Hansard

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

25 Mar 2026

General Question Time · Sexual Crimes and Domestic Abuse

Twelve years on from the equally safe strategy, women and girls in Scotland are less safe than ever. Male violence is escalating in homes, on our streets and online. Despite £100 million of equally safe funding having been delivered since 2021, our vital front-line services ar...

8. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

25 Mar 2026

General Question Time · Sexual Crimes and Domestic Abuse

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the Scottish Police Authority’s recent quarterly policing performance report showing that sexual crimes have continued to increase, with recorded rape at the highest level since comparable records began, and with domestic abuse also ...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

19 Mar 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Transport (Edinburgh and East Lothian)

Public trust and economic confidence require the delivery of essential infrastructure, such as Sheriffhall roundabout, on time and on budget. Scottish people want affordable, reliable public transport, but we should not punish car users when alternatives are lacking.Currently,...

6. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

19 Mar 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Transport (Edinburgh and East Lothian)

To ask the Scottish Government what actions it is taking to reduce journey times and congestion for commuters travelling to and from Edinburgh and East Lothian, including measures to progress with the delayed upgrade of Sheriffhall roundabout and to improve transport reliabili...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

17 Mar 2026

Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

There is a frustration among many of these women, who have spent a lot of time, energy and money building up their businesses and are fearful about what will happen to their businesses, which I think people can understand. The minister seems to be suggesting that it is the Gov...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

17 Mar 2026

Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

Will the minister take an intervention?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

17 Mar 2026

Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

I will support Jeremy Balfour’s amendment 5.Injectable aesthetics procedures are not typically taught as part of most undergraduate medical or nursing degrees. As a result, medical practitioners who enter the aesthetics sector often obtain their training in such procedures thr...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

17 Mar 2026

Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

I will press amendment 11. The bill will create a situation whereby practitioners who spend more than a year completing advanced aesthetics training will not be able to operate independently. That will mean that women such as my constituent and many others, as non-healthcare p...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

17 Mar 2026

Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

The Non-surgical Procedures and Functions of Medical Reviewers (Scotland) Bill seems to be a classic example of the way in which the Government has started to make law, which is that it sees that there is an issue and rushes into legislation while, unfortunately, listening to ...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

05 Mar 2026

General Question Time · The Promise

Safeguarding loses effectiveness when ideological confusion weakens practical protections across public policy. The catastrophic consequences of diluting sex-based safeguards leave the vulnerable exposed to avoidable risks. Children in care are among Scotland’s most vulnerable...

2. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

05 Mar 2026

General Question Time · The Promise

To ask the Scottish Government how it measures success in protecting care-experienced children, in light of reports that its flagship policy, the Promise, has failed to keep vulnerable children safe. (S6O-05596)

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

26 Feb 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Wave Energy Scotland (Funding)

I do not think that we can credibly speak of a just transition while confidence in our existing oil and gas sector is eroded by policy uncertainty and while emerging technologies, including those that are supported by Wave Energy Scotland, are denied the stable investment and ...

1. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

26 Feb 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Wave Energy Scotland (Funding)

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any impact that withdrawing funding for Wave Energy Scotland from March 2026 will have on Scotland’s ability to leverage investment, including through horizon Europe, and on confidence in the marine energy sector. (...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

25 Feb 2026

Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill: Stage 3

Budgets provide an opportunity for the Parliament to scrutinise questions such as whether we are spending public money wisely or funding failure. I will use the few minutes that I have been allocated to talk about public trust and how—or whether—we are getting value for money....

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

18 Feb 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Prostitution

Will the minister now apologise to survivors and resign over the complete failure of her political duty to act on expert advice?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

18 Feb 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Prostitution

The world is recoiling at the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and children that has been exposed by brave survivors in cases such as those of the grooming gangs and Epstein. However, in Scotland—even within walking distance of this Parliament—men who buy sexual access ...

8. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

18 Feb 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Prostitution

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken since 2007 to address prostitution, including legislative measures aimed at tackling demand for paid sex as a means of preventing harm to vulnerable women and girls, and the provision of exit support services for recovery...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

I will conclude, Presiding Officer.For all the survivors of prostitution here, in Scotland and across the world, I commend the motion in my name.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

They do not want your sympathy; they just need your vote. Those who vote against the bill today will find that it will become a stain on their voting record.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

What rational person thinks that the vulnerable are kept safe by shielding the men who have queued around the block to buy access to these wee girls’ bodies and then rape them like takeaway meals on the vile Punternet community sites?There are sliding-door moments in politics,...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The Lord Advocate said that“women involved in prostitution are disproportionately likely to be victims of serious … offences,”but the men“who purchase sex, whether on or off the street, are statistically more likely to perpetrate domestic abuse and other forms of violence agai...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

I will not.If men are refused by those at the very top who are able to do some kind of vetting, where do those men go next? I will tell members where they go: they just go down the chain, to women who are poorer, more desperate and more vulnerable. That is a choice, but too ma...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

If she had taken time to listen to survivors, the minister might have heard people explaining that point.There is a question here that is never answered.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

It has been an interesting afternoon. I reiterate my point that the Parliament is at its best when we are wrestling with such debates. However, it is very clear to me that the approach that I outlined in my bill has won the argument decisively in the chamber this afternoon. Th...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The logic of those on the other side of the argument seems to be that, if we decriminalise similar crimes—if we decriminalise, say, rapists or domestic abusers—that will somehow make women safer. Surely we can understand that that is not the case and that we need to hold these...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

This is directly on that point. Would the member and the committee have been able to satisfy themselves on that point a little bit better if they had not engaged with the lived-experience panel that was against the bill but had engaged in person with the survivors who are for ...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The problem that we are wrestling with is that it is our job as legislators to engage with the data and the evidence. It is fine for people to have opinions. People can say, “I think this might be more safe,” but that is not supported by the evidence. We analysed the evidence ...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

No, that is not true.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

No, it has not.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

That is not true.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Will the member take an intervention on that point?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Will the minister take an intervention?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Will the minister take an intervention?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

I have been very concerned—I would have made an intervention on the committee convener had she had time to take it—about the seeming lack of comparativeness between those who advance the argument that they do not agree with the bill and say that they have lived experience, and...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Presiding Officer, I will. Unfortunately—again—the Parliament does not allocate enough time to the things that are desperately important, such as saving people’s lives. The equally safe strategy recognises prostitution as violence against women and girls, yet ministers are ask...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Survivors have told us repeatedly that the loudest voices in the debate are from those who were never for sale. That is a scandal. One person told us that every delay tells men that they can keep doing what they are doing, and tells women that their lives do not matter.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

I want to make a point to the chamber about the timing, because that is an issue that the Government has raised. We never seem to know our own history in here, so I note that the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill, which was passed in 2007, moved from introduction to...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

—and its duty to have a proper debate on this.

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

—I would like to put on the record that I have repeatedly asked for more time for this debate. When I have taken bills through Parliament before, I have always wanted to take interventions, because that is an important part of steering legislation through. I am sorry, but not ...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Okay. I apologise, but—

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

I will come to the member in a moment.Since 2002, there have been nine bills or formal proposals on prostitution. There have been a dozen consultations, multiple expert groups and, in this instance, a full stage 1 scrutiny of a bill. If the answer is another commission, Parlia...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

03 Feb 2026

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The world is watching. As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal finally unravels, it exposes something that survivors and whistleblowers have been telling us for decades: that sexual exploitation does not persist because no one knows about it; it persists because those with power choose...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

29 Jan 2026

Business Motion

::Through my amendment, I am asking the Parliament for something that should not be controversial: time—having the time to do our jobs properly by respecting the gravity of our task and acknowledging the reality of those whose lives are central to the debate.Having been involv...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

21 Jan 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Rape and Sexual Assault in Hospitals (Protection)

How many rapes of women and girls in Scottish hospitals are acceptable to the Government?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

21 Jan 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Rape and Sexual Assault in Hospitals (Protection)

That vulnerability also applies to female patients in mixed-sex hospitals—

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

21 Jan 2026

Portfolio Question Time · Rape and Sexual Assault in Hospitals (Protection)

The human rights of women and girls in Scotland are not complex. Sex-based risk is real. Women and girls have unique vulnerabilities to sexual violence, including in institutional settings such as hospitals, but also in prisons, toilets and changing rooms. Protections that ar...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

15 Jan 2026

First Minister’s Question Time · Violence Against Woman and Girls (Prostitution)

The latest Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service figures show a 43 per cent post-Covid rise in under-16s who are reported for rape and sexual assault. There is a crisis of violence against women and girls in Scotland. What we are currently doing is not working. Will the G...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

14 Jan 2026

Finance and Local Government · Budget 2026-27 (Prostitution Support and Exit Services)

I look forward to seeing the details of that additional funding. Current funding is very fragmented and it does not align with Scotland’s international human rights obligations, the Government’s stated aim to eradicate male violence against women or the Government’s and COSLA...

3. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

14 Jan 2026

Finance and Local Government · Budget 2026-27 (Prostitution Support and Exit Services)

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider allocating ring-fenced funding to local authorities in the 2026-27 budget to ensure consistent provision of prostitution support and exit services across Scotland, in line with the joint Scottish Government and Convention...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

06 Jan 2026

Complaint

I confirm to the member that I did not send a complaint to the Ethical Standards Commissioner and that both the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and the Presiding Officer—I believe—read my letters as an attempt to seek guidance. I hope that that clarifie...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

06 Jan 2026

Complaint

If I will get the time back, Presiding Officer.

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

06 Jan 2026

Complaint

Over these past decades, public trust in this Parliament has declined significantly, and that is every member’s joint responsibility. Confidence in this institution is now at its lowest point since devolution began, dropping 20 points in just 10 years. I think that Scots expec...

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

18 Dec 2025

Portfolio Question Time · Women and Children in or Survivors of Prostitution (Investment in Prevention, Housing, Safety and Recovery)

—and uphold the Christie commission principles?

Ash Regan Ind Chamber

18 Dec 2025

Portfolio Question Time · Women and Children in or Survivors of Prostitution (Investment in Prevention, Housing, Safety and Recovery)

Prostitution generates billions of pounds globally for the sex trade, and it is the world’s third-largest criminal industry after the drugs and arms trades, yet it is the public purse that bears the cost. In Scotland, prostitution is among the highest-cost forms of gender-bas...

7. Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

18 Dec 2025

Portfolio Question Time · Women and Children in or Survivors of Prostitution (Investment in Prevention, Housing, Safety and Recovery)

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its equally safe delivery plan, what discussions the Minister for Equalities has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the provision of sustained social and economic investment in prevention, housing, safety and long-term recovery ...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

09 Dec 2025

Urgent Question · Employment Tribunal Decision (Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife)

The Sandie Peggie employment tribunal exposes not just one employer’s failings but a systemic collapse in how public bodies understand and uphold women’s sex-based rights. This judgment further exposed how whistleblowers are harassed merely for speaking up for themselves or fo...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

02 Dec 2025

Violence against Women and Girls

Digital technology has created new mediums for abuse, but let us be clear that technology is a tool, not the abuser itself. Technology simply creates new frontiers for a very old problem: male violence against women and girls. It amplifies harm, facilitates exploitation and hi...

Ash Regan (Edinburgh Eastern) (Ind) Ind Chamber

27 Nov 2025

First Minister’s Question Time · 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence

One of the few areas of gender-based violence that is currently condoned by the Scottish Government is the violence of prostitution. Therefore, I welcome the Government’s support—its qualified support—for the principle of my unbuyable bill, which will give the police the power...

Ash Regan Ind Committee

26 Nov 2025

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The timing is very tight, but—as I have said before—the bill is so important that I hope the Parliament will come together on it. The committee is playing its part. I am doing my best, and I hope that the Government will help me with that. We are talking about women’s lives. I...