Call for fresh indoor sex trade study

INDEPENDENT Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald has called for a fresh study into how prostitution has been driven indoors.

She wants justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to revive the expert group on prostitution set up by the previous Scottish Executive, which never completed its remit.

George Lewis, co-chair of Edinburgh-based support group Scotpep, said there had been an increase in attacks on women since the scrapping of the Capital's tolerance zone and the introduction of a ban on kerb-crawling.

It warned a ban on paid-for sex would not tackle the real problems and risked driving prostitution "to the fringes".

The expert group, led by former Strathclyde assistant chief constable Sandra Hood, produced a report in 2004 on the issue of street prostitution, but did not get the go-ahead to carry out the second part of its work, looking at indoor prostitution.

Lothian and Borders assistant chief constable Iain Livingstone said: "We do have some concerns you will increasingly drive more prostitution further off the street into areas where it is hard to identify vulnerable women."