Should vice laws be tightened?

THE campaign to "End Prostitution Now" is a tremendous opportunity for Scotland to become the first country in the UK to outlaw prostitution.

In Glasgow, we see week after week the devastating impact that prostitution has upon the men and women who are treated as the commodity in the purchase of sex.

But that impact also directly affects the families of those involved and the communities where this appalling trade takes place.

In a great many cases, these communities will be living in a state of fear and anxiety because of the criminality that surrounds prostitution.

Organised crime plays a massive part in perpetuating prostitution in this country and elsewhere. Ruthless criminals see only profit in the sale of people for sex. They have no concept of the devastation they cause – if they have to control and ultimately ruin the lives of others then it is a price that has to be paid.

Such gangsters are responsible for trafficking dozens and dozens of women into Glasgow, for what is unquestionably a form of modern slavery. But if there was no market where sex could be bought there would be no point in trafficking.

That is why tackling demand is the key to tackling prostitution. It is demand which props up the whole rotten pyramid. It is kind of the man who pays his 20 or 30 and then goes home to his wife without any regard for whether that money goes straight to a drug dealer or pimp that is the problem.

Target these men by sending a very clear message through legislation about the acceptability of prostitution, and the market effectively seizes up.

The recent kerb crawling legislation has had an impact. But it could do nothing about indoor prostitution. The amendments we want to see will close that gap. If passed by parliament, anyone involved in the facilitation of the purchase of sex would be guilty of an offence, wherever those acts took place.

Already, our "End Prostitution Now" campaign is gathering steam and a cross-party consensus is growing. If Scotland takes the lead and makes the purchase of sex illegal, it is a lead the rest of the UK will be compelled to follow – otherwise, the traffickers, pimps and brothel-keepers will simply move south.

NO SAYS Ruth Morgan Thomas, project manager of the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project

THE "End Prostitution Now" campaign is unrealistic. We have seen similar strategies in the past, it's something that's been happening not just for decades, but millennia.

There have been various attempts to criminalise buyers and organisers of prostitution, and Glasgow City Council has been building towards this campaign since 1999. They have been looking for other local authorities to support them, but there is no consensus among councils on this issue.

Research suggests that the type of legislation being proposed will only increase the vulnerability of women – a review of the legislation in Sweden found that sex workers had been subject to increased violent attacks.

In Sweden, women have been forced to use their own private residences for selling sexual services, but often they are reported and then made homeless. If this legislation goes ahead here, it will see the indoors industry in Glasgow multiply enormously.

When you don't have the services or support in place for women to move on, they will continue to sell sex. For a lot of women it is how they support themselves and their families.

If you criminalise the whole industry, you lose the opportunity to put in place the mechanisms to prevent abuse.

The vast majority of women are not coerced into the sex industry – the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project found 50 per cent of those women we worked with moved on with little or no help.

I hope there is no political support for this legislation, and that MSPs do not get carried away with what is in my view a moral, ideological campaign. The evidence on the End Prostitution Now website is flawed.

I was very surprised when the Scottish Parliament overruled the evidence from an expert group, and introduced the kerb crawling legislation despite concerns it would place women at risk. I remain concerned that politicians do not look at the facts on this issue, and instead are ruled by politics. In my opinion, that it is not how a government should be run.