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Absolutely. I am pleased with the stage 1 scrutiny, because it has brought to the surface issues that we had not thought about. This is the first time that I have introduced a bill by myself, without the support of a Government team behind me, and it is a very different experience. However much research we do and however much work we put into it, it is always good to have other people look over the bill and perhaps suggest ways of improving it.

A number of issues have come up and we have touched on most of them already. One improvement would be to remove automatic quashing from the bill, as it was one of the minister's concerns, and move to the more appropriate model to achieve the same policy intent, which is an automatic pardon and voluntary disregard. I put on the record today that I intend to lodge stage 2 amendments to do that.

The Law Society has also helpfully suggested that we might change the definition of a sex act because it thought that the definition was too widely drawn and, as the Crown Office has also pointed out, it might make it more difficult to get convictions if it is that widely drawn. I have taken that on board and I intend to lodge an amendment at stage 2 that will change the definition of a sex act. It will be explicit, but it will be the way that sex acts are described in other legislation, so it will be familiar to ���˿��� and our justice agencies. It will make the law clearer, more understandable and, I hope, more enforceable.

Those are the two main issues that I have thought of. I have also taken on board a couple of small issues about sentencing that have been raised and I intend to lodge amendments to clear those up, but they will be more technical amendments.

Because it does not make it less safe.

Of course it does, because the nature of prostitution as gendered violence has not changed at all. The fact that women are advertised online is a change because we used to have mostly on-street prostitution and we now have mostly indoor prostitution, but the nature of prostitution has remained the same.

The Crown Office’s position on that, which it put forward when it was in front of the committee, provided an interesting perspective. Emma Forbes said that this is a type of offending that is carried out behind closed doors, like other types of offending that we have criminalised. Such offences are slightly more challenging to prosecute, but, as she said,

“That does not mean that we should not do it and that the difficulties are insurmountable”,—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 November 2025; c 2.]

because they certainly are not. All such offences are difficult to prove, but no one is suggesting that those offences—for instance, similar crimes such as rape or domestic abuse—should be repealed.

Established evidential routes are already available. I had that conversation with the Lord Advocate, and I have had numerous meetings with Police Scotland and other members of COPFS, because I thought that that was a very important point that had to be explored. In the past few weeks, I have had at least two and possibly three such meetings exploring the issue further with them. We have discussed various scenarios and what type of evidence might be used.

For the committee’s information, the evidence could be things such as digital communication, as the convener has mentioned, which could show the time, what act was requested and what price was agreed on. It could involve using payment traces and bank app data. In the meeting with the Lord Advocate, it was confirmed to me that that would not always require extensive digital forensics; it could just be screenshots—those would be sufficient. Surveillance could be used, where appropriate, as could various types of online intelligence. Obviously, third-party testimony would be a type of evidence that could well be used, as well as buyer admissions—the committee might be surprised to know that, sometimes, people admit that they have committed a crime when questioned by the police.

The timing is very tight, but—as I have said before—the bill is so important that I hope the Parliament will come together on it. The committee is playing its part. I am doing my best, and I hope that the Government will help me with that. We are talking about women’s lives. 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.

I am therefore pleased that the Government has put on the record that it supports the principles of the bill and I am happy to work with the Government. As Ms Mackay said in her question, the Government has issues with the bill and I intend to lodge amendments to deal with the issues that have been raised. When the Government sees the amended bill, I hope that it will be able to offer its full support.

The bill has been drafted differently—in fact, we spent quite a bit of time, in drafting it, looking at the drafting of various other pieces of legislation. In the original drafting, we had the offence drafted as it is drafted in the Northern Ireland legislation, and then we looked at the conviction rates. We also took note of the Irish review, which included a review of the way in which Ireland’s legislation had been drafted. Ireland has said that it now recognises that it has issues with the drafting of its legislation. When we drafted the bill, we took note of that and we drafted in a different way.

As I explained in a previous answer, we have included the reasonable inference test. I have sat down with the Lord Advocate, who is the head of prosecutions in Scotland. She read the description of the offence, and she said to me that there is nothing wrong with how the offence has been drafted, and that it is enforceable.

There have been issues with enforcement; I am sure that, if the committee had somebody here from Northern Ireland, they would say that. I have not been to Northern Ireland for some time—I went over there in 2017 and I spoke to the Advocate Attorney General—it was John Larkin at that time. At that point, the law had been in force for only a very short period of time, and he admitted to me that they were having issues with enforcement. Ruth Breslin, when she spoke about the Irish experience, said the same thing: they recognise that they are having trouble with enforcement.

Other countries are not having trouble with enforcement. The latest statistics that I saw from France, which has not had the law in place for nearly as long as Sweden has, show that it has convicted 5,000 men. I know that France is a large country in comparison with Ireland and Scotland, so the context is different, but it shows us that enforcement of these offences is possible.

It can be an iterative approach. Ireland is looking at how it is enforcing the law and at ways to change it to make it better. Sweden has been on a very long journey, during which it has changed the way in which it enforces its legislation. I have been to Sweden and spoken to its prosecutors and its police forces, and to its anti-trafficking commissioner. I spent several days in Sweden looking at the situation with my own eyes. The police told me that, when they first started to enforce the law, they were using a surveillance approach. They would find the adverts online, go to the location and observe, and then, when the men were coming out, they would arrest them.

That is obviously a different context, but because of the way in which the culture has changed as a result of the law, there was an interesting public discussion. The public were saying, “Hang on a minute—if we think that this is violence against women and a crime is being committed here, why are the police waiting for the crime to be committed before they take action?” The police in Sweden have now changed how they police. They have moved from the surveillance model to what they would describe as a welfare model. That is very similar to the way in which Police Scotland police prostitution, and the convictions have gone up—

Yes, you are quite right. It was Dr Emma Forbes—I will paraphrase what she said, as I do not have it in front of me, but I looked at it again this morning. She said that there would be the same evidential challenges that there are in other offences, such as rape and domestic abuse—I am sure that the committee is well aware of what those challenges might be. However, that does not mean that we should not do this and change the law, nor does it mean that the difficulties are insurmountable. If the Crown Office thinks that there are evidential challenges in the same way that there are with other offences, that is its opinion. Obviously, no one is suggesting that we should repeal the offences of rape and domestic abuse. They are very important in Scotland, and we would not even think about repealing them.

I have had a conversation with the police about what evidence they might gather. The police think that there is a gap in the law. They would like to have the powers to arrest and charge sex buyers. A number of different pieces of evidence would be used—I listed some of them in answer to an earlier question—and I imagine that some of that evidence would be digital, such as screenshots and so on. The evidence shows that, if the police move to more of a welfare model, they are more likely to develop a relationship with women who are working in prostitution, in which the women will often voluntarily share evidence with the police, particularly from their mobile phones. That model is working very well in Sweden. Because of the way that we police in Scotland, we are quite close to that model anyway. I had a number of conversations with both police and prosecutors, in which we imagined that some version of that model would work in Scotland.

I am sure that the convener will not want me to go into extreme detail on this. I will follow up with the committee on the evidence that we have on it—but, no, that is not substantiated by any evidence. In fact, that was investigated by the court.

We are coming back to the same argument, but, although prostitution is inherently violent, we have to be careful that we are not conflating the legislative model with the violence. The violence is ever present. There is no evidence that the proposed legislative model makes things more violent or more unsafe.

I did not talk to you about the murder rates, which I will try to come back to if I get an opportunity in response to the next question.

That is what the evidence shows.

That term “sex work” is a contested and disputed term, but it tends to encompass other things. I would say that it would probably be understood as including things such as web cams, OnlyFans or porn and not only prostitution, which slightly changes the way that we might think about it. It can also include pimps and managers, who are also termed as sex workers, so we need to be very careful with the terminology that we use.

The internet has made it much easier to exploit women. It used to be the case that prostitution was, for the most part, on street, but there was a limit to the number of hours women could go on the street and the number of punters that they could see in that environment. The reason that sex trafficking is now so profitable is because of online advertising. Women can be advertised to punters all over the place and punters can easily find them and can make appointments to go and see women who are exploited in prostitution in indoor settings. That is much easier.

The internet has not changed the nature of prostitution, which is still violence against women.