's consultation notes, many women engage in prostitution because of poverty and difficulty entering employment. Addressing poverty and improving the social welfare system is undoubtedly a core part of any attempt to lessen men's ability to coercibly control women engaged in prostitution. Disadvantages experienced by women and girls are societal issues that cannot be addressed. Our nation prides itself on being fair and progressive, so while we have very important conversations about how to reform our prostitution laws, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture, that this is also about the overall effort to improve the lives of women. Whenever prostitution is discussed, the role played by the client is disregarded, protected and minimised. The current prostitution law fails to deter the perpetrators of this form of gender-based violence, nor does it hold them to account. In some communities in Forth Valley, on-street prostitution is practically non-existent, but off-street prostitution is reported. Properties, often short-term lets, will be reported by concerned residents as showing suspicious activity. Forth Valley Police will carry out what they call shaw visits, which stands for support, health and wellbeing, where they offer support and assistance to any women, women that they think could be being coerced or pressurised into prostitution or be a victim of sex trafficking. The phrase hiding in plain sight is often used. The highly lucrative pimping websites that operate openly in Scotland have been found to not only facilitate but to incentivise sex trafficking. We in this Parliament must show leadership and commitment to the women of this country that we will address every contributing factor that is making this world unfair, unsafe and unjust for women. We can learn from the Nordic model, which essentially makes the act of buying sexy legal and shift sanctions on to the buyers, primarily men, and New Zealand's decriminalisation approach. Our focus must be on finding a model that seeks to protect women, their safety and offers an exit, which promotes their rights while also tackling inequality at the root cause. At the heart of that, we must listen to women with lived experience, and I very much agree with Jamie Greene's comments in that regard. We must also work on challenging men and boys' attitudes and behaviours towards women. The culture of violence against women starts with the sexual comments that go unchallenged. The groping that is laughed off. The constant harassment that means that women can't enjoy a simple night out in peace. We have a duty to imagine and build a world without prostitution, to transform society and see real equality between men and women. I thank Elena Whitham for bringing forward the motion for debate today. The motion rightly highlights the central injustice that is facing sex workers under the current legal framework. Sex workers currently face criminal sanctions for soliciting under section 4GC of the Civic Government Scotland Act. The threat of criminal sanctions can deter many sex workers from seeking support, including to leave sex work altogether. That is an untenable position, which is why we must remove the burden of criminality from sex workers. To explain why, I would like to highlight some of the consequences of a criminalisation approach. Criminalisation prevents sex workers accessing essential healthcare services, impacting on their health. Concerns about the link between criminalisation and poor health among sex workers are shared by international bodies, including the World Health Organization and UN AIDS. In fact, the World Health Organization found that female sex workers were up to 30 times more likely to be living with HIV than other women of reproductive age. Human Rights Watch has found that criminalisation makes sex workers more prone to violence, including assault and rape. That is because criminalisation stigmatises sex workers, reducing their likelihood to seek help from the police and increasing their use of unsafe locations for work. Human Rights Watch surveyed South African sex workers who revealed that they were less likely to report crimes to the police because of the illegality of sex work. That, in turn, left them open to suffering from violence, which they then did not report to the police. However, we can break this vicious cycle through a decriminalisation approach. Decriminalisation does not mean that we abolish laws protecting sex workers from exploitation, human trafficking and violence. It means removing the laws and policies that criminalise selling and buying of sexual services. Decriminalisation is supported by a broad range of organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. However, it is also an approach that is increasingly backed by evidence from international bodies, including the World Health Organization and UN agencies. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that decriminalisation could lead to a nearly 50% reduction in new HIV infections in sex workers over 10 years. However, decriminalisation alone is not enough. We must also tackle the underlying material issues that often drive people into sex work in the first place. For some, it is a lack of employment or education opportunities. For others, it is rising living costs, including rent, food and heating. Some sex workers have chronic conditions or disabilities and turn to sex work because of inadequate social security provision. Until there is a concerted effort to improve material conditions, we will continue to see people turning to sex work. Continuing to criminalise sex workers will not help individuals to leave sex work. Evidence shows that it will not reduce violence against sex workers, and the criminalisation approach serves as a barrier to sex workers accessing essential services such as healthcare. We need a new approach, which is why I believe that we should pursue a decriminalisation approach. To conclude, I would like to share a workers testimony that I received. Kim is an Edinburgh-based migrant worker, and in response to the proposal to criminalise buyers, they said this. We are just out of a whole year of Covid, which showed that taking our clients away does not magically deliver us into a new life free from exploitation, but rather makes us poor and hungry and heavily dependent on the few clients that are left. Thank you very much indeed, Ms Vi Alba. I now call on Gillian Martin, and you've got four minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, want to thank Elena Witham for securing this important debate today. For the many years of campaigning on our issue and our motion that she delivered speech was palpable. I also want to pay tribute to the important work that was done in the last sessions of the cross-party group on commercial sexual exploitation, led by Rhoda Grant, MSP, my good friend Ruth Maguire MSP. Ruth Maguire would, of course, be speaking in this debate, if she were here. When she comes back, I have no doubt that she will get wired straight into resuming her work on this subject. It's work that challenges often very powerful people and places the safety of some of the most marginalised women at its heart. In no small part, the CPG's work has led to proposed law reforms in this area. This report, published by the commercial sexual exploitation CPG earlier this year, on sexual exploitation websites, is a really important piece of work that shines a light on how websites have increased sex trafficking and how they allow those who profit from sex trafficking to evade prosecution. Those who profit are most often organised crime organisations, and as Rhoda Grant detailed in her speech, her insinuation into superficially benign lobby groups is pernicious. Ads on pimping sites might look like they are from the women, but they are more likely posted by their pimps. The report, as you would expect, is a challenging read that pulls back the curtain on some of the worst crimes against women that are happening right under our noses in Scotland. I am in firm agreement with Rhoda Grant when she says in the introduction to the report that we need to tackle the exploiters and protect and empower those who exploit them. The women exploited, those who are pimped out, should not be sanctioned by the law for soliciting. That means repealing section 46 of the Civic Government Act. Criminalising women for soliciting is not helping women whom many of us consider to be victims. We should be going after those who exploit those women. I agree with the recommendation of the report, which says that we should be introducing laws that sanction those who enable and profit from the prostitution of another person, just like they have done in the countries that Elena Whitham mentioned. In 2018, the Home Office estimated that the length of time a trafficked individual is held by those who run their lives is nine months. During that time, they estimate an average of 795 counts of rape and assault in that time. That type of modern slavery is most prevalent in countries that have loosened laws on buying and profiting from prostitution or the so-called legalising of prostitution. Germany springs to mind, where expert studies have shown that, by normalising prostitution, the state has contributed to the enormous increase in demand and the influx of trafficked women from Eastern Europe, in particular, earning barely enough money to cover their enforced rental of brothel rooms that have been likened to an existence similar to that of a battery hen, never seeing daylight. I urge the chamber to read the speech of Dr Ingeborg Kraus to the Italian Parliament on the impact of German law changes in 2002, and, with the greatest respect, Mercedes Villalba, talking about the decriminalisation of the buyer, would contribute to something akin to what has happened in Germany. As I said in the member's debate in the subject in the last session, the myth of prostitution is a career choice that is helping only those who exploit women. Another myth perpetrated by those organisations is that prostitution makes sex work safer, as women do not have to walk the streets. It is a myth that punters are vetted. In fact, they take any agency away from women. Access to their bodies is controlled by their pimps, who market them in any way that they see fit, with the exploited women having no say in what they are forced to do or the men to do it with. Our focus must be on protecting the exploited women, and that means criminalising traffickers and those who perpetrate the exploitation of women. I applaud the calls to extend that to the buyers, who, in my view, are just as guilty of exploitation as those who traffic and pimp. I thank Elena Whitham for raising that motion. It is fitting that we are discussing this important issue ahead of the annual UN 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, which is taking place later on this month. I thought that Elena gave an excellent speech on this, and one sentence stood out particularly from her contribution. That was the one where she said that sanctioning and criminalising women for their own exploitation is a very important point that she made there. I was pleased to attend the Alliance's launch in September, and I am grateful to them for providing a platform to discuss what model is right for Scotland and to challenge men's demand for prostitution and to keep those who sell safe and ensure that support remains an integral part of the design. I thank everyone who contributed to the debate this evening. I think that there were some powerful points made by Rhoda Grant in her contribution, and it was a really excellent speech that I thought was given this evening by Gillian Martin as well. I am committed to working across the chamber and with stakeholders on tackling prostitution within the context of how women and girls should be viewed in an equal society. Our current programme for government commits to this action, and we have now begun work to develop our own model for Scotland that will effectively tackle and challenge men's demand for prostitution. The Scottish model will be underpinned by principles that are in line with our aspirations to embed equality and human rights in Scotland and support our efforts to tackle men's violence against women. It will meet our international obligations, including our commitments to incorporate the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women into Scots law. Our key aim is to reduce stigma and criminalisation experienced by women and encourage better access to integrated and specialised services. A number of respondents also noted the need for support for women to be involved, to be holistic and person-centred. That was in the consultation that the Government ran recently, and to be able to address the multiple underlying needs of many women. As such, we have committed to engaging with those who have direct or lived experience in order to shape those services and design measures that will protect them from harm and provide them with the support that they need, including helping them to exit prostitution if they so wish. I note that that was a point that was raised by a couple of speakers tonight. It was raised by Jamie Greene, and it was also raised by Jackie Dunbar. By the end of this month, we will be seeking experts to better understand the current support service provision and the needs of service users who are engaged or have lived experience of prostitution in Scotland to better inform the future service design. We are also going to be convening a short-life working group with key stakeholders on the development of the fundamental principles of a model for Scotland. Arrangements to begin this engagement are already in hand, and we hope to hold the first meeting of this group in the next few weeks. I understand the desire for more information on what the shape of the criminal aspects of our model might take, but everyone will understand that we must take time to get this right. The model must operate effectively to hold those who buy sex to account, but it must also operate as a deterrent to purchasing sex, because I believe that this behaviour has no place in a modern Scotland. I appreciate the words that I mentioned today, but the minister will also accept that there has been a range of views expressed in the chamber today, and probably outwith as well. The legislation takes time, we know that, but let's not beat about the bush. On the way home from the Parliament this evening, I will walk past three so-called saunas in Edinburgh city centre. We all know what is going on behind closed doors. Is there anything that the Government can do now to address the issue? We are constantly working to address the issue. In fact, I had a recent meeting with Police Scotland about six weeks ago, and I raised that exact issue with them. I am hoping that they will be able to come back to me and give me a little bit more information on what Police Scotland's approach might be. To inform our approach, we are undertaking a programme of work to look at international successes that have challenged men's demand for prostitution, and we want to build on that experience of what has gone before and understand how we can apply that in Scotland. It is vital to ensure that any changes that are brought forward in law are balanced with the necessary package of measures that will ensure that women are supported and that their needs are met by services that are available. Diane Martin has been working in this area for 20 years, and she said that I want to see the sex buyer law introduced because it is the demand that fuels the exploitation that is the sex industry. I want it to be near impossible for organised crime, pimps and punters to operate here. I want to be the kind of society that rejects the idea that people are for sale, and I would agree with Diane Martin on that. Prostitution cannot be considered in isolation. There are many aspects that we need to look at, including online advertising, which was mentioned by a number of speakers this evening. I note the excellent work that was done by the CPG on things such as substance misuse, human trafficking and increased economic hardship, which might make women more at risk of prostitution. We are alive to all those issues, and we will be working on those. When I talk to people about that, I think that people wonder why there is this emphasis on challenging demand and why there is this emphasis on prostitution. Aren't there other more important things that we could be doing? That is maybe because, for a lot of people, it is quite hidden. It is not right out in the open, maybe confronting people with the reality of what it really is. It is often times quite in the shadows. Even when it is in the shadows, I believe that prostitution harms the individual, and I believe that it impacts on society's view of all women. After all, the misogynistic attitudes of sex buyers are now well documented. How women are viewed, how women are treated and also men's violence against women, those things are all connected. My vision is of a Scotland where all women and girls are treated with respect. Not one where abuse, violence and trafficking is something that we are turning a blind eye to. A few years ago, I met a young woman, so she had been prostituted. By the time I met her, she had exited and she was telling me about her studies. She was finishing study and I was about to embark on her career in one of the professions. She had entered prostitution when she was quite young, and she was still a girl. She told me that something really had to be done about the punters, because they are the ones that are driving this, she said. Then she looked at me and said, actually, I'm really surprised that you're here. I didn't think that the Government cared about people like me. Well, we do. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you, Minister. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting.