When will John Swinney stop ignoring real screams of women trapped in Scotland’s sex trade?

Earlier this month, the First Minister, John Swinney, reminded us of his political ambition. In a press statement to announce new funding to tackle child poverty, he declared: “When I became First Minister, I said that I will pursue priorities that will make Scotland the best our country can be…”

The best our country can be. Stirring words from a man whose downbeat demeanour rarely excites our emotions. And a high bar for a party devoid of ideas and talent after 19 years in power. The best our country can be promises Swinney, yet his actions belie his rhetoric.

A few days ago, his government published its defence for the upcoming court case against For Women Scotland, where it argues for a biological man’s ‘right’ to be housed in a female jail if he identifies as a woman.

This position, in clear defiance of the Supreme Court ruling on sex and gender, is not that of a man determined to build a better country. Instead, it comes across as the action of a politician in hock to state-funded campaign groups. Swinney gives all the appearance of yet another cynical First Minister prepared to sacrifice the well-being of vulnerable women for the support of Scotland’s lanyard class.

READ MORE: Prostitution Scotland: Ash Regan blasts former party as SNP MSPs refuse to back her bill

Working in a brothel can be not much safer than working on the street (Picture: Chris Young) | AFP via Getty Images

Nordic Model

But as May 7 approaches, when Scots will decide who will run the country for the next five years, Ash Regan, his former SNP colleague and formidable campaigner for women’s rights, has offered Swinney an opportunity to transform his high-blown rhetoric into direct political action that will undeniably make Scotland a better place, particularly for women.

Regan’s Unbuyable Bill, which is set for its stage one debate on February 3, would, if passed, make the purchase of sex a criminal offence – the Nordic Model, as it is known after Sweden then Norway introduced similar laws, in 1999 and 2009 respectively.

Her Bill is a straightforward piece of legislation. It is only four-and-a-half pages long, with 11 sections, but the signal it sends about the kind of country in which we want our children to grow up is incalculable.

READ MORE: 'I can't put into words what he did to me': Will the Nordic model safeguard women in Scotland?

Keep promise to ‘protect women and girls’

What government, which party leader, could deny a law that says that women and girls are not for sale? That the protection of vulnerable women from sexual exploitation and violent abuse is more important than the views of those who argue that selling sex is work, just the same as working in a supermarket, or indeed, being an MSP?

Surely a First Minister who promised in his Programme for Government speech only last year to “protect women and girls” and “tackle unacceptable abuse of women and girls in our society” has already offered Regan his full-throated support for a Bill that would do just that?

A law that echoes the Scottish Government’s own policy on prostitution, which is also inspired by the Nordic model. A law that would indeed make “Scotland the best our country can be”.

You would think so, but to date Swinney and his ministers have refused to back the Bill, citing policy and operational challenges for their reluctance. The four SNP members of the Criminal Justice Committee, including the convenor Audrey Nicoll, also oppose the Bill and without the support of SNP MSPs it will not pass its stage one debate. Yet it does have the support of everyone else who matters, including Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal service, Cosla and the Scottish Women’s Convention (SWC).

‘We’re screaming in another room’

Regan wrote to the First Minster this week repeating her offer for him to meet with survivors of commercial sexual exploitation to hear first hand of the degradation and violence wreaked by prostitution.

Women like those described by Regan in her evidence to the Criminal Justice Committee last November, when she said: “I have spoken to women who have worked on street, I have spoken to women who have worked in brothels in Edinburgh… If you work in a brothel in Edinburgh, you cannot refuse clients.

“If you refuse more than a certain number of clients, your pay will be docked – and you have to pay fees and so on. Somebody working in a brothel in Edinburgh said to me that people have the idea that working off street is safer. She said, ‘I think it is slightly safer than working on street, but when we’re screaming in another room, the manager will just shut the door' – so that people could not hear them screaming quite as loud…”

There are thousands of women screaming behind closed doors in Scotland. Women, some of them barely out of school, who are forced to sell their bodies, and their souls, to men willing to pay a few pounds for the cheap thrill of abusing them.

‘System form of violence’

Women who risk being raped, beaten, and killed every day at their ‘work’. Women who are trafficked from the world’s poorest countries to provide sexual services to middle-class men in our nation’s capital.

Prostitution is not, as some campaigners argue, empowering. It is, as SWC chair Agnes Tolmie describes, a “systemic form of violence” and “deeply damaging and traumatising”. Nor does payment magically transform torture, violence and sexual degradation into ‘work’.

If passed, Regan’s Unbuyable Bill will not end prostitution overnight, but it will send a clear signal to the criminals who exploit vulnerable women and the pathetic men who purchase sex that the women of Scotland are not for sale.

If Swinney is sincere about making Scotland the best it can be and protecting women and girls, he must offer his backing to Ash Regan’s Bill, or at the very least, allow his MSPs a free vote on February 3. Anything less would be to ignore the screams of those women trapped in the hell of Scotland’s sex trade.