Criminal Justice Committee 26 November 2025 [Draft]
Mr Kerr’s question cuts to the heart of the issue on which the committee is deliberating. I want to be clear on this point: the committee has not been presented with any verifiable evidence that the Nordic model does not work. A lot of statistics have been thrown around, and small samples of qualitative interview data have been presented to the committee, but that is not verifiable, state-level, Government-level research information.
Governments and Parliaments need to make decisions on policy frameworks and legislative approaches based on the evidence. The evidence that is coming from countries that have implemented the model is that, even if the law is changed and not robustly enforced, it will still have some effect. We have seen that in Northern Ireland and in Ireland. Yes, it is not having the full effect that we might anticipate, but it is having some effect. In a moment, I will go on to discuss how we judge whether it is having a good effect.
I know that the committee is concerned that it seems to have been presented with almost completely contradictory pieces of evidence, so we are developing, in the office, a paper that goes through, in extreme detail, all the evidence that has been given to the committee. I am happy to share that with the committee if it would help with your deliberations.
Turning to how we would decide whether the Nordic model is working, I think that there are a number of key issues that we would look for. We would be looking at what happens to demand and to the market size of prostitution; at trafficking inflows; and at culture and attitudes to buying sex. We need to look at those key things. In order for evidence to be verifiable, we need baseline data, and we need to be able to observe trends. That is why I am suggesting that much of the evidence with which the committee has been presented that appears to undermine the Nordic model does not, in fact, undermine it, because that evidence does not address those key things.
We can look at Sweden. After the buyers were criminalised, the share of men paying for sex fell by almost half, and Sweden now has one of the smallest prostitution markets in Europe. That can be contrasted with what we would call commercialised systems, because there is a bit of debate about whether those systems are regulatory models or decriminalisation models. Those models exist in countries such as Germany and Netherlands. They have some of the biggest markets—they have the highest numbers of men who are buying sex and the largest numbers of women who are in prostitution—and the largest trafficking inflows.
I have to say to the committee—it is disturbing to tell you this—that Scotland, under those measures, sits much closer to countries such as Germany and the Netherlands than it does to a country such as Sweden. We might think that our laws on prostitution are perhaps somewhere in the middle of the models, but the data that I am seeing shows that Scotland is much closer to the latter model.
I can give you the rates of people in prostitution by legislative framework. The data has been adjusted for population size, so it is comparable. To give you a starting point, in Sweden, the rate of people in prostitution per 100,000 is between 6.6 and 15 people. We can compare that to Germany, where, per 100,000, it is between 185 and 493 people. I hope that the committee can see the difference there.
I can read out all the other figures, but I expect that the convener will not like it if I do. Just for context, and for the committee’s information, the rate for Scotland, under our current legislative model, is between 108 and 144 per 100,000. When I saw those figures, I have to say that I was shocked. I think that there is definitely a problem in Scotland that we need to address.