Meeting of the Parliament 08 December 2020
I thank Ruth Maguire for bringing the debate.
We see every day how important human rights are. They must be protected. The Justice Committee is scrutinising two pieces of legislation in which rights are important. One is about defamation. We know that the right to freedom of expression is not an absolute; it comes up against the right to protect one’s reputation. Similarly, in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, the right to utter expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule and insult comes up against the right not to be a victim of hate. The term “chilling effect” has often come up in our scrutiny of each of those pieces of legislation. If we fail to get the balance of those competing interests right, someone’s human rights will suffer and nothing will change for the better.
An unwillingness to address an issue—perhaps because we wrongly fear that a change might tread on our rights or because it is too controversial or complicated—can have a similar chilling effect.
There is no wee boy in Vietnam whose ambition it is to cultivate cannabis in a bungalow in the north of Scotland, all the while being told by his controllers, who literally hold his life in their hands, that he is in debt to them for taking him to London, which is where he believes he is. Likewise, no wee girl in west Africa sets out with the goal of having her body treated as a commodity to be used and abused by men in Scotland. She is a victim. Let us be very clear: she is a victim of men in Scotland who pay for her services. Is that not a vile euphemism? Those men provide the market for human traffickers and make those human traffickers their sordid fortune.
I recognise that issues such as abortion and medically assisted suicide, both of which engender strong views, are legitimately viewed as being about an individual choosing what to do with their body. If that is a decision of someone of sound mind, fully aware of the issues and in control of themselves, then it is none of my business. However, the same cannot be said in relation to sexual exploitation, as the owner of the body is unable to exercise choice or free will; they are trapped and it should be everyone’s business to end such suffering.
I wrestle to reconcile arguments about the so-called sex industry and the graphic facts of human traffic. Last week, the increase in trafficking in Scotland was described by Police Scotland as “exponential”: the police identified 84 women forced into prostitution and nine of the supported victims were under 18—the youngest was a 13-year-old child. I abhor what one victim described as “the trade in trauma”.
I want to understand how we can better address the issue. Is there a hierarchy of rights in Scotland? Do Scotsmen’s perceived purchasing rights trump those of a trafficked girl from Sierra Leone or Stirling? Whose rights are we going to prioritise? As a man who condemns gender-based violence and who recognises the gender power imbalance that fuels so many societal problems, would I try to find a rights-based justification for the men in Scotland who abuse women and girls—the so-called customers—whose actions fuel the globalised crime industry of human trafficking?
As I have got older, I have found that my right to change my mind has become more important. In recent times I have witnessed first hand the inability of medicine to control pain, which has changed my mind on the issue of medically assisted suicide. I am increasingly confronted with the sexual exploitation of trafficked souls, which means that I must rethink everyday language, including the term “the sex industry”. Men have no right to buy another human and to use and abuse them for their sexual gratification. Scotland’s laws must change to reflect that. Any meaningful human rights impact assessment of that tragic situation will evidence that that is the right thing to do.
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